They Followed
Us Step By Step, Piercing Our Ears With Shrieks, Wild Laughter
And Barking.
These animals are annoying, but so cowardly that,
though numerous enough to devour, not only all of us, but our
gold-horned bullocks too, none of them dared to come nearer than
the distance of a few steps.
Every time the long whip, our weapon
against snakes, alighted on the back of one of them, the whole
horde disappeared with unimaginable noise. Nevertheless, the
drivers did not dispense with a single one of their superstitious
precautions against tigers. They chanted mantrams in unison,
spread betel over the road as a token of their respect to the
Rajas of the forest, and, after every couplet, made the bullocks
kneel and bow their heads in honor of the great gods. Needless to
say, the ekka, as light as a nutshell, threatened each time to fall
with its passenger over the horns of the bullocks. We had to endure
this agreeable way of traveling for five hours under a very dark sky.
We reached the Inn of the Pilgrims in the morning at about six o'clock.
The real cause of Nassik's sacredness, however, is not the mutilated
trunk of the giantess, but the situation of the town on the banks
of the Godavari, quite close to the sources of this river which,
for some reason or other, are called by the natives Ganga (Ganges).
It is to this magic name, probably, that the town owes its numerous
magnificent temples, and the selectness of the Brahmans who inhabit
the banks of the river. Twice a year pilgrims flock here to pray,
and on these solemn occasions the number of the visitors exceeds
that of the inhabitants, which is only 35,000. Very picturesque,
but equally dirty, are the houses of the rich Brahmans built on
both sides of the way from the centre of the town to the Godavari.
A whole forest of narrow pyramidal temples spreads on both sides
of the river. All these new pagodas are built on the ruins of
those destroyed by the fanaticism of the Mussulmans. A legend
informs us that most of them rose from the ashes of the tail of
the monkey god Hanuman. Retreating from Lanka, where the wicked
Ravana, having anointed the brave hero's tail with some combustible
stuff set it on fire, Hanuman, with a single leap through the air,
reached Nassik, his fatherland. And here the noble adornment of
the monkey's back, burned almost entirely during the voyage,
crumbled into ashes, and from every sacred atom of these ashes,
fallen to the ground, there rose a temple.... And, indeed, when
seen from the mountain, these numberless pagodas, scattered in a
most curious disorderly way, look as if they had really been thrown
down by handfuls from the sky. Not only the river banks and the
surrounding country, but every little island, every rock peeping
from the water is covered with temples. And not one of them is
destitute of a legend of its own, different versions of which are
told by every individual of the Brahmanical community according
to his own taste - of course in the hope of a suitable reward.
Here, as everywhere else in India, Brahmans are divided into two
sects - worshippers of Shiva and wor-shippers of Vishnu - and between
the two there is rivalry and warfare centuries old. Though the
neighborhood of the Godavari shines with a twofold fame derived
from its being the birthplace of Hanuman and the theatre of the
first great deeds of Rama, the incarnation of Vishnu, it possesses
as many temples dedicated to Shiva as to Vishnu. The material of
which the pagodas consecrated to Shiva are constructed is black basalt.
And it is, exactly, the color of the material which is the apple of
discord in this case. The black material is claimed by the
Vaishnavas as their own, it being of the same color as the burned
tail of Rama's ally. They try to prove that the Shivaites have no
right to it. From the first days of their rule the English inherited
endless lawsuits between the fighting sectarians, cases decided
in one law-court only to be transferred on appeal to another, and
always having their origin in this ill-omened tail and its pretensions.
This tail is a mysterious deus ex machina that directs all the
thoughts of the Nassik Brahmans pro and contra.
On the subject of this tail were written more reams of paper and
petitions than in the quarrel about the goose between Ivan Ivanitch
and Ivan Nikiphoritch; and more ink and bile were spilt than there
was mud in Mirgorod, since the creation of the universe. The pig
that so happily decided the famous quarrel in Gogol would be a
priceless blessing to Nassik, and the struggle for the tail. But
unhappily even the "pig" if it hailed from "Russia" would be of no
avail in India; for the English would suspect it at once, and
arrest it as a Russian spy!
Rama's bathing place is shown in Nassik. The ashes of pious
Brahmans are brought hither from distant parts to be thrown into
the Godavari, and so to mingle for ever with the sacred waters
of Ganges. In an ancient MS. there is a statement of one of Rama's
generals, who, somehow or other, is not mentioned in the Ramayana.
This statement points to the river Godavari as the frontier between
the kingdoms of Rama, King of Ayodya (Oude), and of Ravana, King
of Lanka (Ceylon). Legends and the poem of Ramayana state that
this was the spot where Rama, while hunting, saw a beautiful antelope,
and, intending to make a present to his beloved Sita of its skin,
entered the regions of his unknown neighbor. No doubt Rama, Ravana,
and even Hanuman, promoted, for some unexplained reason, to the
rank of a monkey, are historical personages who once had a real
existence. About fifty years ago it was vaguely suspected that the
Brahmans possessed priceless MSS.
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