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.
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