The temple houses a rough-hewn block of stone eight feet in diameter reputed ... to have been found in a mango forest south of the Old Town. This stone is believed to possess particularly sacred powers as the lingam of the god Shiva and attracts many pilgrims from other parts of India ... Between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, Vaishnava influences became so strong that the temple was renamed the Lingaraj Mahaprabhu Temple. Lingaraj (King of the Lingam) is an epithet of Shiva; Mahaprabhu (Most Powerful One) is an epithet of Vishnu-Krishna. The stone lingam itself is today called Harihara, a combination of Vishnu (Hari) and Shiva (Hara). A natural cleavage in the lingam is said to manifest its dual Shaiva-Vaishnava character.
(Miller & Wertz 1976: 7–8)
A similar phenomenon can be found in the Cave of Amarnath, 13 000 feet high on the 18 000 foot Amarnath mountain, 90 miles northeast of Srinagar in Kashmir. The mountain is impassable in winter, but during the summer months a 5ft liṇga of ice forms in the Cave. ‘The lingam, it is believed, waxes and wanes with the moon and reaches its greatest height on the day of the August full moon: on this day the pilgrimage arrives’ (Naipaul 1964: 163).
With respect to inanimate objects, further, consider the śālagrāma, a short, smooth, tubular stone, which is revered especially by Vaiṣṇavas as a representation of Viṣṇu;more eclectically, however, it is installed on a tiny pedestal or ‘throne’ in the domestic shrine by many Hindus of all denominations to show honour to this deity.
The sacredness of this ... stone containing fossil ammonite seems to be comparatively ancient. A motive for it seems to be that several interior spiral grooves visible in the stone are considered by the people to be representations of Viṣṇu's discus. Another interpretation ... may, however, possibly be more original: a śālagrāma can be of nine colours, and then represent the nine ‘historic’ avatāras of the god.
(Gonda 1954: 94–5)
The śālagrāma is often wrapped in a clean cloth and regularly bathed, the water after this ritual being drunk to wash away sin and impurity. The forcible removal of the śālagrāma from the home or its desecration is a byword in Hindu culture for unmitigated disaster.
In rural areas natural mounds of earth are sometimes designated as shrines of the local mother Goddess. Here a simple form of worship may take place regularly. A pot of water is often placed near the mound (or under a convenient tree), with a coconut sitting on the mouth, holding flowers and leaves in place around the rim. The pot symbolizes (the womb of ) the Goddess and corresponding ideas of divine fertility. We shall return to such ‘folk religion’ in due course. Speaking of mounds, we can also mention the hill Arunachala at Tiruvannamalai in the state of Tamil Nadu, considered as a sort of sacred axis mundi of devotion. It was especially revered by the sage Ramana Maharshi who dwelt there, his presence becoming a focus of its sanctity (on Ramana see Chapter 10, Part II).17
Let us now move on to vegetative markers of the holy. Mention of the mango in the quotation above in connection with the liṇga in the Bhubaneshwar temple brings to mind the following example, taken from a newspaper report, which illustrates well the ordinary Hindu's penchant for perceiving the sacred in unexpected places. The report tells of a mango being discovered, still attached to its tree, in what appeared to be human shape. People came from miles around to revere this chosen manifestation of the Supreme Reality immanent in all being. Mention may also be made of the banyan and pipal trees – ficus benghalensis and ficus religiosa, respectively – which are also regarded as sacred, as is Kuśa (or Darbha grass, poa cynosuroides), which has a purificatory role in both śrauta and smārta ritual. We may include the basil or Tulasī (Tulsī) plant (ocimum sanctum) which is universally revered in Hinduism though it has a special association with Viṣṇu;it is supposed to discourage Yama, the Lord of Death, from paying one a (premature) visit. This plant is used in the funeral pyre and is grown in pots or in the yard in houses of the pious, where a daily ritual may be performed in veneration. Sacred plants or trees are often believed to incorporate the power of some deity or spirit, which gives them special uses.
Certain animals are also regarded as significant in religious context. The vāhanas are a case in point. Let us single out the snake. In Hindu iconography it is usually the cobra that is depicted;we have indicated in our description of the Mamallapuram relief that the cobra also represents the nāga, mythical half-human, half-serpent creatures that dwell in water. The cobra, which stands for fertility and, by its coils, the unendingness of space and time, is associated with deities of all three major strands of Hinduism: Vaiṣṇava, Śaiva, and Śākta. It evokes a sense of dread and insinuates that however benign the deity may appear, there are elements in the divine make-up that cannot be taken for granted: the spiritual life is not without its hazards.
The cobra is also a chthonic being – a creature of the soil – and signifies the nurturing and fecundating qualities of the earth, and in so far as it sloughs off its skin periodically, the cobra also stands for regenerate life. For all these reasons, the cobra – or some other snake, depending on local tradition – is the object of religious veneration throughout the land. There may be a marked reluctance to kill these snakes even if they intrude into places of human habitation. Many Hindus regularly place saucers of milk and other food in places which the designated snake is expected to frequent. All over India, flat ovoid or square snake stones or tablets, generally not more than about a foot high, with carvings of a serpent or entwined serpents on them and smeared with vermillion, are installed under well-established trees. These are placed there to honour the dead in the hope that they will receive new life either by going to heaven or by way of a good rebirth. Particularly in eastern India, Manasā the snake Goddess, whose vāhana is a white goose, is worshipped to protect from snake-bite.
The rationale behind the worship/veneration of all these objects is usually the same, though it may be articulated more or less explicitly and with more or less sophistication. It is that the deity or transcendent power is present everywhere, immanent in all things. At any point in space and time this Presence may burst through, and when it does, this should be acknowledged, or at least the ubiquitous presence of the sacred should be marked appropriately. This does not mean that Hindus are prone to seeing the sacred at every turn; people get on with their lives for the most part matter-of-factly. It means, rather, that every level of being is within the compass of the divine power, and may become a transparent medium of the latter.
But I do not wish to imply that all instances of such veneration carry this underlying rationale, however dimly perceived. Hindus can be rather uncritical at times about the presence of the sacred or of occult powers in various objects. In his survey of Chirakkal (in north Kerala), Ayrookuzhiel records that out of ‘187 interviewees, 108 believed in the śakti [special power] of nāgam [the snake]’. A further 52 expressed doubt in this regard, but wanted to take no chances; thus all were opposed to harming snakes. Further, exactly what kind of śakti it had and how this was thought to manifest, varied (1983: 54f.). Similarly, wearing amulets containing some mantra, around the upper arm, or finger-rings made from various materials, to ward off evil planetary and other influences, is not uncommon. Thus coral is believed to be an auspicious substance and to protect against possible malignant influence from Mars and the Sun.
Another related notion is that of the ‘evil eye’, viz. subjecting an individual to a malevolent gaze that results in harmful consequences. Not only envious human beings but also a local spirit or deity can be thought to put the ‘evil eye'on someone. We are in the realm of charms and spells here and their removal by various human or mechanical means. Married and/or childless women in particular are usually careful not to praise a bonny baby in public too much, otherwise they run the risk of being blamed for causing any subsequent misfortune the child may suffer by having cast the evil eye on them. The eyes of infants are sometimes heavily outlined by black pigment. One explanation given for this is that by putting this black mar
k or ‘blemish’ on the child during a vulnerable period of its life, the child's beauty is impaired and so the evil eye is averted. Of course, there are many Hindus who do not entertain such beliefs, yet it is surprising to note how many do, and how much influence such beliefs can exert in the lives of families and communities.
It is not uncommon for Hindus from all castes and walks of life to believe in spirit-possession. An individual can be possessed by the spirit of a holy person(maleor female) orbya deity (usually a Goddess), or by a ghost of some kind (bhśta, preta).’Possession by an evil spirit is seen as an affliction or punishment, while possession by the Goddess [or other benign spirit] is seen as a gift, a sign of grace, a positive, albeit awesome and often troublesome, appearance’ (Erndl 1993: 106).18 In keeping with the theme of this chapter, viz. the Sacred and its forms, let us focus on possession by the Goddess. In so far as the subject possessed (usually a female) is identified with the Goddess in some way, such possession is regarded as an intermediate manifestation of the Goddess, ‘intermediate’, that is, between the Goddess’ generally invisible, transcendent form and her visible form in the concrete image worshipped in the temple. Thus, possession is another way of localizing the Goddess; it is, in fact, a further expression of poly-centrism in so far as many individuals can be possessed by the same Goddess in one or other of her numerous forms.19
Possession of an individual by the deity is a kind of līlā, in so far as it manifests the Goddess’ chosen, spontaneous interaction with her devotees through the subject possessed. An important feature of this phenomenon is the permeability generally believed to exist between the ‘self’ of the subject possessed and that of the agent of possession – the deity. The Goddess takes over the subject and acts and speaks through her, interrelating with her devotees in this way. Such possession is rarely continuous: it takes place for fixed periods and for specific objectives, and can be more or less regulated and institutionalized. The reasons for Goddess-possession vary, depending on perspective: the Goddess may wish to reveal some particular purpose she has in mind, e.g. the construction of a temple in her honour, or the punishment due to a wrongdoer. On the other hand, she may want to use this method to build up her worship and solidarity among her followers, and/or accede to various requests they may make such as finding a spouse or job, passing an examination, winning a lawsuit, predicting the outcome of a course of events, etc. Usually, these objectives are down-to-earth and pragmatic. In this way, the Goddess enters into people's everyday lives as a concrete reality, testing their faith and showing her maternal concern and love (vātsalya) for them. This then is another expression of the dynamics of bhakti.
We noted earlier that there are some Hindu denominations that denigrate image-worship or do not believe that the image is an embodied form of the deity, e.g. some forms of Sant practice and the Advaitic tradition. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that none of these groups have time for religious ritual. On the contrary, ritual is so endemic a feature of religious Hinduism that it appears almost everywhere. Thus, the Ramakrishna Order, which theoretically follows the Advaitic tradition of Śaṃkara (for whom image-worship is an activity of the spiritually small-minded), has an elaborate daily ritual in its monasteries and public shrines. The object of veneration here is not the image of some deity, it is true, but rather the supreme Brahman, the ultimate Source of all reality that has manifested with particular potency in the sage Ramakrishna himself (a photograph or bust of whom generally occupies pride of place in the shrine-room).
During the Order's daily ritual or ārati service, certain constants of the ritual of Hindu image-worship remain, e.g. flowers, incense, the waving of oil lamps, the blowing of a conch-shell, the continuously rung hand-bell and so on, but other ingredients may be added such as a small square of cloth waved to and fro to signify the element of space, a fly-whisk flicked back and forth to symbolize air/wind, etc. The idea here is that the microcosm that is the individual is made of the same stuff as the five elements of fire, earth, water, wind and space (pañcabhūtas) that constitute the macrocosm or universe, the whole being but a lower-order, if ultimately illusory, manifestation of the one, ineffable, undifferentiated Brahman. The Sacred here has empirical forms that vanish ‘like mist in the noonday sun’ (to quote a phrase of Śaṃkara's) when the non-dual (advaitic) insight is attained.
But, for the practitioner of everyday Hindu temple-ritual, the Sacred really does have multiple forms. One way of celebrating this is by repeating, and if one wishes meditating upon, established chants of praise. A good example of such eulogies is the Sanskrit Sahasranāmas, or Litany of a Thousand Names, dedicated to various deities (not to mention certain shrines, pilgrimage sites etc. as well).20 These Names generally recall various forms attributed to the deity, as well as notable deeds and qualities etc. associated with him/her. The Sahasra-nāmas may be recited by priests during formal worship in the temple, or devotionally in private at home. Before we give a sample of the Names recorded in the Viṣṇu Sahasranāma, which has been recited daily for hundreds of years in countless Viṣṇu temples and Vaiṣṇava homes around the subcontinent (including the Tirupati temple spoken of earlier), we quote from a Hindu appreciation of the text:
The Vishnu Sahasranāma, containing 142 verses is extracted from the Ānusasanika Parva ... of the Mahābhārata, in the dialogue between Bhīshma and Yudhṣṭhira.21
It is held in great veneration all over India ... and is recited by persons of all stations in life ... on every occasion of joy or sorrow, fear or hope. Miraculous virtues are attributed to it ... The ancient custom ... is to repeat each name of the Sahasranāma ... before the [image] of Vishnu in his various incarnations of Rāma, Krishna, etc ... Many merely repeat the whole book sitting before the [image] with Bhasma (sacred ashes) in a plate by their side, which is afterwards distributed among the ... people [as a sort of prasāda].
(R.A.Sastry 1927: viii–ix)
Now follow some of the names attributed to Viṣṇu in this litany of (a) mythological, (b) descriptive or attributive, and (c) theological/metaphysical epithets. Under the heading of (a) mythological, we may mention: no. 21: ‘He who has the form of a man-lion’ (narasiṃhavapuṣ): this name refers to a particular avatāra of Viṣṇu;no. 70: ‘the Golden Germ [of creation]’ (hiraṇyagarbhaṣ); no. 115: ‘Many-headed’ (bahuīiraṣ): a way of referring to Viṣṇu's omniscience; no. 227: ‘Thousand-footed’ (sahasrapād): a reference to the Vedic hymn to the Cosmic Man (10.90.1 – in this way the earliest portions of the Veda are made to bear on Viṣṇu); no. 538: ‘the Great Boar’ (mahāvarāhaṣ) – a reference to Viṣṇu's Boar avatāra; no. 857: ‘Bearer of the Bow’ (dhanurdharaṣ): probably a reference to Viṣṇu's avatāra as Rāma, one of whose characteristics is the renowned bow he wields, and so on.
We turn now to (b) descriptive or attributive names: no. 22: ‘Possessed of well-being and beauty’, (or alternatively) ‘Possessed of [the Goddess] Śrī’ (śrīmān); no. 27: ‘the Gracious One’ (śiva, possibly also a reference to the deity Śiva himself as identified with Viṣṇu here, since all beings ultimately derive from the Godhead of the latter); no. 128: ‘Knower of the Veda’ (vedavid) – perhaps recalling Gītā 15.15, which attributes the same epithet to Kṛṣṇa (thus Viṣṇu becomes the ultimate referent of the Gita's teachings);no. 184: ‘the Refuge of the Virtuous’ (satāmgatiṣ); no. 287: ‘the [healing] Balm’ (auṣadham), doubtless for the malaise that saṃsāra or worldly living represents;no. 365: ‘the Way’ (mārgaṣ); no. 555: ‘the [unshaken] Tree [of being]’ (vṛkṣaṣ) – no doubt an allusion to Śvetāṣvatara Upaniṣad 3.9, which speaks of the highest Person filling the whole universe, and established like a great Tree (vṛkṣah iva stabdhaṣ), i.e. like the axis mundi (by this, Upaniṣadic teaching is made to bear ultimately on Viṣṇu alone); no. 664: Brahman; no. 956: ‘the syllable Oṃ’ (praṇavaṣ), and so on.
Finally, to the theological/metaphysical epithets. These abound. Here are a few: no.4: ‘Lord of the p
ast, future, and present’ (bhūta-bhavya-bhavat-prabhuṣ); no. 210: ‘the Best of Teachers’ (gurutamaṣ); no. 225: ‘the Self of all’ (viśvātmā); no. 467: ‘All-pervading’ (vyāpī); nos. 478 and 479: ‘Being’ and ‘Non-Being’ (sat, asat); no. 587: ‘the Giver of Peace’ (śātidaṣ); nos. 602 and 603: ‘the Abode of Śrī’ and ‘the Lord of Śrī’ (śrivāsaṣ, śrīpatiṣ, however ‘śrī may be interpreted); no. 815: ‘All-knowing’ (sarvajñaṣ); no. 817: ‘Easily attained’ (sulabhaṣ); no. 832: ‘Inconceivable’ (acintyaṣ); nos. 839 and 840: ‘Possessing attributes’ and ‘Without attributes’ (guṇabhṛt, nirguṇaṣ – where the ambiguity of ‘guṇa’ is open to interpretation); no. 843: ‘Self-sustained’ (svadṣrtaṣ ); nos. 963 and 964: ‘Reality/Truth’ and ‘He who knows Reality/Truth’ (tattvam, tattvavit), and so on.
We catch only a glimpse here of the immense imaginative, theological and contemplative depths Hindus have attributed to these great Litanies. It is not surprising then that, wholly or in part, they have been the subject of numerous commentaries in their respective traditions. But we must move on to our final topic. In the next and last chapter, we shall describe some Hindu festivals as a stage to discussing different ways in which Hindus have thought about the state of ultimate human fulfilment and various means to attain it.
15
Ways, means and ends
Part I
In this chapter we shall first briefly consider three kinds of religious festival, exemplified respectively by (i) Dīwalī, which is annual and pan-Indian; (ii) the Pūrṇa Kumbha Melā, which occurs every few years and is the cynosure of enormous interest, and (iii) Durgā Pūjā, celebrated every year in autumn with the Goddess as its focus, and special to its heartland, Bengal.
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 58