తలనీలాలు
Shaving the head as a vow. At Tirumala it is free, available around the clock, and done by some 1,148 tonsurers — around seventy per cent of pilgrims offer their hair, which the temple then sorts and sells at auction.
More than one account explains this custom. They are given separately because they are separate — merging them into one story would invent a consensus that does not exist.
The temple gives one reason and only one: the hall exists so that pilgrims may fulfil vows they have taken. TTD offers no myth, no founding text and no date for the practice anywhere on its site or in its press archive. That silence is worth recording rather than filling.
A child's first ritual haircut is textually attested and quite distinct from the temple vow, though the two are often performed on the same day at the same temple. The Asvalayana Grhya Sutra opens its treatment with the instruction that the tonsure of the child's head falls in the third year, or according to the custom of the family, and prescribes vessels of rice, barley, beans and sesame and cutting with mantras. Nothing found connects this rite causally to the vow-tonsure at Tirumala, and the two are not merged here.
The story printed by nearly every travel account — that a cowherd's axe wounded Venkateswara's head, that the Gandharva princess Neela Devi cut her own hair to cover the wound, and that he granted in return that the hair devotees offer would be received by her — could not be found on the temple's own site, in its press archive, or in any text reached. It is recorded here as widely retold and unlocatable. The temple itself says only that people are fulfilling vows.
People promise the god something in return for a wish, and shaving off all your hair is one of the things you can give.