Glimpses of Bangkok

 

It was good to return to the Brahma temple in downtown Bangkok after a few years. I missed a few shrubs and trees that once stood in the area now thronging with people - worshippers, onlookers, curious tourists - all watching the dancers swaying to the rhythms of cymbals and prayer songs. 

Not too far from Erawan Brahma shrine on Rama-I road, Lumpini district is the "Sri Maha Mariamman Temple" on Silom road. A plaque outside this colourful temple informs you that, "It is a temple of Goddess Uma, consort of Shiva, built around 1879...It was in custody of Tamil Indian who brought Indian civilisation to other areas of Asia". Am I missing something here? ;)

People

Street Art

Cityscapes

Surprises

There are no stray dogs in Lumpini Park but it does have a number of 'community' cats that the park regulars like to pet. The big surprise here however are these lizards. When I first saw one slowly sauntering across the road, the first thought that crossed my mind was - 'what are Komodo Dragons doing here??' After crossing the road, it slipped into one of the canals and lazily swam past fishes, herons and humans practicing Tai-Chi in the park.

Turns out that these are the Asian Water Monitors. Though quite closely related (second heaviest lizards in the world), to the Komodo Dragons these are comparatively less venomous and aggressive. Wonder if they ate up all the stray dogs in Lumpini... ;)

I love "Conbinis",  Japanese style convenience stores that seem to have a fairly wide network in Thailand. I like to try and spot the similarities and differences between the 7-Elevens in different localities, the types of merchandise they stock, the shop layouts, and the efficiency with which these businesses are managed.

At this particular 7-Eleven on Wireless Road I caught a glimpse of the amazing logistics networks at work. This particular Conbini was going through a stock-check. Two staffers were quickly scanning the shelves with QR code readers that were no bigger than finger-rings, and simultaneously sending out an audio report on their observations. By the time we checked-out of the shop a carton of onigiris would certainly have been added to the next van or scooter replenishing the shelves we had emptied a few minutes earlier!

And the final surprise - the city metro network. Bangkok has three metro systems - BTS, SRT and MRT - but strangely they don't talk to each other! You can buy transit "Rabbit Cards" from any BRT station (THB 100 for the card, minimum refill THB 100) but for commuters and tourists the card cannot be used across most other metro lines. The Rabbit is valid only for BRT network and only two of the six MRT lines (Blue and Pink). Quite surprising for an urban mass transport system that was started as early as the 1970s..

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Difference - Komodo Dragons and Water Monitors - https://www.rekoforest.org/field-stories/komodo-dragons-vs-monitor-lizards-can-you-spot-the-differences/#:~:text=Asian%20Water%20Monitor%2C%20the%20world's,tropical%20islands%20with%20warm%20weather.

Vatapi Ganapati

 

"Vatapi Ganapati" is a much loved composition in Carnatic Music, one of the two branches of classical music in India. Composed by the great poet-composer Mutthuswami Dixitar (1775-1885), it is a hymn praising a specific idol of Ganapati,  worshipped in a small shrine in Tiruchenkattankudi Utrapatishwaraswamy Temple, in Thiruvarur district in the Tamil Nadu state of India.

The name of this place may seem long and complicated to those who are unfamiliar with South Indian languages, but so is the distance covered by this Ganapati. Vatapi (present day Badami), is a place located about 1000 km away from this coastal town. According to the g-maps, it would take a brisk walker about 190 hours or a week to cover this distance. 

How did a temple idol get its name from a place so far away? 

Anirudh Kanisetti's answers this question (and many others) through his fascinating new book titled, "Lords of the Deccan". For the vast majority of us who had been brought up on passing references in our history books to this part of this country, Kanisetti's book is a revelation, an eye-opener to the array of kingdoms that had ruled this vast area in central India from 500 to 1200 CE. 

Is is the story of the powerful dynasties that ruled this part of the country before the Islamic invasions - the Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rashtrskutas, and the Cholas. It is also a rather sad commentary on the shortage of written records that tells us about the life and times of those who built some of the massive temples of South India. Among these is the Kailashnatha temple at Ellora that was 'built' top-down by cutting through solid rock on a cliffside, after carefully chipping away more than 200,000 tonnes of granite stone!

Coming back to the story of Vatapi Ganapathi, it turns out that this idol was actually war booty that was brought here more than 1300 years earlier by the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram.  Tiruchenkattankudi was the birthplace of Paranjothi, the commander-in-chief of the Pallava king Narasimhavarman I (reign: 630–668 CE). 

Contrary to the Hindutva tropes about Hindu temples getting destroyed by exclusively by Muslim invaders, it is interesting to know that ever since temple building became a popular symbol of power projection after 500 CE, it was fairly common for Hindu kings to loot and destroy the temples of their rivals. 

Some other nuggets are even more surprising, such as the extent to which foreigners, especially West Asians, were welcomed by the kingdoms of ancient India. Muslim Persians and Arabs, as well as Zoroashtrians, Jews and Christians of diverse ethnicities, had not only settled in large numbers in the port cities but also rose to high positions in the civil and military hierarchies:

One fascinating example is a Persian Muslim known to us a Madhumati, son of Sahiyarahara (a Sanskritised version of Muhammad, son of Shahryar). In the tenth century, Madhumati was appointed the Rashtrakuta governor of the entire region of Sanjan, including much of northern Konkan.

Long before "Globalisation" became a buzzword, the Rashtrakutas, Pallavas and Cholas were already convinced of the strategic, political and economic benefits of encouraging meritocracies that were multi-ethnic, multilingual and cosmopolitan!

Sri Varaha - What a Boar!

One of the many intriguing things about the temples of Khajuraho is the prominence given toVaraha - the boar incarnation of Sri Vishnu.

As is the norm, nearly all the temples here face the rising sun, and many temples dedicated to Shiva have a Nandi, the bull, facing the deity, looking towards the west. At Khajuraho, in front of the 10th century Lakshmana temple stands a shrine dedicated to Varaha.  It does not seem big until you climb up a fleet of stone stairs to see the massive, beautifully carved and polished,  single-stone sculpture of Varaha that almost looks like a huge piggy bank rendered through flights of imagination. 

Mythology is of course a time tested way of communicating an underlying philosophy through engaging stories. This one is no different. The ASI boards at the temple does not tell us anything beyond the estimated timelines of construction. So I thought this sculpture was a one off thing until today when I came across a tweet by William Dalrymple with a Varaha image from Eran in Madhya Pradesh that looks almost exactly like the one in Khajuraho.

Intrigued, I got in touch with a cousin, an archeologist at MSU Baroda, who told me that Varaha was a popular cult in central India during the early phase of the Guptas, around 300 CE. "In fact the largest of these Bhu-Varahas is at the Udayagiri caves near Sanchi, where the 12 feet high rock-cut statue, in an area that has the earliest surviving evidence of Hindu structural temple construction."

Why would the earliest temples give so much importance to an animal form, and that too, a wild boar? What do all those intricate carvings on the boars head and torso signify? Apart from some distant memories of stories I heard from my grandmother, and those that I read in Amar Chitra Katha comics, my bandwidth was rather limited. 

These are stories that have survived thousands of years, from one generation to the next. My grandmothers generation is no more but her children have grown up seeped in poetry, and the epics. So when I reached out to my mother I was not surprised to receive at the outset an admonition, a gentle rebuke of a reminder - "How many times have I told you to read the Srimad Bhagavatham? It is a treasure trove of wonderful stories!"

Easier said than done. The Srimad Bhagavatham, or Bhagavata Purana, consists of 12 books (skandhas) with 332 chapters (adhyayas) containing about 18,000 verses... in Sanskrit!

The story of Varaha-avatara is covered in canto 3, chapter 13, and goes something like this: 

Four baby-faced nerds of the spiritual world, the elder sons of Brahma called the Sana-Kumaras, once went to visit Vishnu.  At the gates of Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu, they were stopped by two guards, Jaya and Vijaya, who refused to let them through - the kids just did not look serious enough to deserve a meeting with the boss.

The Kumaras got enraged. They cursed Jaya and Vijaya to be born on earth thrice, as three villains with characteristics of "lust, anger and greed". In the first round, during Satya Yuga, the guards were reborn on earth as asuras named Hiranyakashyapu and Hiranyaksha. 

So one of the insolent guards turned into the demon Hiranyasha. While living up a life of lust, greed and anger, he once assaulted Mother Earth (Bhu-devi), and dragged her down into the cosmic ocean. People were distraught, they prayed to Vishnu for help, and this time he took on his third avatar to become a wild boar - the Varaha. Varaha dives into the ocean, and finds Bhu-devi. After this rescue mission, as he swims out of the ocean with the Devi clinging on to his curved tusk, Hiranyaksha tries to stop Varaha. A fight ensues, the villain is killed, and Mother Earth is saved.

As always these mythologies are full of hyperlinks - wheels within wheels, stories within stories, popping up like Matryoshka dolls. 

What remain unclear is the reason why the cult of the Varaha is restricted to Central India. There is a place near Thiruvananthapuram called SriVaraham named after a shrine dedicated to the same avatar. But why are there no shrines to this avatara elsewhere? 

Also, in terms of iconography, the rest of the picture remains unclear - Why is the goddess of wealth (?) placed at the nostrils? What is that fat snake crawling on the ground? why are there 'thousands of sages' attached to the boar's body? 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Bhagavata Purana - https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/

Chalo Khajuraho!

Travelling means different things to different people. To me, one of the most interesting things about travelling is the clash between expectations and ground realities.

Long before you arrive your destination you have a picture in your mind, an image built out of words and views of folks who have been there before. In the new world of digital media the gap between expectation and reality is bridged the moment you scan through some Google searches, a few YouTube videos and articles. In most journeys you re-live the experiences of others.

Not so for Khajuraho.

Nothing prepared me for the scope and scale of artistry, human ingenuity and effort that has gone into the Khajuraho temples. I had expected to see a small town built around a couple of temples, its walls packed with erotic sculptures, a backdrop for an annual dance festival where classical dancers perform for the tourists. What I found instead was an orderly municipality built on the site of an ancient, abandoned city packed with scores of temples of astounding beauty, set in a landscape that was just as bleak and arid, a mere shadow of what it must have been a thousand years ago.

The temples are proof that an oasis of prosperity existed amidst the badlands of Bundelkhand long before it came to be known by that name. It was a city without walls, protected by the swift waters of the Karnavati river, enriched by the precious gems extracted from the Panna Mines and ruled by a dynasty that controlled the lucrative trade routes between the northern Gangetic plains and southern India.

At Khajuraho you enter time-space warp. The Karnavati river is now called Ken - an anglicised abbreviated version of a river that is a dribble of what it used to be. You look at the scorched, barren, red soil and wonder how it could have been thickly forested once, or the rich agricultural land that fed the healthy, rugged warriors and lovers that adorn the walls of all the temples here.

The site was also significant in Hindu cosmology. Just as in the case of holy city of Varanasi, here too a major river  flows northwards, towards the sacred Himalayas before it turned again towards the seas. For some reason this was also a centre for yogic austerities, a hub for Jain monks, tantric Shaivite worshipers, as well as a range of unusual deities such as Brahma, Varaha (the boar avatar of Vishnu), and Vamana (another avatar of a pudgy, dwarf mendicant).

Folklore has it that the area around Khajuraho, which was known in ancient times as Jejahoti, was home to 85 temples and 85 lakes. Only 25 temples remain now. As for the lakes, they are now mere ponds filled with murky green water and a few buffalos. Historical records indicate that the city and its temples were abandoned after the Chandela Kingdom with its capital at Kalinjar Fort 85km away, was raided by Mahmud of Ghazni  in 1022 CE. As was the norm, the survivers may have been enslaved and taken away by other invaders , including Qutub-ud-din-Aibak who defeated the Chandelas again, two centuries later.



The abandoned temples then drifted into oblivion and got covered by forests that protected it from the zeal of later invaders until they were 'rediscovered' by an Englishman travelling from Sagar to Calcutta.

Since this 'rediscovery' almost all the temples of Khajuraho have been under government control. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) now restores and maintains most of these abandoned temples within manicured lawns and and fenced compounds. Only two sets of temples falls outside this control - the set of Eastern Jain Temples and one temple dedicated to Matangeshwara (Shiva) just outside the fenced perimeter of the Western Group of Temples.

ASI does a fine job of preserving these heritage monuments. Each temple has been assigned a care-taker, each of whom ensures that visitors do not deface or vandalise the sculptures. We were particularly impressed with three young men - Anurag Pathak at the Chaturbhuj temple, Saurav Singh Rajput at the Vamana temple and Parasuram at the Vishvanath temple - each of them took care to ensure that the temples were safe.



While inside the Vishwanath temple a large group of village women could be heard singing songs and going from one temple to the other. In their own sing-song way they walked into the sanctum of each temple and paid their respects to the gods that once occupied them. According to the caretaker, Parasuram, many of the pilgrims who throng the Mantangeshwar temple also drop by into the fenced, ticketed ASI complex to reaffirm their ancient ties to these great temples.

Researchers have tracked available records to recreate the sequence of temple building in Khajuraho. It follows an intriguing pattern. The earliest temples built in Khajuraho were the Brahma shrine next to the lake and the Chausath (64) Yogini temple. Both are bare and austere, made out of rough hewn granite. The Matangeshwar temple came up next around 900 CE. This active temple has such a large Shiva Linga that you barely have any space to move inside.

The Laxmana temple was perhaps the first 'grand' temple built in generous proportions with a large Varaha (boar) shrine facing it. On the same line, the Vishwanath temple was built next, paired with a Nandi shrine. Among the large temples here, the Kandaria Mahadev which came up next is considered the acme of Chandela temple architecture. From here on all the temple building went downhill, both in scale and exuberance.

Prudes and others who are embarrassed about the erotic sculptures here will tell you that only 10 percent of carvings here are 'gross'. Don't believe them. Fact is that uninhibited display of sex is exactly what the temple builders wanted to highlight. At all the three major temples (Laxman, Vishwanath, Kandaria Mahadev) the northern and southern walls are packed with 3+ feet high sculptures of uninhibited lovemaking. These are like large banner headlines that turn all the remaining sculptures into footnotes.



Amazingly, while all the Hindu shrines reserve lovemaking scenes for the outer walls, within the Jain shrines it seems to be the opposite. Here you have tangled couples on the doorway to the sanctum showing the great "Digambara" (sky-clad) Jaina saints in all their naked glory!

At the end of the day one simple fact stands out. We know very, very little about our own people who built these amazing temples. We see them through a prism coloured by the Abrahamic armies that conquered us and colonised our minds for a thousand years.

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Looking Around

Since the main set of temples - the Western Group - was walking distance from our hotel we decided to use a taxi to visit the temples that were away from the town.  First we visited the Chausath Yogini Temple, then the Eastern Group of Temples (Jain Complex - Adinath, Parasvnath, and Shanti Nath), the Southern Group of Temples (Duladeo, Chaturbhuj and Bijamandala), then back to the eastern zone to visit the temples that our driver 'forgot' to mention - the ones around the lake - Brahma, Hanuman, Javari and Vamana. The rest of the time was dedicated to the main Western Group of Temples (Laxmana, Kandariya Mahadev, Jagadamba, Chitragupta and Vishvanath).

Accommodation

Travelling during the off-season has its perks. We stayed at the Lalit hotel which was so short of guests that it upgraded our booking to a suite which turned out to be as big as an apartment - two bedrooms with attached bath, a large hall with an attached kitchen, bright French windows opening into the lawns and overlooking bright bougainvillea bushes overhanging the walls!

The location is excellent - just 750m from the Western Temples, and right next to the ASI museum, the Festival Grounds, eateries and short walk from the Tribal Museum which is worth visiting.

Travel Tips

• Travel during the off-season (April - September). Apart from being spared the crowds you get better deals at the hotels, restaurants and with the taxi-wallah.
• Use the Indian Railways. The Sampark Kranti Express is perfectly timed for weekend getaways from Delhi.
• Cameras: For some strange reason, ASI does not allow tripods into the temple complex. You need to have a letter granting permission from their office in New Delhi / Bhopal (!)
• Don't expect much from the Archaeological Museum in Khajuraho. Despite having a sprawling complex ASI displays are poorly labelled, manned only by security guards who just keep intoning the rules ("no selfies with the displays"...)
• Guide - Satendra Kumar Dwivedi (Sachin) - Mobile: +91 9753 954 343 - Email: dsachine@rediffmail.com
• Driver - Lakhan Singh, Old village ward no.14, Near Jawari Temple - Mobile: +91 7223 053 448, 7049 844 467

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Questions:
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* The Chandela - Chola Connection: The Chandela dynaty ruled Bundelhand from ~900 to 1100 CE while the Chola's of South India were also at their peak during the same period. Rajaraja-I (985-1016 CE) and his son Rajendra-I (1012-44 CE) stretched the boundaries of their kingdom not only across the seas to South East Asia but also northwards, all the way into the Gangetic plains. In fact Rajendra-I also earned the sobriquet "Gangaikondachola".
Rajendra-I could not have reached the Ganga river without crossing Bundelkhand. Was there a link between the massive stone temples erected by the Cholas and the ones built by the Chandela's in Khajuraho?