Temples
India - The Story of a Sacred Land
Once upon a time, legend has it, there lived in the northeren Kingdom of Kankhol, near the sacred town of Hardwar, a beautiful princess named Sati. Though she had been born as one of the 50 daughters of King daksha, Sati was really an incarnation of the goddess Parvati. And so when she came of age, she was married to her divine consort, Lord Siva, the Destroyer.But the curse of a divine garland gifted to King Daksha by the gods, caused him unaccountably to hate his son-in-law. So, one day when he decided to conduct the great Brihaspati Yagna (Sacrifice), he excluded Siva and Sati from the ceremony. His daughter, who loved him dearly, could not stay away and journeyed to Kankhol, thinking, "My father will not be able to turn me away when he sees me." Poor Sati did not comprehend the extent of Hardhearted Daksha’s anger. When the king saw his child, he spat out a stream of abuses about Siva.
The devoted wife, Sati, was unable to tolerate the insult to her husband. An obedient daughter, she was equally unable to cross her own father. So , consumed by grief, she fell dead before the King. Siva, in his abode on Mount Kailash, heard the sad tidings and flew into a moghty rage, Swearing to take revenge on an unrepentant Daksha for his injustice. Coming down to the earth, Siva and his army of spirits marched to the site of the King’s Yagna and declimated Daksha’s army. Siva beheaded the monarch and threw his head into the sacrificial fire. Then sorrowfully he picked up Sati’s body and wandered with it across the land for many years, aimless and disconsolate.
Lord Vishnu finally took pity on the moghty god and decided to end his mourinng. Using his powerful weapon, the Suddarshan Chakra (discus), he cut the corpse into many pieces. As the 51 parts of Sati’s body fell to the ground they turned into stone and sanctified the soil upon which they landed, creating 51 holy and potent pitha-s or places across India.
And thus it came to be, the ancient Vedic texts tell us, that Bharatvarsh (the Indian Sub-Continuent) became a "sacred Land" a (nine maidens) or holy rivers like the Ganga and Yamuna flowing through it. A land of seven kshetra-s or regions of active power, the saptpuri or seven ancient cities of Ayodhya (Oudh), Mathura, Maya (Hardwar), Kashi (Benares), Kanchi (Kanjivaram), Avantika, and Dvaravati (Dwaraka), where Moksha (Salvation) can be attained. A country which, according to the ancient epic, the Mahabharata. Has thousands of tirtha-s (Places of Pilgrimage) where devotees can ford the river of life and reach the sublime shore beyond.
From its northernmost regions to the tip of its southern peninsula in the Indian Ocean, India is filled with places of worship. It would be difficult to walk a mile here without coming upon a shrine of some sort or the other, be it a historic monument or simply a piece of stone symbolizing a village deity. Each is significant in its own way, commemorating the occasion of a god’s visit or deed of valour in the area or explaining its existence due to divine creation or patronage. Every one wanted to be near god.
For in ancient days, faith meant more than holy tenets to be adhered to, more than a belief in an almighty and powerful being, more than a method to prevent citizens from straying off the straight and narrow. Rather than being a religion, Brahmanism, later known as Hindusim, was a gradual amalgamation of Aryan and Dravidan customs and traditions. God was every where, in every person and every object. An all-pervasive force, he ruled, in both subtle and obvious ways, the thought processes, the actions, the consequences, the beliefs, the sciences and the tempo of people’s lives.
That Hinduism’s influence was strong and consistent is evident in a society where even today this philosophy plays an all-consuming role. It determines matters as worldly as Worldly as What food is to be cooked in a certain season and when a particular ceremony or rite should be conducted. It also governs maters as spiritual as the nature and attitudes of the Hindu People. Their belief in karma (destiny), for instance, which leads to a rather fatalistic view of life. Hindus may traditionally be resigned to events by the belief that it is fate that ordains them and believe, at least in theory, in ultimately sacrificing the material world in favour of asceticism.
In its essence, Hinduism is a way of worshipping life in its every form and a path towards co-existence. The Hindu looks upon life not as a single opportunity but as part a larger cycle of births, deaths and deliverance. It is journey in which death plays a major role but does not result necessarily in monksha (liberation). Salvation must be striven for and obtained by various means-brahmavidya (knowledge) and tirtha (here, the pilgrimage itself), both of which bring bhakti (devotion, thus joy). Some people earn it during their life-jivan mukti, others spend lifetimes in quest of a final liberation from all forms of existence.
One theory states that the mandir (temple) was simply a concrete location given to god for the benefit of those who could not perceive him without help and who could not undertake the most superior form of pilgrimage, the manastirtha (pilgrimage of the mind), whose "deep, clean water is truth (satya)," The concept of the temple intended for the uplift of the common man works in abstract. However, as religious architecture evolved, the shrine with all its inherent significance, became a symbol of power and wealth with dynasties vying against each other to create more magnificent, more memorable edifices. While these may have served to immortalize their names, in reality, patrons and administrators often discriminated against the vast majority of the population, serving only a privileged elite.
The skeleton of Hindusim, without the complications of politics of caste and power however, is pantheistic, for two reasons. The first is the belief that through there is but one Supreme Lord, he takes on many forms for different purposes to preserve good, destroy evil, restore peace onearth, and vanquish chaos. As these myriad forms benefit humanity in innumerable ways, they must all be worshipped. Secondly, derived as it is from ancient fertility rites and the worship of natural powers such as the sun, moon, stars, tides water, fire, and air, Hindusim preserves the human personifications of these powers even to this day, in the form of their deities- Surya Soma, Ganga, Agni, Vayu, Varuna and others. Indeed, as many as 33 Vedic deities have been incorporated into Hindusism, worshipped either in small cults or nationally.
The holy trinity of gods derived from the Vedic period includes Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Mahesh (Siva), the Desroyer; and paradoxically, also the protector. According to Hindu mythology, Brahma, though the greatest of all gods, was once cursed that he would have no followers and that no memorials would be built to him. This explains why there are very few mandir-s devoted to him, though he appears as a Subsidiary god in the shrines of others. While not worshipped, Brahma remains highly venerated.
The chief deities of the Hindus are the remaining members of the trinity, Vishnu and Siva. Their followers form the two key sects of Hinduism, the Saivite group of Siva and the Vaishnavite of Vishnu. Although each worships their own god, the link between the tow is so convoluted and intertwined that inevitably when one is being worshipped, the other will be too. A shrine of Vishnu, for instance, would contain idols of other gods, including Siva or his wife Parvati. Indeed most temples, regardless of whom they are dedicated to will possess an image of Siva’s son Ganesha, the elephant god, for all good deeds are supposed to begin with an invocation to him.
A while range of lesser gods and goddess are also worshipped by Hindus, in individual shrines or in conjunction with the great ones. Some of the 10 avatar-s (incarnations) of Vishnu, sent to the earth to vanquish evil, are worshipped in their own right. Others are respected and depicted in many temples.
These avatar-s are Matsya (fish), kurma (tortoise), Varaha (boar), Narasimha (man-lion), Vamana (dwarf), Parasurama (Brahmin warrior), Rama (the ideal man), Krishna (the dark-skinned god), Buddha (the Hindu clergy, in an attempt to adapt to changes brought about by the newer religion of Buddhism, converted its chief source into an avatar), and Kalkin (an amorphous avatar yet to appear). Of these, Krishna and Rama acquired the status of great gods, even eclipsing Vishnu and Siva in popularity, largely because of their tangible human form and qualities, including quirks and failings, and because their stories narrated in the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics were those that devotees could identify with.
While Siva and Vishnu remained in heaven, only occasionally coming down to the earth, Rama and Krishna were born here, the former brought up to be king, the latter supposedly a crowherd (often depicted with a cow, and playing a flute to entice his herd home), living and dying as mortal beings.
In pre-Aryan and Aryan times, the mother goddess had been a consequential figure symbolizing fertilify and birth, aspects of life that were deemed sacrosanct. The fact that the innermost sancturary of all Hindu temples is called the garba grha (place of the womb and, therefore, the sanctum sanctorum), is testimony to this reverence. The mother goddess was worshipped by several indigenous ‘primitive’ cults, including the Trantric which overlaid this worship with sexual connotations.
However, with the coming of the partriarchal Aryan invaders, the prominence of the mother goddess gradually declined. Varous aspects of womanhood-the meek, the brave, the angry-are still respected in Hinduism but the female deity usually holds a subordinate place to the male. Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu, is the goddess of wealth, good fortune and beauty; Saraswati of learning; Parvati is the perfect wife; and Durga epitomizes the female element of life.
In attendance on all the major gods are their servants and vehicles, images of which also appear in shrines, frequently being given separate altars as well. These attendants are often symbolic of the particlular characterisitics of the deities, their preferences of abode, or the areas of life and earth that they control. So Siva rides a bull, Nandi virile and strong; Vishnu, a serpent, Naga; and Ganesha, a mouse or bandicoot. Surya drives a chariot pulled by seven horses, the subject of many carvings in Hindu temples, and Yama, the god of death, is seated upon an awe-inspiring black buffal0. Lakshmi, who was recovered from the ocean by a tortoise, is often depicted standingupon one, as is Ganga, the river goddess. Saraswati glides about on a Saras (swan) from which she derives her name while the warrior goddess Durga of Kali, rides a ferocious tiger.
As is only natural in a religion which has developed, adapted, and been built upon over millennia, Hindusim is now not only a mélange of anecdotes and moral tales ablut divine beings and interventions bus also a convoluted, often rigid, sometimes and forms of worship. Some of these are obsolete or followed unquestioningly or without knowledge. The ‘way of life’ has in many ways turned into another cliché, ‘blind faith.’
