Kabir the Weaver

There is, it is estimated, some 20,000+ Hindoo temples and shrine in Benares. This is not to mention the mosques and other Mahometan holy places. There is more religion per square inch in Benares than any other city on earth. The city has survived on the religion business for thousands of years. That, and weaving. Specifically the weaving of silk. For many hundreds of years Benares has been the silk weaving centre of India and one of the silk capitals of the world. Benares produces exquisite silks. Every Indian you meet in Benares is either in the religion business, or he wants to sell you a silk scarf.

These two industries - religion and weaving - come together in the figure of Kabir, the city's favorite son. It is uncertain in exactly what year he was born, and the whole matter is mired in legend to the extent that we cannot be sure about anything about him, but every tradition asserts that he was born in Benares, and most traditions assert, furthermore, that he was the son of a Mahometan weaver. Accordingly, by tradition, and on the evidence of the images and metaphors in his poems, he was a weaver. He wove silk throughout his long life.

There is no need to rehearse his full biography here. It is very well known. He is the most quoted poet in India - outside of the sacred canon - and he enjoys an enthusiastic readership in the West as well. He is counted as one of the major figures in the Bhakti (devotional) movement in early modern Hindooism and is widely revered as one of the great mystics of the world. He was persecuted and condemned for his irreverent attacks upon official religion and advocated a devotional non-dualism rooted in Advaita Vedanta.

The context of his opposition to religious formalism is to be found in Benares. The city is filled with pilgrims and devotees, and they busy themselves with temple attending and ritual observances. It is easy to imagine that a certain temperament of the spirit – such as we find in an especially pure and natural form in Kabir – could rebel against the cults of external practice and insist that the real temple is within. He links this to the non-dualist doctrine that identifies the self with the Self, atman with Brahman. His poetry explores the paradoxes that follow from this truth. He advocates a path of love.

The modern enthusiasm for Kabir, however, is responding to a different context altogether. The present author views it with suspicion. There is no question that the “real” Temple is within, and that external observances are empty without the participation of the heart – all religion, finally, is internal – but what would modern people know about any observances anymore? It is strange to find people who have never been to a church or a temple or a mosque in their numb secular lives reading Kabir and cheering every time he slags off the Brahmins and the Imams. Kabir was criticizing an age of excessive ritual; why he is so popular in an age of no ritual at all? When he sings “you will not find God in cathedrals, or masses, or synagogues…” why do modern readers thrill with approval and agreement? What would they know about a stultifying ritual formalism? 

In Benares, where the author presently resides, though, Kabir’s critique has an obvious and legitimate relevance. One sees sadhus who are devoted to severe austerities as a means to salvation. One sees Brahmin priests muttering long incantations of Sanskrit before images of the Monkey God. There are statues and idols and icons at every turn. One does not need to be occupied with it all for very long before one needs to be reminded that, in the end, all that is really required is a simple movement of the heart. Men go to extraordinary lengths in search of God, but in reality God is always present and easily accessed – no contortions and austerities required.

That is not a modern man’s predicament. Modern man is senseless with comfort and ease and remote from any real religious feeling. He has never experienced austerities or tied himself into contortions. He doesn’t go on pilgrimage. He doesn’t fast at Lent or go to Mass on his knees. He reads a poet like Kabir through the lens of his ego, seeking approval and endorsement for his spiritual indolence. Kabir, today, is just a baby boomer’s excuse not to go to Church anymore and to indulge in the thought that he will be saved just for being nice.

* * * 

The author has collected together lines from various Kabir poems on the theme of the inner path in the City of Temples, and has strung them together as follows:


WHEREVER YOU ARE IS THE ENTRY POINT

Wherever you are is the entry point.
Throw away all thoughts of imaginary things
and stand firm in that which you are.

Whether you are in the temple or in the balcony,
in the camp or the flower garden,
every moment your Lord is taking His delight in you.

If God is within the mosque, 

then to whom does the rest of the world belong?
If Ram is within the image which you find upon your pilgrimage,
then who is there to know what happens outside?
Hari is in the East, Allah is in the West.
Look within your heart,
There you will find both Karim and Ram;
All the men and women of the world are His living forms.
Kabir is the child of Allah and of Ram:
God is my Guru, God is my Pir.

You don't grasp the fact that 

what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: 

go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
the world will never be real to you!

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

The home is the abiding place;
in the home is reality;
the home helps to attain Him Who is real.
So stay where you are,
All things shall come to you in time.

If a mirror ever makes you sad
you should know that it does not know you.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Cow Protection

We have searched the Turk's religion, 

These teachers throw many thunderbolts,

Recklessly they display boundless pride, 

while explaining their own aims, they kill cows.

How can they kill the mother, 

whose milk they drink like that of a wet nurse?

The young and the old drink milk pudding, 

but these fools eat the cow's body.

These morons know nothing, they wander about in ignorance,

Without looking into one's heart, 

how can one reach paradise?

— Kabir

Although it hosts a number of minority religious communities, notably the Mahometans – about a fifth of the population -, Benares is the quintessentially Hindoo city. Accordingly – as the author's photographs on this page illustrate - its laneways and streets and river steps (ghats) abound with cows, sacred to the Hindoo. The author currently resides in Benares; the sight of cows wandering by as he sits in cafes and lassi houses and strolls the streets is one of the most conspicuous features of the experience. 

The cow is protected under Hindoo religious codes and in some places under civil law, although this is a matter of contemporary controversy. The sanctity of the cow in India is ancient, but in the Middle Ages, corresponding with the invasions of the beef-eating Mughuls, cow protection came to prominence as a touchstone of Hindoo religiosity. Then, during British rule, the Cow Protection Movement, started in 1892 by Swami Dayananda, famously agitated for an end to the slaughter and eating of cows, bringing the issue to the very forefront of Hindoo identity. Today, Hindoo nationalists are again vocal on the matter, and some state jurisdictions have recently banned the consumption of beef. Modern India is a nation where McDonald’s stores assure customers that their burgers are ‘100% Beef Free’. 

Cow protection, however, is, and always has been, perceived as an attack upon the rights of the Mahometans who have often responded angrily to restrictions on beef eating. When the British, conceding to Hindoo demands to some degree and seeking to regulate the matter, ordered that Mahometans would need to register for permission to slaughter cows, riots broke out all over northern India. Beef is explicitly mentioned in the Koran as a permitted food, and for Mahometans in Hindoostan beef-eating is an emblem of freedom from what they deem as Hindoo idolatry. Any restrictions on eating beef is seen as a direct assault upon the Mahometan faith. In a modern context, moreover, it is seen as an attack upon the rights of a minority religion in an ostensibly secular and multi-faith polity. 

This is a particularly volatile issue under the strongly Hindoo Prime Ministership of Mr. Modi (who, incidentally, the present author saw in person during his visit to the Ganges several days ago.) There has been renewed agitation for cow protection in recent times, to which Mr. Modi has given his tacit (unspoken) approval. This has outraged secular Leftists who are – as they are in the West - siding with and speaking for the Mahometans and the complaint of “Islamophobia”. The conservative Mr. Modi represents a resurgent Hindoo identity – but given the religious demographics of India this is necessarily at the expense of the Mahometans. It is said that Mr. Modi is the first truly Hindoo leader of this land in 500 years. First there were the Moghuls, then the British, and since independence the secular Leftists of the Congress Party have dominated. Mr. Modi is an advocate for a more Hindoo India and champions the nation’s Hindoo heritage. He is loved and loathed for the same. In any case, once again cow protection has become a symbolic issue, a dividing line in the struggle for India’s soul. 

While there are no doubt complexities to the issue, the present author is generally but cautiously sympathetic to the cause of the Hindoos in this case – or at least he resists the excesses of the relativism that now defines (and distorts) the (ever-outraged) political Left. The immutable fact is that Mother India is, if not officially a Hindoo nation, then most definitely a Hindoo majority one, and this – by the very nature of things - demands some recognition. Reality trumps ideology.

The Hindooness of India – ancient, primordial, autochthonous - is an inescapable reality and it is an impossible absurdity for India not to have a Hindoo identity. Hindooism is in the soil. Secular India is a contrivance. The principle involved here is that the rights of minority groups, though important, cannot be allowed to dissolve the identity of the dominant culture, or else – as we see in the cringing cultural sickness that besets the West today - a society descends very quickly into the churning quicksand of relativism. 

By all means, the ever-present shadow of overbearing chauvinism is to be avoided, but minorities are still minorities, and to suppose that they are ‘equals’ in a total sense is a dangerous abstraction. The necessary protection of minorities under law should not be at the expense of a strong and vibrant dominant culture. No society should indulge in self-harm in order to accommodate diversity. You do not shoot your foot off to make the lame equals. Diversity – religious, ethnic, linguistic – is always a negotiated balance of factors, but there is no sense in pretending that there is not, and should not be, a dominant player in the arrangement. Of course there is. And in multi-faith India, it is Hindooism. The Mahometans, the Sikhs, others, are minorities, and it is proper that they admit this and understand it is a fact of life. They remain partners in modern India, but by the sheer force of numbers – not to mention history – they can never be ‘equals’ in the total sense. 

Arguably, in any case, modern India has already conceded too much. This is the argument of the Hindoo advocates. As any Hindoo will remind you, independence surrendered a good third of India – the whole Indus valley and the Ganges delta, no less! – to the Mahometans by way of the east and west Pakistans. The entire rationale of those Muslim-only nations was that the Mahometans – like a peculiar species that needs its own special habitat - could not bear a shared identity. India, in contrast, settled on a multi-faith modernity, and very deliberately chose not to be ‘Hindoo’ in any official sense. Pakistan – an appalling mess from the beginning, to be frank - is an ‘Islamic Republic’ (of which there is not a single successful example anywhere in the world), but India, let us note, is not a ‘Hindoo Republic’. And nor – so this writer believes, insofar it is any of his business - should it be. But, for all of that, it remains a Hindoo majority nation, and this fact must mean something. 

The sanctity of the cow is the issue at hand. Is it too much to ask of the Mahometans that they eat mutton? Religious tensions rise whenever a cow wanders into the Muslim quarter of the city and duly disappears into the butcher shops. The present author has seen actual cases of this in Calcutta and elsewhere. Slaughtered cows, herded from the streets, are strung up in butcher’s shops in the laneways around the mosque. The Hindoos rightly see this as provocation and sacrilege. The Mahometan, in response, holds up his Koran and cries “Halal! Halal!” – beef is permitted by Allah! Maybe so, but it ignores the fact that, whatever the ideals of the secular nation might be, Islam is a minority faith living under the ecumenical umbrella of Hindoo hospitality. And where, in any case, does Allah say that beef-eating is required? Mahometans choose to eat beef. They need not. It is surely a matter of respect to their Hindoo compatriots and neighbours that they refrain from doing so. Would it hurt for Mahomatens to say, "The cow is sacred to you. Okay, we'll eat chicken."? No one is asking the Mahometans to become vegetarians, as good Hindoos are. The Hindoos understand that they are meat eaters. But the cow is sacred. 

The present author eats beef too – but not when he is in India. He is in a Hindoo majority nation. He modifies his behavior according to this fact. He doesn’t march into a McDonald’s and demand a quarter pounder as one of his inalienable human rights. Respect.Not to mention prudence. 

True, the author is a visitor to India, whereas Mahometan Indians are full citizens, which implies equality, but – once again – this “equality” is an abstraction that is, at best, an ideal rather than a reality, and it does not apply to all things or prevail in all domains, except as an approximation. Any member of any minority in any polity knows this as a fact of existence, which is merely to say we do not and cannot ever live in an ideal world. All the mischief of life consists in refusing to acknowledge this. The most dangerous people in the world are those who want to force abstractions upon the gritty facts of life. The rights of a minority do not negate the right of a majority to maintain a living culture. Whatever ideals of “equality” and other abstractions we entertain, minorities must always adjust to the legitimate dominance of a majority, if not in theory, certainly in practice.

Mahometans deserve to be equal partners in modern India, but they need to appreciate that Hindooism was here long before the arrival of Islam and that Hindoo spirituality - to which the sanctity of the cow is emblematic - is the very essence of the land. This is nowhere more apparent than in the sacred city of Benares. Is the Ganga sacred to Islam? We have reached an impasse in Indian history at which a responsibility falls upon the Mahometans to recognise the reality of Hindoo India and to accommodate it to the potentially (but tragically unfulfilled) universalism of the Islamic spiritual perspective. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

The Benares of James Prinsep

British India produced many genius orientalists, but few with such innate talent and breadth as Mr. James Prinsep. He showed great aptitude for drawing and draughtsmanship at an early age but had weak eyesight and so was directed away from the visual arts to a career as a metallurgist and assayist. It was as an assayist working for the British Mint that he ventured to India and took a position in Benares. There he became deeply interested in early Indian coins which led him to decipher the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts, the feat of scholarship for which he is most renowned. 

But, in Benares, he also made extensive drawings and engravings of the sacred city and accomplished much else in both the humanities and the sciences. His drawings and lithographs are some of the finest ever made by an orientalist artist, a sublime record of British Benares. In an age where our intellectual elites are poisoned with post-colonial resentment, however, his genius and achievements have been forgotten. Few remember James Prinsep now, though he would have been an extraordinary character in any age. His contribution to the Benares and to its people was profound. More generally, he made a substantial contribution to a wide range of disciplines - a polymath of great imagination and talent. 

The life and times of this unsung hero - and the life and times of Benares, the most sacred city of the Hindoos - is presented in a charming documentary entitled The Benares of James Princep, thus:

The description of the movie:

James Prinsep landed in india in 1819.

He came to work in the mint as an essay master for the East India Company but destiny had bigger plans.

Truly a man for all seasons, his genius blossomed as an artist,linguist,architect,translator,wri­ter,engineer and scientist.

He died at the age of 40.

His brilliance has been ignored by the world.

May this documentary shed light on him and the holy city that he loved.

Readers can find a trailer and instalment of the movie here. 

* * * 

The present writer, having moved along from a week-long sojourn in Boodh Gaya, is now residing for a while in mystical Benares and is privileged to spend his days - especially his mornings - strolling along the ghats on the banks of the Ganges. He is pleased to report that, although less treed, spotted with graffiti and advertising, and suffering the usual cement degradations of Indian modernity, little of substance has changed on the riverfront since the time of James Prinsep. The city is thousands of years old, one of the oldest continually occupied cities in the world. The old city sections with its narrow streets - as opposed to modern commercial extensions - have remained more or less intact since the time of the British Raj. Some things, such as the open-air cremation grounds on the river banks, have remained unchanged since Vedic times. 

The following are some of Mr. Prinsep's engravings of the ghats and other features of Benares. Readers should click on the image for a larger version of each...

* * * 

The Prinsep Monument in Calcutta which, regrettably, is now dwarfed by the new bridge across the Hoogley.

James Prinsep became ill in India and returned to Britain to recover. Alas, he  died a young and untimely death in 1840. News of his demise was greeted with consternation throughout British India, and a beautiful monument was built in his honour beside the Hoogley River in Calcutta. The present author has spent time there too, and along the Prinsep Ghat which is, without question, one of the loveliest parts of Calcutta today. It is now gratifying to be in Benares to see first hand the faithfulness of Prinsep's renderings of the architecture of this ancient and most extraordinary of cities. 

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

The Decline of the Mahant of Boodh Gaya

Herein is the problem. At the Mahant's College these feet are presented as the sacred imprint of Vishnoo. Across the road at the Mahbodhi Temple the Boodhists present the same relics as the footprints of Lord Boodha.

There is another story to be told concerning the revitalization of the great Mahabodhi Temple in Boodh Gaya. The British, as related in a previous post, created the archaeological and administrative circumstances that allowed the Boodhists of the world to reclaim the long neglected temple complex – location of the revered Peepel Tree under which Sakyamooni Boodha attained enlightenment – but this, it must be related, was at the expense of the local Hindoos. The temple had long been under the ownership of the local Mahant (priest) and had been loosely and somewhat incongruously incorporated into the region’s network of Shiva temples and Math (Hindoo monasteries). 

Generally, the Mahant had neglected the Mahabodhi complex although, as Sir Arthur Cunningham who conducted the authoritative archaeological survey of the site relates, he seems to have sometimes used it as a source of stone, statuary and other building materials. Certainly, the Mahant had no need of it for explicitly Hindoo purposes – except that Lord Boodha, much like Krishma, is regarded by Hindoos as an incarnation of Vishnoo – and there were, until the late 19th C., no local Boodhists or pilgrims in any substantial number needing to use it. The movement to restore the temple noted this fact and sought ways to arrest control of the place from the Mahant who was, at the time, the most powerful man in the district. This proved a more difficult task than had been hoped. In the end it took over a century of difficult legal proceedings before the temple was finally taken from the Mahant’s sole jurisdiction and put in the hands of a governing committee. 

It must be said that the Mahant did not play his cards well. There were many points at which he could have sold the complex to Boodhist interests at a very substantial price. This, for a time, was the solution preferred by the British. But he had no interest in selling and instead squandered his resources and store of good will on court cases that ultimately went against him. Even then, in the 1950s, he wanted to challenge the rulings in the Supreme Court of India. This won him the ire of Prime Minister Nehru who, losing patience, intervened and threatened to investigate the legality of the Mahant’s other land holdings if he did not desist and leave the site to the Boodhists. 

The Mahant in question.

The impasse required a compromise. It was determined that the complex would be administered by a committee of equal numbers of Boodhists and Hindoos, of which the Mahant would only be one. The Mahant was aggrieved by this solution but so too were the Boodhists who had hoped for exclusive control without Hindoo involvement. This remains so to this day. They argue that the Hindoos have no real claim to the sacred site and that it belongs to the Boodhist sanga. They would like Hindoo oversight ended altogether. The Mahant, on the contrary, claims an historical right as well as some religious justifications.

The politics of this controversy is complicated but, essentially, leftist intellectuals in India – insufferably self-righteous and verbose at the best of times – side with the Boodhists, while Hindoo nationalists - pig-headed chauvanists in the main - side with the Mahant. He feels that his property has been confiscated by force, that he has been elbowed out by over-bearing Boodhist peaceniks, and most recently by UNESCO who have claimed the site for World Heritage listing.

It need not have been this way. The Japanese sage, Tenshen – mentioned in earlier posts on this web log – proposed, in the early 1900s, that the site ought to be a joint Shiva/Boodha temple shared by Hindoos and Boodhists with the claims of both faiths given due recognition. This pan-Asian view did not prevail. Instead, the Hindoos and Boodhists, Brahmins and Lamas, went their separate ways, or at least settled on an uncomfortable and awkward detente.

In this, though, the Mahant in fact lost out. Over the course of the entire affair his position has been much diminished and a once thriving centre of Shiva spirituality adjoining the actual Mahabodhi site has been displaced and overshadowed by the sprawling  majesty of the new Boodhist pilgrim theme park. The triumphant restorationism of the Boodhists has, in fact, been at the Hindoos expense. Very much so, as the present author has witnessed for himself. Not only has the booming Boodhist pilgrim trade in Boodh Gaya left the local Hindoo population impoverished – as this author related a few posts ago – but the former glory of the Mahant now lies in ruins. 

Leaving the Mahabodhi complex, following the pathways through the market and then the back streets behind the high walls – areas the pilgrims rarely venture – the author chanced upon a fortress-like building with wide, heavy gates that clearly was once somewhere important. Inside, he has shown around – for a few hundred rupees - by a cheerful but mute Indian man who managed to communicate that the building – quite vast – was the ‘college’ of the Mahant and the remains of an old Math and Shiva Temples. It is in considerable disarray. History books tell us that there was once a time when the Mahant was greeted in the streets outside by merchants and wallahs and shoppers and pedestrians stopping, standing and bowing in his honour. The College – along the banks of the river - was a thriving complex with over 300 students at a time and the Math was an important way station for wandering Shaivite sadhoos. Now the Mahant collects rent but has no real power and the college is almost deserted. The Math is entirely in ruins and the vast ‘Cobra Garden’ - which was clearly once magnificent - is a jungle, except for areas being used as a market garden.

Photographs of the Mahant's college follow. They can be compared with pictures of the beautiful restoration of the Boodhist's Mahabodhi complex just a stone's throw away. The wheel has turned. The Boodhist's fortunes have been reversed, but so have those of the local Hindoos who were clearly the losers. It is a great pity that the prosperity of one party meant the decline of the other. While it is a matter of some wonderment that the Boodhist world has had its omphalos restored after many long centuries, it is a great pity that the Mahant's college and the Shiva Temples of Boodh Gaya are now rotting in poverty and neglect. 

The compound of the Mahant's religious college.

The college in relation to the Mahabodhi Temple at the rear.

The Mahant's throne today. (That is a real tiger's skin.)

In a second floor area there is a gallery of old photographs that tell the history of the building and also the Mahant and his relationship with the Mahabodhi complex.

Shiva shrines

All that is left of the Math (Monastery)

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black

Darshan

The prominence of the eyes of Hindu divine images… reminds us that it is not only the worshipper who sees the deity, but the deity sees the worshipper as well.

- Dianne Eck

In studies for his doctoral thesis the current writer observed (in the context, the correct word) that the Platonic cosmology as found in the dialogue called Timaeus is strikingly and surprisingly visual. It is surprisingly so because in every respect it is a thoroughly Pythagorean work, the Timaeus, and its central protagonist, Timaeus of Locri, is clearly being presented as a Pythagorean divine who is visiting Athens. One might expect a Pythagorean cosmology to be auditory in nature. The Pythagoreans are best known for their doctrine of the so-called ‘music of the spheres’ and the general proposition that music is at the heart of the cosmic order. And yet Plato’s cosmology – his distinctly Pythagorean cosmology – is entirely visual. The central elements, we are told, are fire and earth. Fire – which is to say light – shines upon earth – which is to say solid objects, and in this manner the visible cosmos comes into being. Timaeus explains it otherwise by the parallel terms ‘radiance’ and ‘solidity’. He makes it plain that it is a visible cosmos that the Demiurge constructs through these principles.

In accord with this, Timaeus’ account of eyesight takes a special place in the dialogue. He gives an account of how an internal light extends outwards from the eye and meets the external light reflected from solid objects by the ‘radiance’ of the cosmic ‘fire’. Moreover, as Timaeus – an astronomikos says - it is by the visual observation of the stars that all human knowledge is ultimately derived. Eyesight here, not hearing, is the primary faculty.

These matters have come to mind for this author at this time because he finds a compatible cosmological perspective implicit in the visual character of the Hindoo. Hindooism, as it is practiced, is an extraordinarily visual affair – bright, garish, variegated, multi-coloured, abundant – but more than that the very act of seeing is spiritual in itself to a degree that is quite striking to those not accustomed to it. This act of seeing is called darshan. One “takes” darshan. The word is used when, for example, one goes to see a king or a prince or a maharaja. One “takes darshan” with important authorities. By extension, one “takes darshan” with the gods. It is central to Hindoo piety. In English, we might say that one has an “audience” with a king or a prince or a maharaja, but “audience” is exactly the wrong word here. (Audience = audio, to hear.) Rather, for the Hindoo, seeing and being seen are the important things. The Hindoo world is extraordinarily visual. We might expect a tradition encapsulated by the sacred syllable AUM to be about sound and resonance. In fact, the religious cosmology of the Hindoo is intensely visual and based in the act of seeing. It has been so since the beginning. Its most primordial roots are in primal (Vedic) fire.

Darshan is what happens when the devotee goes to a Hindoo temple. There is a seeing. The devotee is there to look upon an image of the deity, and, moreover, to be seen by the deity in turn. Evidence that the latter has occurred is found when the priest in attendance places the tika – the vermillion mark – upon the third eye (forehead) of the devotee. Seeing, that is to say, is the devotional act. Just looking is the devotional act. For the Hindoo, this is a deeply tangible thing. In many ways, to look is to touch. And so, in turn, to be seen is to have been touched.

Indeed, this attitude is not exclusive to the Hindoo but can be regarded as more widely traditional. It prevails in the strongly auditory tradition of Islam, for instance. Seeing is touching – and thus we find the careful regulation of what is seen in, for example, the veiling of wives. Islam, like Judaism, and like Protestant Christianity, places emphasis upon the Word which is spoken and has, accordingly, a deep mistrust of the image. This was not so for Plato’s ancient Greeks, nor for other so-called “pagan” systems, and it is not so for the Hindoo. There is an often overwhelming profusion of images in Hindooism, to a degree that even exceeds the most image-laden manifestations of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox piety in the Christian faith. The Catholic and the Orthodox, though, are in some position to understand the Hindoo’s love of images. Their use of statues and icons is not dissimilar, but even so, not nearly so profuse and unrestrained. 

A good account of this is given in Dianne Eck’s small booklet from 1998, Darshan: Seeing the Divine Image in India. “When the Hindoo goes to the Temple, they do not commonly say, ‘I am going to worship’,” she explains, “but rather, ‘I am going for darshan.’” It means, as she says, that the devotee is going to “see the image of the deity – be it Krishna, or Durga or Shiva or Vishnu – present in the sanctum of the Temple.” And they go, as she says, “especially at those times of the day when the image is most beautifully adorned with fresh flowers and when the curtain is drawn back so that the image is fully visible.” This is the central act in common Hindoo piety. The deity is present in the image. “Beholding the image is an act of worship,” Eck relates, “and through the eyes one gains the blessings of the divine.”

Appreciating the importance of this assists the stranger in understanding the activities that are to be seen daily in a Hindoo mandir (Temple). Similarly, it is by this that we must understand the Hindoo practice of pilgrimage as it is undertaken by millions of souls every year. A Hindoo will traverse the sub-continent or travel high into the Himalayas in order to take darshan of his or her god – to see and be seen. It is an aspect of Hindoo worship that common Western portrayals of the Hindoo – chanting a mantra with eyes closed – overlooks. Mantras and interiority are part of the Hindoo order too, certainly, but in everyday experience they are not as important as darshan (“auspicious seeing”). In every Temple is the ancient Vedic fire pit. Images – iconic and aniconic – abound. There is an implicit cosmology of fire/light in which the faculty of eyesight is central. It is fully in accord with Plato’s account. When one goes to a Hindoo temple, this is mainly what is happening – the seeing of the sacred, and the being seen by the sacred in a world of fire and earth, radiance and solidity.

The present author recalls the mysterious “seeing” that he experienced at the Kalighat Temple in Calcutta only last month. At the very core of the Temple – the ultimate experience for devotees, many of whom have crossed the country in pilgrimage – is the terrible eternal gaze of the dark goddess of primordial night. Devotees, pushed and shoved in the tussle of the crowd, catch a fleeting glimpse of the goddess’ image. But, at the same time, she gazes back through the eyes painted upon her stone. There is a visual encounter. One sees. One is seen. That is darshan.

In this, let us note, there is an important contrast to be made with the tourist who is there with his own profane and uncomprehending forms of seeing as well as with the single mechanical and one-way eye of his camera.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Place of the Thunderbolt

Called the ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’, Darjeeling, where the writer resides at present, is a town developed around the precincts of an ancient Boodhist monastery that once stood upon the site now called Observation Hill. The hill, just off the town’s central square and marketplace, is called thus because it is the highest vantage on this particular ridge and so affords direct observation of the mighty Kangchenjunga, which mountain stands snow-capped at over 28,000 feet and is barely fifty miles away. The site was once heavily forested, but from the hill one can obtain an unimpeded view of the sacred mountain. The monastery, it is said, was called ‘Dorje Ling’, a Tibetan name signifying ‘The Place of the Thunderbolt’, and it is from this, it is said, that the name Darjeeling has been derived. The ‘Queen of the Hill Stations’ known to the British, therefore - and most famous for her exceptional tea gardens - was, or is, ‘The Place of the Thunderbolt’ according, that is, to its original Boodhist inhabitants.

Suprisingly, though, this signification has continued under subsequent Hindoo occupation in a remarkable way; it has done so to the extent that it is here in Darjeeling that one finds a particularly unique synthesis of Hindoo and Boodhist sanctity. Where in other places the two creeds are parted, in Darjeeling they not only exist side by side but actually share sacred places with Brahmins and Boodhist Lamas working in concert as if theirs is a single religion. This is most notably the case in the splendid temple, the Mahakal Mandir, which is now found on Observation Hill. The Boodhist monastery that was supposedly once on the site in ancient times has now been relocated further down the slope, and where it was once supposed to stand there is a temple of Shiva, only this temple fully accommodates Boodhist devotions as well. Indeed, the central temple on the site is a combined Hindoo/Boodhist affair featuring the iconography and devotional supports of both religions in undivided combination. At the entrance one finds Tibetan lions along with the Hindoo bull Nandi. The Shiva temple is decorated with Boodhist dragons. Around the outside one find icons of Hindoo deities, Shiva and Ganesh and co. along with Boodhist prayer wheels inscribed with Tibetan mantras. 

The present writer has been assured that this syncretism is very unusual, and he has certainly not encountered it elsewhere. To be frank, it is quite odd. In the inner sanctum sit Lamas on the right and Brahmins on the left. The Lamas chant Boodhist scriptures and at the very same time the Brahmins recite Vedic mantras. In the outer courts are small temples to Kali and other Hindoo gods right next to Boodhist reliquaries and stupas. The entire thing is smothered in a wild array of Boodhist prayer flags. Devotees from both faiths make their way there and revere it as a place of special sanctity. 

So what, one wonders, is going on here? How did this unique synthesis come about? What historical development led to it and, more importantly, by what symbolism and what doctrine are the two religions united in this particular location? It is a very special place, certainly. It is both stunningly picturesque and palpably holy. Evidently, it was a sacred site since earliest times, both the hill (with its view of Kangchenjunga) and – let readers note here – a cave that is found beneath it. Why, when, in the course of its history, it changed hands from Boodhist occupation to Hindoo, was there such a degree of assimilation? This writer has marched up the steep hill several times now and spent hours there, exploring, watching and pondering. Very slowly, the secrets and the meaning of the place have become apparent.

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The first key to this place is to be found in the story of the Shiva temple that is now central to it. While there is really no historical evidence that there was ever a Boodhist monastery on Observation Hill, or that the current monastery lower down the slope was ever on Observation Hill, the Shiva temple’s origins are historically exact and revealing. In 1782, it is said, three Shiva lingams miraculously manifested on the site of the current Temple. This is the date at which the Boodhist occupation gave way to the Hindoo, and in effect the date of the founding of the Mahakal Mandir as it is. It is the date at which the name Mahakal was given to the site, the date at which it became a Hindoo holy place with Shiva claiming it over its pre-existing Boodhist associations. The three lingams are now at the very core of the complex. The stones themselves, though, are not visible, since they are encased in an alloy of eight metals called astdhatu. They represent, respectively, the triunity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and in that, therefore, the three prongs of Shiva’s trident. The devotions of both Boodhists and Hindoos at Mahakal are focused upon these lingams. 

To understand the transition from and the synthesis of Boodhist symbolism to Hindoo/Shaivite in this case, it is simply necessary to appreciate that the trident of Shiva is here a substitute, or rather a parallel to, the vajra of Tibetan symbology. The weapons are interchangeable, and that is what has happened here. The Tibetan vajra is the Boodhist thunderbolt. Vajra is a cognate term for darje = thunderbolt. But in 1782, this Boodist order of symbolism was replaced, or subsumed, by a parallel symbolism from Hindooism, namely the trident of Shiva. When it is said that three Shiva lingams suddenly manifested on Observational Hill in 1782, we are to understand that it was, so to speak, struck by the trident of Shiva in the form of a thunderbolt, real or symbolic. The Temple marks the place where Shiva’s trident – his thunderbolt – struck and marked the ground. Thus, Dar + jeeling = the place of the thunderbolt – was now the place of Shiva’s thunderbolt, Shiva’s trident being to Hindooism what the vajra is to Lamaism. Ordinarily, the parallel made in Hindoo mythology is to Indra’s thunderbolt, but here the assimilation has been done through Shiva’s trident, the trishula. It is a parallel noted by Mr. A. K. Coomaraswamy in his commendable work The Elements of Buddhist Iconography. The town of Darjeeling has a Boodhist name, but the temple is devoted to the equivalent and corresponding cultus in Hindooism. The only odd thing is that the Boodhist elements were retained. 

As for the name Mahakal, it means “the Great Death” or the “Great Time” with the “Great Death” implied. This signifies the particular spirituality of vajraism, if we may put it thus. Namely, the notion of “thunderbolt” here refers to that form of spiritual awakening which is sudden and complete. One may think of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. There is a particular mode of enlightenment which is like a thunderbolt. Boodhists speak of the sudden falling away of the ‘self ‘ – or the illusion of ‘self’ – and the Tibetans specifically call it the “Great Death” as distinct from the lesser death that occurs at the end of a mortal life. This is to what the temple’s name refers. The “mahakal” – the Great Death – is the annihilation of the illusion of self. In the spirituality typical of this temple, devotees seek the “thunderbolt” of conversion, the sudden rupture of illumination, the death of the ego in a blast of enlightenment. Just as Shiva’s trident struck Observation Hill like a thunderbolt in 1782, so adherents hope to be struck with sudden transformation. 

The second key to understanding this remarkable place is to appreciate that the Shiva Temple – complete with its Boodhist iconography – is oriented very deliberately to the sacred mountain of Kangchenjunga. It is perhaps not so obvious today because of extra buildings and the profusion of prayer flags, but it is a certain fact that the temple points directly to the mountain, as can be checked on any clear day. The association is made explicit by a folkish wall painting in enamel paints on the back of the temple wall which shows the mountain with the trident and cobra of Lord Shiva. The mountain is what is really sacred here. The temple on Observation Hill is only sacred by extension, as it were. This is a key because it reveals the actual operations of the temple from a geomantic point of view and thus the full significance of the site. The entire symbolism, we realise, is axial in the primordial sense. The sacred mountain is the universal axis. The viewpoint from Observation Hill has been made a temple (a platform for seeing in the Latin sense) and acquires this axial significance. Thus do devotees to Mahakal Mandir circumambulate the Shiva Temple thrice. In fact, they are circumambulating the mountain. The temple represents the mountain and the whole iconography of the temple draws out the axial symbolism and significance of the mountain. 

This extends to the cave below, or rather inside, the hill. According to legend there is a ‘Lost Valley of Immortality’ on the slopes of Kangchenjunga. The mountain has its secrets. The secrets of the mountain – also the “esoteric” path to enlightenment – is symbolized by the cave, the inner dimension, the heart. It is, like any cave, a mysterious thing. One must crawl into the narrow opening. The present author did so but was reluctant to go too far into the darkness, lit as it was by only one or two votive candles. It is said, besides, that those who go too far into the cave never return. There is no telling how deep it goes. It clearly extends directly under the temple. There is an interesting local story about a British couple, a man and woman, who ventured into the cave one day and were never seen again. Can it be a coincidence that this story has a direct parallel in the Upanishads with the story of “two who entered the cave”? The two, as Mr Rene Guenon notes, are paramatman and atman, the universal and the individual self. Monsieur Guenon's exposition of the relevant symbolism in his essay The Heart and the Cave is, as usual, profound. It is worth quoting in this context:

..What resides in the heart is both from the standpoint of individual manifestation, and unconditioned Atma or Paramatma from the principial point of view; the distinction between individual and principle is no more than an illusory one; it only exists with regard to manifestation, but they are one in absolute reality. These are the 'two who have entered into the cave' and who at the same time are also said to 'dwell on the highest summit', so that the two symbolisms of the cave and the mountain are here united.


The symbolism of cave and summit are, in a sense, interchangeable. The cave and the temple are assuredly connected. The story illustrates the actual process of the steps to enlightenment. The exoteric adherents pray for the thunderbolt of enlightenment – in this life or in some other – in the temple on top of the hill, leaving their offerings of rice and incense and rupees, but the esoteric process (undertaken by only a few) is illustrated in the symbology of the cave below.

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There is, of course, much more that might be said about this. The symbolism of mountain and cave is extensive and rich, and this location gives an almost textbook case of its application. It would be possible to write an entire exposition on the symbolism and meaning of Mahakal Mandir in Darjeeling. The present sketch, however, is enough to set out the main lines such an exposition would need to explore. The first thing is to explain the unusual synthesis of Hindoo and Boodhist systems in this place. The second is to show the relation of the place to the sacred mountain that looms on the horizon only forty or so miles from Darjeeling and that can be seen with particular clarity from Observation Hill.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black