| Month's Details for: September 2001 |
Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal:
A religious land where only one in 1,000 bows his knee to the Holy One
Have you ever stopped to think about what makes Christianity different from other religions? It boils down to this: In Christianity, what matters is who you are. It has everything to do with your relationship with Jesus Christ. In Hinduism like other religions, the question is, what have you done? You must earn merit by performing rituals and going on pilgrimages. You can earn good merit, known in Eastern religion as karma, partly by going on the right pilgrimage.
Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal, the states we will cover this month, are the locations of four key Hindu pilgrimage sites: Ayodhya, Haridwar, Mathura, and Varanasi. The mountains and rivers of this region house many other lesser known pilgrimage sites and shrines. According to Hindus, these places are where the gods live; Christians would say these places house demons.
Hindus believe that Varanasi is the earthly abode of Shiva, the god of destruction. It is home to no fewer than 140 recognized pilgrimages. Among the better known pilgrimages is the Pancakrai Yatra (yatra means pilgrimage), a 55-mile route that encircles Varanasi’s most sacred land, which includes 108 shrines.
Oral tradition chronicled in the Puranas between AD 300 and 500 describes Badrinath, Uttaranchal, as one of the four compass points of the Hindu religion. The other sacred abodes in the Hindu world are Puri on the east coast, Rameshwaram in the south, and Dwarka on the west coast. According to some Hindus, those who perform this pilgrimage in all four centers in a clockwise direction, attain liberation.
Perhaps the key players in the Hindu pilgrimage system are the priests. We will begin with them.
The Relationship Between Priests and Pilgrims
Both priest and pilgrim benefit from these long–standing relationships. The priest helps the pilgrim to find lodging and loans for those who are short of money. Pilgrims reside in the buildings of the priests, though increasingly, pilgrims prefer to stay in hotels. Priests serve as guides for those illiterate and semi–literate pilgrims who frequent shrines and other sites.
Before modern transportation was available, priests and their agents escorted pilgrims from their villages. Today, the agent of a priest usually meets pilgrims at the bus or railway station. They ask the pilgrims about their caste and where they come from. Agents of the priests have phenomenal memory and their identification techniques are invaluable.
In the rush of pilgrims, Brahmins cannot avoid coming into physical contact with members of lower castes. Ironically, the priests often become defiled by touching low and outcaste members at pilgrimage sites. Furthermore, the food offered to idols and later distributed among pilgrims may not be refused by any person even if it comes from the hands of the lowly scheduled castes. This ideal does not mirror the reality of the social order that prevails in the daily life of Hindu society.
Other elements are the shrines at the pilgrimage sites. Let’s take a look at these next.
High Level Shrines
Hermitages, monasteries, and headquarters for various sects surround the shrines. Some of these sects renounce the world and practice asceticism in order to attain liberation. Some started as militaristic responses to Muslim control of India and are now educational groups which perform dramas at festivals from the Hindu holy books which emphasize themes featuring severe, yogic practices like self–torture by fire. Religious and secular education institutes are also found near the shrines. These teach Sanskrit literature, ancient Hindu medicine, and Hindu philosophy. This one-stop shopping center includes publishing houses oriented to printing sacred texts, books, and pamphlets of devotional songs.
Lower Level shrines
These daily concerns can lure pilgrims from Uttar Pradesh to Himachal Pradesh where Naina Devi, the Mother Goddess, holds court in a temple setting on the pinnacle of a hill. She watches caste Hindus gather alongside Sikhs and scheduled castes as priests conduct ceremonies marking the passage from infancy to childhood. Holy men at Hardiwar perform similar rituals, but families prefer the goddess shrines of Himachal Pradesh. A large number of pilgrims will come back to Naina Devi as dandotis. A dandoti shows his commitment to the gods by becoming like an inchworm as he prostrates himself repetitively covering a portion of the five miles from the base of the hill to the temple.
Obviously, many Hindus have a great deal of faith in the gods they worship. But the Hindu religious system, which has been around for about 4,000 years, has turned their allegiance to gods that are not God, and away from the only One who can truly bless them. Let us pray that the Hindu priests and pilgrims will attain true liberation, the kind that will free them from spiritual bondage and sin.
Priests are always trying to expand their reach and the influence of their shrines. To do this, they foster their relationships with pilgrims and devotees. Priests occasionally visit with influential pilgrims. Each Brahmin priest has certain villages or castes in a specific area as the source of his traditional clients. In small sacred places, only a single priest services the temple. The benefit to a priest can also be monetary. In some cases, the priests receive large sums of money or even land from benefactors.
Hindu pilgrims frequent certain shrines partly because they perceive that the deities that abide there exercise power. Hindu scriptures describe the power of certain shrines to purify the soul and remove sin. Pilgrims will gather from all India at such high shrines. Badrinath in Uttar Pradesh is one such shrine with pan-Hindu appeal. Pilgrims come for darsana (sight) of the gods, and for holy baths in the chilly Alkananda River and its tributaries. Earning religious merit is the goal at high shrines, rather than praying for wealth or success in business. Seeking favor from the gods takes time. Pilgrims often travel great distances to visit the more renowned sites. Nearly one-half of the Badrinath pilgrims spend more than a month on their pilgrimages. They also visit other shrines in the area.
The poor frequent local shrines, often for less than three days. These local, lower-level shrines deal with more earthly concerns and folk elements of Hinduism. Devotees offer animal or monetary sacrifices to the deity whose help he seeks. A desire for male offspring, marriage, higher profits, better crops, and favorable settlement of pending court proceedings pushes the pilgrim to dependence on the supernatural. The pilgrim may display this dependence by making commitments and vows or by performing rituals and ceremonies.
