“This wealth belongs to the temple,” Mr. Chandy said. “Sri Padmanabhaswamy is a symbol of the Kerala culture. The government will not agree with the view that this belongs to the state.”

Political analysts say his position will serve him in good stead with Hindus, who make up a little more than half of Kerala’s population. Mr. Chandy is Christian and led the Congress Party and its coalition partners to a narrow victory in state elections recently.

Image Credit... The New York Times

India’s Supreme Court will ultimately decide who should control the temple’s wealth, which an archeological expert and the royal family say is probably worth less than the $22 billion estimate but is still likely to be monumental.

On Friday, the court put off the opening of the last of six vaults under the temple and ordered the state government and royal family to come up with a plan to secure the treasure. Previous attempts to open the vault have been unsuccessful because the entrance is sealed with a thick steel door and granite pillars, said Shashi Bhushan, the archeologist who is also an informal adviser to the royal family. A previous king failed in an effort to enter that vault in 1931.

Local legend has it that the vault is filled with snakes, but Mr. Bhushan, who wrote a 120-page history of the temple for the Supreme Court, dismisses those tales as hearsay. He said the court-appointed committee opening the vaults was searching for blacksmiths who may be familiar with ancient metallurgical methods to assist them.

Mr. Bhushan said most of the temple’s assets were deposited by the royal family and came from the pepper that the Travancore kingdom used to sell to Europeans and others. In times of economic stress, the assets served as a “lender of last resort” to the royals and the debts were later repaid, according to detailed records written on palm leaves, said K. Jaya Kumar, a Kerala government official who is a member of the committee.