Chandrasena Jadhav was blessed by his Guru Bhāskararāya that his pregnant wife would have a son. The king then traveled to Bhalki to see a Siddha named Nārāyaṇa and questioned him regarding the gender of his unborn child. The Siddha immediately replied that the queen would give birth to a daughter. The king was confused and narrated that his Guru Bhāskararāya had indicated that he would have a son. Nārāyaṇa expressed his displeasure thus, “O King, by asking me the same question you asked your Guru, you have disrespected your Guru and have doubted his word. Neither of our words can go untrue. So your child will neither be a male nor female”. His words came true and the child was born a eunuch. Who was this Siddha named Nārāyaṇa?
Long ago, Rāmacandra killed Rāvaṇa and returned to Ayodhyā victorious. Now, though endowed with kśātra and āsurī tejas, Rāvaṇa was still a brāhmaṇa! The brahmahatyā doṣa of having killed Rāvaṇa assumed the form of a gigantic monster and began to follow Rāma like his own shadow. To get rid of the doṣa, he undertook various remedies such as japa, dāna, homa, etc. He wandered from one kṣetra to another, bathing in various tīrthas. But the piśācākr̥ti continued to haunt him. Finally, his guru Vasiṣṭha led Rāma to a prācīna tīrtha created by Brahmā bathing in which relieved Rāma from Brahmahatyā doṣa and hence also the piśāca. From then on, the tīrtha and the surrounding grāma came to be known as Narāvaṇī.
A brāhmaṇa named Nārayaṇa was born in this holy village. He was married at the age of ten. However, after his parents died, the spiritually inclined Nārāyaṇa left his wife in the care of her father. He received initiation into śrīvidyā from the maṭhādhipati of a branch maṭha of Sringeri. With an earnest desire to earn the grace of Parāmbā, he visited various kṣetras and eventually reached the sannidhi of Bhramarāmbikā. In the dense forest of śrīśaila, he began to perform tapas, reciting the scared śrīvidyā mantra. Yakṣis, piśācas, and divine damsels attempted to scare and tempt him but he continued his penance with unmoved devotion. After a period of thirty-five long years, Bhramarāmbikā graced him with amogha mantra-siddhi and blessed him with vāksiddhi so anything he said would become true. Having worshiped Parāmbā in various ways, he returned to his village.
By then he was nearly fifty years of age and his wife had passed the prime age suitable for bearing a child. As he was weak from long penance as also poor, no one was ready to offer him a younger bride. In the same village, the young daughter of a rich merchant had died. He approached the father of the dead girl and asked if he would give his daughter to him in marriage if she were to become alive again. When the merchant agreed, Nārāyaṇa brought the dead kanyā back to life through his mantra-siddhi. As promised, the kanyā was offered to him in marriage. He began to use his siddhi to cure various diseases and offer help to those in need of assistance.
Through his siddhi, he divined that a śrīcakra was secretly being worshiped in Veṅkaṭācala (Tirupati) and decided to offer his worship to this sacred symbol of Parāmbā. However, the śrīvaiṣṇava archakas denied the existence of such a śrīcakra and had him physically thrown out of the temple premises. Enraged, Nārāyaṇa placed a stone at the entrance of the shrine of Veṅkaṭeśvara and performed the ākarṣaṇa of deity’s kalā, prāṇa, indriya, avayava, etc. into that stone by the merit of his mantra siddhi. That night Veṅkaṭācalapati appeared in the dream of the archakas of the temple and said, “Due to the disrespect you have shown the great mantravettā Nārāyaṇa, he has pulled me out of the shrine. Seek his forgiveness, bring him to my garbhagrha and let him worship me with siddha-mantras in solitude. Only that shall please me”. As instructed by the Lord, Nārāyaṇa was brought into the temple and allowed to worship the Lord in solitude. Nārāyaṇa worshiped Veṅkaṭācalapati and the gupta śrīcakra in his sannidhi following the diktats of śrīvidyā tantra. After this incident, his fame spread across Andhra, Karṇāṭa and Marāṭha deśas. Some manuscripts attributed to him, that I have talked of elsewhere, are available today with some of his vamśathas.