Devi-yatras here & there

Published November 21, 2013

ONE would not have expected to encounter Devi in Balochistan and certainly not in a gully deep in the Kirthar mountains. And yet, 250 kilometres along the Karachi-Gwadar highway, her presence is commemorated there in a small shrine embedded in the rock, protected by an overhang.

For Hindus, she is the revered Mata Hinglaj, the supreme Kuldevi. Local Muslims know her as Bibi Nani. The shrine marks the spot where (legend has it) the head of Devi was buried by her grieving husband Shiva. He disposed of her other 51 body parts all over India.

Anyone expecting to see a finely carved representation of Devi will be disappointed. The epicentre of worship is no more than a natural formation of stone, its visage daubed with saffron paste and two eyes accentuated with white paint. Yet, in April each year, devotees congregate there in their thousands to affirm their faith in her powers.

“Faith is to believe what you do not yet see;” the Christian St Augustine said, “the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.” To witness faith in action, one needs to visit the areas in and around Kangra (Himachal Pradesh), where temples to Devi are as numerous as her many manifestations.

Some 15km from Dharamsala lies the temple to Chamunda Devi, the sobriquet applied to her after her victory over the demons Chanda and Munda. If the local pundits are to be believed, the temple was founded over 400 years ago. The present temple building is all too obviously modern, built sometime after the devastating earthquake of April 1905 that flattened most of the old monuments in Kangra.

Nowadays, pilgrims queue to pay homage to something not dissimilar to Mata Hinglaj, for here too the image is a natural formation, enlivened with vermilion paste. For those who wish to purify their sins, there is a pool fed by water diverted from the adjacent Baner stream (a tributary of the river Beas). Another 40km away from the Chamunda temple is the more famous and certainly more historic shrine of Devi as Jwalamukhi or “she of the flaming mouth”. Locals have still not forgiven Mahmud of Ghazni, even after 1,000 years, for looting Kangra and its rich temples (including Jwalamukhi) during his attack in 1009.

They are more indulgent towards the emperor Akbar. They revenge themselves with a story about how Akbar tried to extinguish the flames that emanated from the natural rock. Unsuccessful, he then tried to mollify the goddess with an offering of a gold umbrella which she spurned, transmuting it into a baser metal.

Akbar’s version is different. His chronicler Abul Fazl in the Akbarnama recounts how in 1582, Akbar set out to see the temple where devotees were said to demonstrate their faith by cutting out their tongues. Within days, the tongues would grow again. The origin of this tradition was that Devi’s tongue — one of her 52 parts — was supposed to have been dropped in Kangra by Shiva.

Before Akbar could reach the sacred site, though, an apparition appeared to him in a dream. It warned him against going any further. That was enough for Akbar. He turned his forces around and returned to the plains.

Had he persisted, Akbar would have had to battle his way, as modern visitors do, uphill through a phalanx of shopkeepers peddling votive offerings. Nowadays, they thrust with aggressive determination fresh flowers or videos of the shrine complex or distinctive woollen caps from Kulu. One of the shopkeepers, disappointed that he could not sell anything, offers a ‘VIP darshan’. He says he doubles as a temple pujari, and takes the afternoon shift.

At least Mata Hinglaj and Chamunda Devi have some image to offer the faithful; Jwalamukhi is devoid of any idols, nothing except a flame fed from natural gas emanating from a fissure in the rock. That is revered as the fiery mouth of the goddess.

In the centre of the temple is a deep pit, hewn out of the hard rock, and through one of the walls a flame flickers. Smoke from ghee applied by the priests to revivify the ignited gas has darkened the interior of the pit into a stygian black void. Around the pit rotates a never-ending line of pilgrims, jostling for a glimpse of the sacred flame.

The manifestations of piety are all outside. Surmounting the temple is a golden dome, donated by the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1815. Six years earlier, he had visited Jwalamukhi and there sealed a pact over the flame with the Katoch Raja Sansar Chand whom he had rescued from the Gurkhas. (The choice of Jwalamukhi was significant: Kangra rulers claim descent from the perspiration of the goddess’s brow.)

Unlike Akbar’s gift, Ranjit Singh’s has retained its golden sheen. Similarly, the folding doorway donated later by his son Maharaja Kharak Singh has survived, its silver intact.

Pilgrims returning downhill carry with them an open basket which contains sweet prasad, marigolds and a lamp with a dangerously open flame. Those without insurance shield theirs in glass lanterns. They see their Devi in each flicker of every flame; they see what they believe.

Many Indians and most Pakistanis are unaware of the significance of Mata Hinglaj or Chamunda Devi or Jwalamukhi. That is understandable. Our post-1947 midnight’s children and their younger siblings live in a shared twilight, in un-illumined ignorance of one another.

The writer is an author and art historian.

www.fsaijazuddin.pk

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