From the Ashwina shukla ekadasi
(eleventh day of the waxing moon of the month of Ashwina) till the end of the
month of Kartika, a special ritual is held in the Jagannath Temple in Puri. It
is an additional food offering to Mahaprabhu Jagannath. Incidentally,
“Jagannath” is a popular cover term for the Chaturdha Murti (Four -Form Images)
of Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana. The food offering in
question is “bala (pronounced as ‘baala’) dhupa”. Now, the name of the first
food offering, dhupa, to Jagannath is “gopala ballabha” or just “ballabha”, which
is sometimes called “bala dhupa”. But the word “bala” in the special food
offering under reference doesn’t have the meaning “first or the earliest”- this
dhupa, incidentally, is the third dhupa of the day. The word has the meaning
“hair”, in which sense it is most frequently used in Odia. This would appear quite
odd, considering that in the relevant culture, hair is considered impure. The
non-shastrik rituals generally have tales associated with them and there is one
associated with bala dhupa. It occurs in Madala Panji, which is a
chronicle of the Jagannath Temple, dealing with the doings of the kings of Puri
belonging to different dynasties, some important events connected with the
rituals and the like in the Bada Deula (the Big Temple), as the Jagannath
Temple in Puri is famously called.
Long ago, in the first part of
the fifteenth century, Nishanka Bhanumana Deba of the Ganga dynasty was the
king of Puri. One day, he came for the darshana of Jagannath (The Lord is
generally and fondly addressed and referred to by the people of Odisha as
simply “Jagannath” without any honorific prefix or suffix). At that time there
were no flowers on the head of the Deity. Extremely nervous, the pushpalaka
servitor (these servitors dress the Deities) engaged in the seva (service of
the Lord) on that day, placed the garland he was wearing on Jagannath’s head.
When the king arrived, he took that garland from the Deity’s head and offered
it to the king as prasad.
Later, the king found that there
was a strand of hair in that garland. He was furious. He ordered his men to
bring the servitor to his presence. He thundered at him, urging him to tell him
how there was hair in the garland. The nervous, confused and terrified servitor
told him that there was hair on Jagannath’s head. The king told him that he
wanted to see it for himself the following morning. The servitor was utterly
miserable. That night the king heard a voice in his dream asking him not to
trouble His servitors. The voice asked him to come to the temple the following
morning and see His hair. Early in the morning, at the time of Jagannath’s
abakasha (bathing), when He wears nothing on His head, including flowers, the
king went for His darshan. And he saw long,
thick hair flowing down from His head. The king prostrated himself in front of
Jagannath. He then comforted the servitor and instituted an additional food
offering called bala dhupa. Over the centuries, this special ritual has
commemorated that narrative and celebrated the Lord’s mercifulness.
Dadhyata Bhakti (Steadfast
Devotion), which is a collection of stories of some great devotees, composed in
verse by the poet Rama Dasa in the eighteenth century, contains the story “Talichcha
Mahpatra”. It can be viewed as a variation of the story in Madalapanji,
mentioned above. In this story, however, the servitor had a name: Jagabandhu
Mahapatra. He had the tilachcha seva, which included dressing the Deities. Now,
he was not just a servitor but a great devote of Jagannath as well. The king then
was Prataparudra Deva (sixteenth century), who was known to have a quick temper
and who gave harsh punishment to the guilty. When he came for darshan one day,
there were no flowers on Jagannath’ head. Jagabandhu put the garland he was
wearing on the Deity’s head and when the king came to the Lord’s presence, he took
that garland from the Deity’s head and gave it to the king as prasad. When the
king found hair in the garland, he told Jagabandhu that if he did not see hair
on the Deity’s head the following morning, he would punish him. Terribly
frightened, that night Jagabandhu prayed to Jagannath to save him. He kept some
water mixed with poison with him, having decided to drink it in the morning in
case he did not receive any divine indication during the night to the effect that
he would be saved. Jagannath appeared in his dream and told him that he had no
reason to worry, for the following morning, he would see hair on His head. When
the king came, Jagabandhu told him that he could see Jagannath’s hair for
himself. Suspecting that the servitor had played a trick and that the hair was
false, the king pulled out some hair and he found blood in them. The penitent
king threw himself at Jagabandhu’ feet and begged for forgiveness. Why the expected reference to bala dhupa is
missing here is open to conjecture. Our tentative and rather weak surmise is
that the episode, like the others in the collection, is about devotion and the
devotee, as its title suggests; for the poet, things about the object of the
devotee’s devotion were dispensable.
There is yet another construction
of the Madalapanji story. In Surendra Mohanty’s classic, Neela Saila
(Blue Mountain), published in 1968, a character, Kantha Mekapa, narrates the
story of bala dhupa for the benefit of
his captive audience of Jagannath devotees in a village. Here the servitor was
a suara. The suaras prepare food for offering to Jagannath. One day hair was
found in the food (in poda pitha, roughly speaking, a kind of baked / roasted
Indian cake) which had been offered to the Lord. The king, who, like the suara,
is un-named here, put the servitor in prison. Jagannath appeared in the king’s
dream and told him that He would not accept any food if His servitor was not
released. Post- haste, the king went to the servitor, apologized to him
profusely and set him free himself. On that day, the king instituted bala
dhupa. Mohanty has attempted to make his version more credible and persuasive
than the source narrative. If a food offering is instituted, not a dress (like
Gajanana besha (Elephant dress), for example), then from the point of
authenticity, the story is better contextualized in food than in dress (flower
on Jagannath’s head).
This is Jagannath’s story, not Lord
Vishnu’s or any avatara’s. When Jagannath was brahminized (using the term
without any caste implications), that is, assimilated into the Great Tradition
of Sanatana Dharma, the narratives of the leela of Vishnu or His avataras
became His stories. Prior to this assimilation, there was no leela of Jagannath
(or whatever name the forest dwellers had given him); therefore, no stories of
His own. In the Ramayana, there is the story of the savari who fed Lord
Rama with berries which she had already tasted for sweetness and the hair story
of Jagannath is similar to it to the extent that the Lord in each had accepted
polluted food. But there the similarity ends. Ignoring details, there are no
rituals in any Rama temple, to the best of our knowledge, where the savari
episode is commemorated through a ritual.
The hair story, like Rai’s story,
the milkmaid Manika’s or the little girl in the brinjal field’s, are purely
local stories, with a distinctly folk flavour. Who created these, for what
purpose and in what context, we may never get to know for certain. But we tend
to look upon these stories as attempts to confront the brahminization of
Jagannath and construct His identity in consonance with the Little Tradition.
(Published in margAsia. Summer 2020. pp.
9-11.)
No comments:
Post a Comment