City of Djinns

by William Dalrymple

  As I lay there, unable because of the heat to get back to sleep, I remembered reading in Carr Stephen’s classic 1876 study The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi that a tradition had been maintained in the city - at least until Carr Stephen’s own day - explaining why the Pandavas chose to build Indraprastha where they did. According to this tradition, the site of Delhi was already sacred many millennia before the Mahabharata.

  The legend relates that once upon a time, at the end of the Duvaparyyoga, soon after the creation of the world, Brahma, the Creator, suffered a fit of divine amnesia and forgot all the Vedas and sacred scriptures. In order to remember them, the God peformed a series of yogic exercises and austerities, before diving into the Jumna. Soon afterwards, during the monsoon when the waters were in full spate, the flooded river miraculously threw up the sacred texts on the right bank of the river, not far from where the Jumna hits the foothills of the Aravallis. The place where the scriptures were washed up was named Nigambodh Ghat, the Bank of Sacred Knowledge.

  It was for this reason that the Pandavas chose to build Indraprastha where they did, and for this reason also (here the tradition diverges from the ‘official’ text of the Mahabharata) that after the Battle of Kurukshetra, the five brothers returned to Indraprastha and performed the great Das Ashwamedha Yuga - the Imperial Ten Horse Sacrifice - at Nilli Chattri on the Nigambodh Ghat.

  The Ghat remains, but I had never gone to see it. Our flight did not leave until evening; we still had plenty of time to visit this, the site hallowed by tradition as being the most ancient in all Delhi.

  It dawned a dark and threatening morning. Great purple thunderheads were scudding low over the domes of the Old City. A storm was clearly threatening: the trees were being tossed around, the leaves were rustling, but still the humidity seemed near the point of saturation. Above, the hawks and vultures circled lower and lower, as if their aerial spirals were being pressed downwards by some invisible hand in the sky. Occasionally there was a blue crackle of lightning followed by a distant boom from the south-east: a soft cloud-collision announcing the coming storm.

  We drove up the Ring Road, the motorway which for much of its length follows the old course of the Jumna. Driving up the dry riverbed was like looking at a section of Professor Lal’s stratigraphy: on the way we drove through millennia of Delhi’s history, the detritus of city after city spaced out on the old river bank. Leaving Lutyens’s broad twentieth-century avenues we passed by the Purana Qila, the early Mughal addition to Delhi’s bastions; after that we passed the shattered domes of Feroz Shah Kotla; then the magnificent walls of the Red Fort with their great ribbed chattris; and finally we drove under the walls of Salimgarh, the old Bastille of Delhi. Passing beyond all of these, we headed up towards the site of William Fraser’s first house.

  But before we got there we took a right turn and drove into a grove of ancient neem trees. All around saffron-clad sadhus were squatting by the road, their dreadlocks dishevelled by the rising wind. Some of the holy men had small portable primuses on which they were attempting to brew tea; others sat swinging their prayer beads on their index fingers, puffing mesmerically at their chillums (hashish pipes).

  We walked past the mendicants and passed into the Nigambodh Ghat cremation ground - an expanse of tin-topped pavilions, each raised over a broad stone hearth. Here, only ten days previously, Mr Puri had been cremated by his family. But it was early still and all that now smoked amid the ashes of the hearths were sticks of incense tended by one or two early-rising widows. On one side, a party of sweepers were doing their best to clear up the detritus — garlands of marigolds, lumps of charcoal, broken clay pots which had once contained offerings for the sadhus -but the blustery breeze blew away as much as the sweepers could gather.

  Beyond, through a line of arches, down a flight of steps, we could just see the black ooze of the Jumna, now - at the end of the hot season, on the very eve of the rains — in its very darkest incarnation. The closer we came, the filthier it looked: a black swathe of suspended mud as heavy and sluggish as crude oil. But beauty and sanctity lie in the eyes of the beholder and the believer. At the bottom of the steps a sadhu was sitting, arms outstretched, shouting out his prayers to the River Goddess Jumna. He was, I realized with a start, actually worshipping the ooze below him.

  Hindus believe that all rivers, irrespective of their beauty or cleanliness, deserve special homage as givers of life and fertility. They are the veins of Mother Earth, just as the mountains are her muscles and the forests are her long and lovely tresses. The red sediment carried from the hills during the monsoon is the Earth Mother’s menstrual flow. The Jumna, one of India’s seven most sacred rivers, is no exception. She is the daughter of the Sun and the sister of Yama, God of Death. Once, under the influence of alcohol, Balaram the brother of Krishna attempted to rape her; when she resisted the divine drunkard tied her to his plough and dragged her across North India - irrigating the fertile plains of the Doab as he did so. Finally he dumped her into the Ganges near Allahabad.

  Attractive enough to awaken Balaram’s lust, the Jumna’s dark complexion has never troubled the normally colour-conscious Hindus. In the Golden Age of the Guptas (the fifth and sixth centuries AD) when it became common for statues of the two sisters, Ganga and Jumna, to be placed at the doors of temples, Jumna was depicted as a beautiful Dravidian girl with a delicately curved, almost Semitic nose and thick, curly hair. In the Delhi National Museum there is a pair of fine idols of the two goddesses brought from Ahichchhatra, one of the Mahabharata sites. Ganga stands on a crocodile and looks like a lovely long Punjabi girl: she is tall and thin and her long tresses are tied into a plait. Jumna, who stands on a tortoise, is unmistakably a Tamil - she has huge, sensuous lips, tight, curly locks and a diaphanous bodice which barely succeeds in enclosing her enormous breasts; of the two sisters she is by far the most attractive.

  As Olivia and I stood looking out on the sun rising slowly above the dark ooze of the holy river, one of the doms who tended the burning ghat appeared through the arch behind us. On his head he carried a shallow bowl of human ashes. Slowly, reverently, he made his way down the steps, then jumped into one of the two boats tied at the bottom. Walking to the far end, he cast off and waited for the dinghy to drift into the current. When he was out in the flow he gently tipped the ashes into the river, like King Arthur returning Excalibur to the lake. For a moment the white ash swirled milky on the surface, then it sank; only the black charcoal floated. Circling slowly in the eddies, it was gently swept off downstream towards the Ganga.

  When the dom returned to the bank I asked him for directions to the Nili Chattri, the temple that was said to mark the site of the Ten Horse Sacrifice. He pointed downstream several hundred yards and said that he would take us in his boat. We got in. The dom - an Indian Charon on an Indian Styx - took the oars and pushed off.

  It was at this point that it finally began to rain. At first it was no more than a shower, but soon the murky water around us burst into a ripple of concentric circles. On the bank a dhobi (laundryman) squatting over his slapping-stone, stopped dead as if amazed by the water suddenly falling from the heavens. The sadhus sitting cross-legged along the edge of the ghats looked up expectantly at the sky.

  In the boat we were now passing the spires of a group of small riverside temples. The oars dipped and splashed on the choppy waters; we headed on downstream to the southern edge of the Nigambodh Ghat. Then the dom pulled slowly in towards the bank. He jumped out, pulled the prow on to the lowest of the steps and pointed up the ghats.

  At the top of the steps, surrounded by a grove of neem trees, was a dark and ancient temple, its plasterwork stained by centuries of monsoon rain. In the centre of its inner sanctuary, enclosed by a quadrant of black stone pillars, stood Shiva’s phallic symbol, the lingam; it was resting on a white marble yoni, its female receptacle. A copper pot had been raised on a tripod so that it dripped Jumna water out of a hole in its base down on to the egg-shaped lingam stone
. The water then ran, through the yoni, on to the floor and out towards the river.

  As we stood there in the half-light, a saffron-clad sadhu with a beehive topknot and a thick black beard appeared out of the darkness towards the rear of the temple. His face was lit by a single flickering oil lamp.

  ‘Namaskar,’ he said, raising his hands in the Hindu gesture of welcome. He had the triple-mark of Shiva drawn on his forehead; his eyes were as dark as the waters of the Jumna. Then he saw what we were looking at, and said, in Hindi: ‘This lingam was raised by the Pandava brothers.’

  ‘When?’ I whispered.

  ‘After the Das Ashwamedha Yuga,’ said the sadhu. ‘This lingam marks the site.’

  In fact the lingam looked early mediaeval; it certainly wasn’t prehistoric. Yet the sadhu’s words showed that the oldest legend in Delhi was still current. The story of the Nigambodh Ghat and the founding of Indraprastha had survived to the present day.

  Standing there in the dark temple, as the rain lashed down on the ghats, I realized that of course it must have been the sadhus here on the banks of the Jumna who had preserved this most ancient of Delhi legends: the story of the Ten Horse Sacrifice and, long epochs before that, the tale of the sacred shastras emerging from the river flooded by the monsoon cloudburst. It was a wonderful legend: the mythical story of Delhi’s first birth linked with the undeniable fact of its annual rebirth in the monsoon rains.

  Indraprastha had fallen; six hundred years of Muslim domination had come and gone; a brief interruption by the British was almost forgotten. But Shiva, the oldest living God in the world, was still worshipped; Sanskrit - a language which predates any other living tongue by millennia - was still read, still spoken. Moreover, the sadhus and rishis — familiar figures from the Mahabharata - remained today, still following the rigorous laws of India’s most ancient vocation: giving up everything to wander the face of the earth in search of enlightenment; renouncing the profane in the hope of a brief glimpse of the sacred. In these wet and dishevelled figures sitting cross-legged under the neem and banyan trees of the river bank lay what must certainly be the most remarkable Delhi survival of all.

  We left an offering for the temple keeper amid the small pile of marigold petals at the base of the lingam.

  Then we walked slowly back through the warm rain towards the boat. At the bottom of the steps a drenched sannyasi was leaping about, dancing like a madman, his arms outstretched towards the heavens. Above him, the branches of the neem trees shook fantastically in the wind. There was a forked flash of lightning followed, almost immediately, by a sharp whipcrack of thunder.

  The water was now coming down in great rushing torrents. Instantly it drenched us to the skin, before pouring down the steps of the ghat and splashing into the river at the bottom.

  With a noise like a bursting dam, the world slowly dissolved into a great white waterfall.

  Glossary

  Acha Good

  Allah hu-Akbar! God is Great! (Muslim prayer)

  Amir Muslim nobleman (lit. ‘rich’)

  Asalaam alekum Peace be upon you (Muslim greeting)

  Avadi Golay Fast-flying pigeon from Lucknow

  Avatar Incarnation

  Ayah Nanny

  Azan The Muslim call to prayer

  Bahot Very

  Bait al-Hikmah Renowned mediaeval hospital in Baghdad

  Baksheesh A tip or offering

  Bandh Closed or on strike; also a dam

  Barsati A top floor flat (lit. ‘rain shelter’)

  Bhagavad Gita Crucial section in the Mababharata when Krishna persuades a faltering Arjuna to fight in the great battle of Kurukshetra, telling him that he must do his duty and that anyway all is illusion. The Gita is the most holy text in all Hinduism.

  Bharat India (in Hindi and Sanskrit)

  Bidi Cheap Indian cigarette (made from tobacco dust wrapped in a leaf)

  Biryani Fancy rice dish

  Bogie Hinglish (qv) word for railway carriage

  Burqa Tent-like covering of Muslim women (extended version of the chador, qv)

  Burra Sahib Big man (lit. ‘Great Sir’)

  Bustan The Orchard (a famous Persian poem by Sa‘di)

  Caravanserai Lodging house for mediaeval merchants throughout Islam

  Chador Muslim woman’s veil (lit. ‘sheet’). Can involve anything from a headscarf or sack to a fully fledged tent (see burqa).

  Chai Tea

  Chajja Long outward-jutting eave on a Mughal or Sultanate building designed to give maximum shade

  Chamcha Sycophant (lit. ‘spoon’)

  Champa Frangipani

  Chapatti Disc of unleavened bread

  Char-bagh Garden of Persian inspiration divided into four parts by irrigation runnels

  Charpoy Rope-strung bed on which the population of rural India spend much of their lives (lit. ‘four feet’)

  Chattri A domed Mughal kiosk supported on pillars, often used as decorative feature to top turrets and minarets (lit. ‘umbrella’)

  Chela Daughter, disciple, follower or slave

  Chillum Hashish pipe

  Chota hazari Bed tea (lit. ‘little breakfast’)

  Chowkidar Watchman, guard or groundsman

  Chunar Plaster

  Dargah Muslim Sufi shrine

  Das Ashwamedha Yuga The Ten Horse Sacrifice, only to be performed by maharajas, great kings and emperors. At the end of the Mahabharata the Pandavas perform the Das Ashwamedha Yuga (according to some on the banks of the Jumna near lndraprastha).

  Dawa Medicine

  Dervish Muslim holy man or mystic; same as a fakir or Sufi

  Derzi-wallah Tailor

  Dhaba Roadside restaurant

  Dharna A peaceful protest (usually involving a long period spent sitting outside the house or office of a person considered to be responsible for some injustice)

  Dhobi Laundryman

  Dhoti Traditional loin-wrap of Hindu males

  Diwali Hindu festival of lights

  Diwan-i-am Hall of Public Audience in the Red Fort

  Diwan-i-khas Hall of Private Audience in the Red Fort

  Djinn An invisible spirit, composed of flame, often (though not necessarily always) mischievous. The djinns are referred to in the Quran and were introduced into India by the Muslims, but are now believed in by both Hindus and Muslims. Same word (though with slightly different connotations) as ‘genie’.

  Dom Untouchable responsible for cremations and cremation grounds; Hindu equivalent of undertaker

  Durbar A courtly levee or reception at an Indian palace

  Dusshera Hindu festival celebrating Lord Ram’s victory over the demon Ravanna Fakir Muslim holy man or mystic: same as a dervish or Sufi

  Galee Abuse

  Ghazal Urdu or Persian love lyric

  Ghee Clarified butter

  Godown Warehouse or storeroom

  Gora White man

  Golay Racing pigeon

  Granthi Sikh reader (or official) in a gurdwara (qv)

  Gulistan The Rose Garden (a famous Persian poem by Sa‘di)

  Gulmohar Orange-red flower which blooms in the hottest period of the summer (lit. ‘Peacock Flower’)

  Gunda Hired thug

  Gurdwara Sikh temple (lit. ‘the Guru’s doorway’)

  Hadiths The Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad; sayings and injunctions not included in the Quran

  Hajj The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca

  Hajji One who has been thereon

  Hakim Muslim doctor practising ancient Greek or Unani (qv) medicine

  Haveli Courtyard house

  Hayyat Baksh The ‘Life Giving’ Garden in the Red Fort

  Hazar Ustan The Hall of a Thousand Pillars

  Hijra Eunuch

  Hinglish Modern Indian English

  Holi Hindu spring festival; the occasion is normally celebrated by the throwing of coloured water and the consumption of a great deal of hashish and opium

  Hookah Waterpipe or hubble-bubble

&nbs
p; Howdah Seat carried on an elephant’s back, usually canopied

  Id The two great Muslim festivals: Id ul-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, while Id ul-Zuha (or Bakr-id) commemorates the delivery of Isaac. To celebrate the latter a ram or goat is slaughtered, as on the original occasion recorded in the Old Testament.

  Idgah Open-air mosque used biannually for Id prayers. Idgahs are normally very large and are designed to take the overspill from the proper mosques on the Id festivals.

  iftar Meal eaten at sunset during the Ramadan fast

  Inshallah God willing

  Ivan High entrance portal normally bounded by a pair of minarets; same as a pishtaq

  Jalebi Sticky Indian sweet made by deep-frying sugar syrup

  Jali Lattice-work stone screen

  Jamevar Antique Kashmiri shawl

  Jataka Buddhist legend

  Jawan Police constable (lit. ‘young man’)

  Jaya Victory

  Jharokha Projecting window or balcony

  Jizya Quranic tax imposed on non-Muslims

  Jhuggi Shanty settlement

  Jungli Wild, unrefined

  Kabooter Pigeon

  Kabooter baz Pigeon flier

  Kalidasa Great classical Sanskrit poet and playwright; lived first millennium BC in Ujjain. Central India.

  Kali Yuga The age of Kali; an epoch of destruction and disintegration

  Karkhana Factory

  Keffiyeh Arab headcloth

  Khalifa official at a cock or partridge fight (lit. ‘Caliph’)

  Khanqah Dervish monastery

  Khitmagar Bearer, table-servant

  Khoon Blood

  Kirpan Sikh ceremonial sword

  Kos The Mughal mile (about 2½ British miles). The measure is still used in remote parts of rural India.

  Kshatriya The warrior caste

  Kucha Alley

  Kufic Arabic calligraphy used for monumental purposes