Mathura A District Memoir Chapter-4

'THE BRAJ-MANDAL, THE BAN-JATRA, AND THE HOLI.

NOT only the city of Mathura, but with it the whole of the western half of the district, has a special interest of its own as the birth-place and abiding home of Vaishnava Hinduism. It is about 42 miles in length, with an average breadth of 30 miles, and is intersected throughout by the river Jamuna. On the right bank of the stream are the parganas of Kosi and Chhata—so named after their principal towns—with the home pargana below them to the south ; and on the left bank the united parganas of Mat and Noh-jhil, with half the pargana of Maha-ban as far east as the town of Baladeva. This extent of country is almost absolutely identical with the Braj-mandal of Hindu topography; the circuit of 84 Kos in the neighbourhood of Gokul and Brinda-ban, where the divine brothers Krishna and Balaram grazed their herds.

The first aspect of the country is a little disappointing to the student of San skrit literature, who has been led by the glowing eulogiums of the poets to antici pate a second Vale of Tempe. A similarly unfavourable impression is generally produced upon the mind of any chance traveller, who is carried rapidly along the dusty high-road, and can scarcely see beyond the hideous strip of broken ground which the engineers reserve on either side, in order to supply the soil required for annual repairs. As this strip is never systematically levelled, but is dug up into irregular pits and hollows, the size and depth of which are determined solely by the requirements of the moment, the effect is unsightly enough to spoil any landscape. The following unflattering description is that given by Mons. Victor Jacquemont, who came out to India on a scientific mission on behalf of the Paris Museum of Natural History, and passed through Agra and Mathura on his way to the Himalayas in the cold weather of 1829-30. “Nothing," he writes,” can be less picturesque than the Jamuna. The soil is sandy and the cultivated fields are intermingled with waste tracts, where scarce ly anything will grow but the Capparis aphylla and one or two kinds of zyzyphus. There is little wheat; barley is the prevailing cereal, with peas, sesamum, and cotton. In the immediate neighbourhood of the villages the Tamarix articulata gives a little shade with its delicate foliage, which is super latively graceful no doubt, but as melancholy as that of the pine, which it strangely resembles. The villages are far apart from one another and present every appearance of decay. Most of them are surrounded by strong walls flanked with towers, but their circuit often encloses only a few miserable cot- tages." After a lapse of 50 years the above description is still fairly applicable. The villages are now more populous and the mud walls by which they were protected, being no longer required, have been gradully levelled with the ground. But the general features remain unchanged. The soil, being poor and thin, is unfavourable to the growth of most large forest trees ; the mango and shisham, the glory of the lower Doab', are conspicuously absent, and the place is most inadequately supplied by the nim, faras, and various species the fig tribe. For the same reason the dust in any ordinary weather is deep on all the thoroughfares and, if the slightest air is stirring, rises in a dense cloud and veils the whole landscape in an impenetrable haze. The Jamuna, the one great river of Braj, during eight months of the year meanders sullenly, a mere rivulet, between wide expanses of sand, bounded by monotonous flats of arable land, or high banks, which the rapidly expended force of contributory torrents ha cracked and broken into ugly chasms and stony ravines, naked of all vegetation.

As the limits of Braj from north to south on one side are defined by the high lands to the east of the Jamuna, so are they on the other side by the hill ranges of Bharat-pur; but there are few peaks of conspicuous height and the general outline is tame and unimpressive. The villages, though large, are meanly, built, and betray the untidiness characteristic of Jats and Gujars, who form the bulk of the population. From a distance they are often picturesque, being built on the slope of natural or artificial mounds, and thus gaining dignity by elevation. But on nearer approach they are found to consist of labyrinths of the narrowest lanes winding between the mud walls of large enclosures, which are rather cattle-yards than houses. At the base of the hill is ordinarily Broad circle of meadow land, studded with low trees, which afford grateful shade and pasturage for the cattle ; while the large pond, from which the earth was dug to construct the village site, supplies them throughout the year with water. These natural woods commonly consist of pilu, chhonkar, and kadamb trees, among which are always interspersed clumps of karil with its leafless evergreen twigs and bright-coloured flower and fruit. The pasendu, papri, arni, hingot, gondi, barna, and dho also occur, but less frequently ; though the last-named, the Sanskrit dhava, at Barsana clothes the whole of the hill-side. At sun-rise and sun-set the thoroughfares are all but impassable, as the straggling herds of oxen and buffaloes leave and return to the homestead: for in the straitened precincts of an ordinary village are stalled every night from 500 or 600 to 1,000 head of cattle, at least equalling, often outnumbering, the human population.

The general poverty of the district forms the motif of the following popular Hindi couplet, in which Krishna's neglect to enrich the land of his birth with any choicer product than the karil, or wild caper, is cited as an illustration of his wilfulness:

कहा कहें रघुनाथ की गई सतलो नाहि ।
काबुल में मेवा करी टेंटी ब्रज की माहि ।।।

which may be thus done into English:

Krishna, you see, will never lose his wayward whims and vapours;
For Kabul teems with luscious fruit, while Braj boasts only capers.

In the rains however, at which season of the year all pilgrimages are made, the Jamuna is a mighty stream, a mile or more broad; its many contributory torrents and all the ponds and lakes, with which the district abounds, are filled to overflowing; the rocks and hills are clothed with foliage, the dusty plain is transformed into a green sward, and the smiling prospect goes far to justify the warm est panegyrics of the Hindu poets, whose appreciation of the scenery, it must be remembered, has been further intensified by religious enthusiasm. Even at all seasons of the year the landscape has a quiet charm of its own ; a sudden turn in the winding lane reveals a grassy knell with stone-built well and overhanging pipal; or some sacred grove, where gleaming tufts of karil and the white-blossomed arusa weed are dotted about between the groups of weird pilu trees with their clusters of tiny berries and strangely gnarled and twisted trunks, all entangled in a dense undergrowth of prickly ber and hins; and chhonkar: while in the centre, bordered with flowering oleander and nivara, a still cool lake reflects the modest shrine and well-fenced bush of tulsi that surmount the raised terrace, from which a broad flight of steps, gift of some thankful pilgrim from afar, leads down to the water's edge. The most pleasing architectural works in the district are the large masonry tanks, which are very numerous and often display excellent taste in design and skill in execution. The temples, though in some instances of considerable size, are all, excepting those in the three towns of Mathura. Brinda-ban and Gobardhan, utterly devoid of artistic merit.

To a very recent period almost the whole of this large area was pasture and woodland and, as we have already remarked, many of the villages are still environed with belts of trees. These are variously designated as ghana, jhari, rakhya, ban, or khandi, and are often of considerable extent. Thus, the Kokila-ban at Great Bathan covers 723 acres; the rakhya at Kamar more than 1,000; and in the contiguous villages of Pisaya and Karanla the rakhya and kadamb-khandi together amount to nearly as much. The year of the great famine, 1838 A. D., is invariably given as the date when the land began to be largely reclaimed; the immediate cause being the number of new roads which were then opened out for the purpose of affording employment to the starving population.

Almost every spot is traditionally connected with some event in the life of Krishna or of his mythical mistress Radha, sometimes to the prejudice of an earlier divinity. Thus, two prominent peaks in the Bharat-pur range are crowned with the villages of Nand-ganw and Barsana: of which the former is venerated as the home of Krishna's foster-father Nanda, and the latter as the residence of Radha's parents, Vrisha-bhanu and Kirat. Both legends are now as impli citly credited as the fact that Krishna was born at Mathura ; while in reality, the name Nand-ganw, the sole foundation for the belief, is an ingenious substi­tution for Nandisvar, a title of Maha-deva, and Barsana is a corruption of Brahma-sanu, the hill of Brahma. Only the Giri-raj at Gobardhan was, accord ing to the original distribution, dedicated to Vishnu, the second person of the tri-murti, or Hindu trinity; though now he is recognized as the tutelary divi nity at all three hill-places. Similarly, Bhau-ganw, on the right bank of the Jamuna, was clearly so called from Bhava, one of the eight manifestations of Siva ; but the name is now generally modified to Bhay-ganw, and is supposed to commemorate the alarm (bhay) felt in the neighbourhood at the time when Nanda, bathing in the river, was carried off by the god Varuna. A masonry landing-place on the water's edge called Nand-Ghat, with a small temple, dat ing only from last century, are the foundation and support of the local legend. Of a still more obsolete cultus, viz., snake-worship, faint indications may be detected in a few local names and customs. Thus, at Jait, on the highroad to Delhi, there is an ancient five-headed Naga, carved in stone, by the side of a small tank which occupies the centre of a low plain adjoining the village. It stands some four feet above the surface of the ground, while its tail was supposed to reach away to the Kali-mardan Ghat at Brinda-ban, a distance of seven miles. A slight excavation at the base of the figure has, for a few years at least, dispelled the local superstition. So again, at the village of Paiganw, a grove and lake called respectively Pai-ban and Pai-ban-kund are the scene of an annual fair known as the Barasi Naga ji mela. This is now regarded more as the anniversary of the death of a certain Mahant; but in all probability it dates from a much earlier period, and the village name would seem to be derived from the large offerings of milk (payas) with which it is usual to pro pitiate the Naga, or serpent-god.

Till the close of the 16th century, except in the neighbourhood of the one great thoroughfare, there was only here and there a scattered hamlet in the midst of reclaimed woodland. The Vaishnava cultus then first developed into its present form under the influence of Rupa and Sanâtana, the celebrated Bengali Gosains' of Brinda-ban ; and it is not improbable that they were the authors of the Brahma Vaivarta Purana the recognized Sanskrit authority for all the modern local legends. It was their disciple, Narayan Bhatt, who first established the Ban-jatra and Ras lila, and it was from him that every lake and grove in the circuit of Braj received a distinctive name, in addition to the some seven or eight spots which alone are mentioned in the earlier Puranas. In the course of time, small villages sprung up in the neighbourhood of the different shrines bearing the same name with them, though perhaps in a slightly modified form. Thus the khadira-ban, or ' acacia grove,' gives its name to the village of Khaira; and the. anjan pakhar, on whose green bank Krishna pencilled his lady's eye-brows with anjan, gives its name to the village of Ajnokh, occasionally written at greater length Ajnokhari. Similarly, when Krishna's home was fixed at Nand-ganw and Radha's at Barsana, a grove half-way between the two hills was fancifully selected as the spot where the youthful couple used to meet to enjoy the delights of love. There a temple was built with the title of Radha-Raman, and the village that grew up under its walls was called Sanket, that is, ‘place of assignation. Thus we may readily fall in with Hindu prejudice. and admit that many of the names on the map are etymologically connected with events in Krishna's life, and yet deny that those events have any real connection with the spot, inasmuch as neither the village nor the local name had any existence till centuries after the incidents occurred which they are supposed to commemorate.

The really old local names are almost all derived from the physical character of the country, which has always been celebrated for its wide extent of pasture land and many herds of cattle. Thus Gokul means originally a herd of kine; Gobardhan a rearer of kine; Mat is so called from mat, a milk-pail ; and Dadhiganw (contracted into Dah-grnw) in the Kosi pargana, from dadhi, `curds.' Thus, too, `Braj' in the first instance means ` a herd,' from the root vraj, ` to go,' in allusion to the constant moves of nomadic tribes. And hence it arises that in the earliest authorities for Krishna's adventures, both Vraja and Gokula are used to denote, not the definite localities now bearing those names, but any chance spot temporarily used for stalling cattle ; inattention to this archaism has led to much confusion in assigning sites to the various legends. The word ` Mathura' also is probably connected with the Sanskrit root math, `to churn;' the churn forming a prominent feature in all poetical descriptions of the local scenery. Take, for example, the following lines from the Harivansa, 3395:-

क्षेम्यं प्रचारवहुलं हृष्टपुष्टजनावृतं ।
दामनीप्रायवहुलं गर्गरोद्गारनिस्वनं ।।
तक्रनिस्राववहुलं दधिमण्डार्द्रमृत्तिकं ।
मन्थानवलयोद्गारै गोपीनां जनितस्वनं ।।

"A fine country of many pasture-lands and well-nurtured people, full of ropes for tethering cattle, resonant with the voice of the sputtering churn, and flowing with butter-milk ; where the soil is ever moist with milky froth, and the stick with its circling cord sputters merrily in the pail as the girls spin it round."

And, again, in section 73 of the same poem-

ब्रजेषु च विशेषेण गर्गरोद्गा

“In homesteads gladdened by the sputtering churn."

In many cases a false analogy has suggested a mythological derivation. Thus, all native scholars see in Mathura an allusion to Madhu-mathan, a title of Krishna. Again, the word Bathan is still current in some parts of India to designate a pasture ground, and in that sense has given a name to two exten sive parishes in Kosi ; but as the term is not a familiar one thereabouts, a legend was invented in explanation, and it was said that here Balarama ` sat down' (baithen) to wait for Krishna. The myth was accepted ; a lake imme diately outside the village was styled Bal-bhadra kund, was furnished with a handsome masonry ghat by Rup Ram, the Katara of Barsana, and is now regard ed as positive proof of the popular etymology which connects the place with Balarama. Of Rup Ram, the Katara, further mention will be made in connec tion with his birth-place, Barsana. There is scarcely a sacred site in the whole of Braj which does not exhibit some ruinous record, in the shape of temple or tank, of his unbounded wealth and liberality. His descendant in the fourth degree, a worthy man, by name Lakshman Das, lives in a corner of one of his ancestor's palaces and is dependent on charity for his daily bread. The present owners of many of the villages which Rup Ram so munificently endowed are the heirs of the Lala Babu, of whom also an account will be given further on.

In the Varaha Purana, or rather in the interpolated section of that work known as the Mathura Mahatmya, the Mathura Mandal is described as twenty yojanas in extent.

विंशतिर्योजनानां च माथुरं मम मंडलं ।।
यच यच नर: स्नातो मुच्यते सर्वपातके: ।।

“My Mathura circle is one of twenty yojanas ; by bathing at any place therein a man is redeemed from all his sins."

And taking the yojana as 7 miles and the kos as 13/4 mile, 20 yojanas would be nearly equal to 84 kos, the popular estimate of the distance travelled by the pilgrims in performing the Pari-krama, or ‘perambulation' of Braj. It is pro bable that if an accurate measurement were made, this would be found a very rough approximation to the actual length of the way; though liberal allowance must be made for the constant ins and outs, turns and returns, which ultimately result in the circuit of a not very wide-spread area. There can be no doubt that the number 84, which in ancient Indian territorial divisions occurs as frequently as a hundred in English counties, and which enters largely into every cycle of Hindu legend and cosmogony, was originally selected for such general adoption as being the multiple of the number of months in the year with the number of days in the week. It is therefore peculiarly appropriate in connec tion with the Braj Mandal ; if Krishna, in whose honour the perambulation is performed, be regarded as the Indian Apollo, or Sun-God. Thus, the magnifi cent temple in Kashmir, dedicated to the sun under the title of Martand, has a colonnade of exactly 84 pillars

It is sometimes said that the circle originally must have been of wider extent than now, since the city of Mathura, which is described as its centre, is more than 30 miles distant from the most northern point, Kotban, and only six from Tarsi to the south ; and Elliot in his glossary quotes the following couplet as fixing its limits :

इत बरहद इत सोनहद उत सूरसेन का गांव ।।
ब्रज चौरासी कोस में मथुरा मंडल मांह ।।

“On one side Bar, on another Sona. On the third the town of Surasen; these are the limits of the Braj Chaurasi, the Mathura circle." According to this authority the area has been diminished by one half; as Bar is in the Aligarh district, Sona, famous for its hot sulphur springs, is in Gur-ganw; while the ‘Surasen ka ganw' is supposed to be Batesar, a place of some note on the Jamuna and the scene of a large horse fair held on the full moon of Kartik. It might equally mean any town in the kingdom of Mathura, or even the capital itself, as King Ugrasen, whom Krishna restored to the throne, is sometimes styled Surasen. Thus, too, Arrian mentions Mathura as a chief town of the Suraseni, a people specially devoted to the worship of Her cules, who may be identified with Balarama : and Mann (II., 19) clearly intends Mathura by Surasena

कुरुक्षेत्रं च मत्स्याश्च पञ्चाल: शूरसेनका: ।।
एष व्रह्मार्षिदेशो वे व्रह्मावर्त्तादनन्तर: ।।

when he includes that country with Kuru-kshetra, Panchala and Matsya, in the region of Brahmarshi, as distinguished from Brahmavarta. But though it must be admitted that the circle is sometimes drawn with a wider circumference, as will be seen in the sequel to this chapter, still it is not certain which of the two rests upon the better authority. In any case, the lines above quoted cannot be of great antiquity, seeing that they con tain the Persian word hadd and, as regards the unequal distances between the city of Mathura and different points on the circumference, its only to be remembered that the circle is an ideal one, and any point within its outer verge may be roughly regarded as its centre.

As the anniversary of Krishna's birth is kept in the month of Bhâdon, it is then that the perambulation takes place, and a series of melas is held at the dif ferent woods, where the ras-lila is celebrated. This is an unwritten religious drama, which represents the most popular incidents in the life of Krishna, and thus corresponds very closely with the miracle plays of mediaeval Christendom. The arrangement of the performances forms the recognised occupation of a class of Brahmans residing chiefly in the villages of Karahla and Pisaya who are called Rasdharis and have no other profession or means of livelihood. The complete series of representations extends over a month or more, each scene being acted on the very spot with which the original event is traditionally con nected. The marriage scene, as performed at Sanket, is the only one that I have had the fortune to witness : with a garden-terrace for a stage, a grey stone temple for back-ground, the bright moon over head, and an occasional flambeau that shot a flickering gleam over the central tableau framed in its deep border of intent and sympathizing faces, the spectacle was a pretty one and was marked by a total absence of anything even verging upon indecorum. The cost of the whole perambulation with the performances at the different stations on the route is provided by some one wealthy individual, often a trader from Bombay or other distant part of India ; and as he is always accompanied by a large gathering of friends and retainers, numbering at least 200 or 300 persons, the outlay is seldom less than Rs. 5,000 or Rs. 6,000. The local Gosain, whom he acknowledges as his spiritual director, organizes all the arrangements through one of the Rasdharis, who collects the troupe (or mandali as it is called) of singers and musicians, and himself takes the chief part in the performance, declaiming in set recitative with the mandali for chorus, while the children who personate Radha and Krishna act only in dumb show.

The number of sacred places, woods, groves, ponds, wells, hills, and temples—all to be visited in fixed order-is very considerable ; there are generally reckoned five hills, eleven rocks, four lakes, eighty-four ponds, and twelve wells ; but the twelve bans or woods, and the twenty-four upabans or groves, are the characteristic feature of the pilgrimage, which is thence called the Ban-Jatra. The numbers 12 and 24 have been arbitrarily selected on account of their mystic significance; and few of the local pandits, if required to enumerate either group offhand, would be able to complete the total without some recourse to guesswork. A little Hindi manual for the guidance of pilgrims has been published at Mathura and is the popular authority on the subject. The compiler, however great his local knowledge and priestly reputation, has certainly no pretensions to accuracy of scholarship. His attempts at etymology are, as a rule, absolutely grotesque, as in the two sufficiently obvious names of Khaira (for Khadira) and Sher-garh (from the Emperor Sher Shah), the one of which he derives from khedna, ' to drive cattle,' and the other, still more preposterously, from sihara, ' a marriage crown.' The 'list which he gives is as follows, his faulty orthography in some of the words being corrected:-

The 12 Bans : Madhu-ban, Tal-ban, Kumud-ban, Bahula-ban, Kam-ban, Khadira-ban, Brinda-ban, Bhadra-ban, Bhandir-ban, Bel-ban, Loha-ban and Maha-ban.

The 24 Upabans : Gokul, Gobardhan, Barsana, Nand-ganw, Sanket, Para madra, Aring, Sessai, Mat, Uncha-ganw, Khel-ban, Sri-kund, Gandharv-ban, Parsoli, Bilchhu, Bachh-ban, Adi-badri, Karahla, Ajnokh, Pisaya, Kokila-ban, Dadhi-ganw, Kot-ban, and Raval.

This list bears internal evidence of some antiquity in its want of close correspondence with existing facts ; since several of the places, though retaining their traditionary repute, have now nothing that can be dignified with the name either of wood or grove ; while others are known only by the villagers in the immediate neighbourhood and have been supplanted in popular estimation by rival sites of more easy access or greater natural attractions.

Starting from Mathura, the pilgrims made their first halt at Madhu-ban, in the village of Maholi, some four or five miles to the south-west of the city. Here, according to the Puranas, Rama's brother, Satrughna, after hewing down the forest stronghold of the giant Madhu, founded on its site the town of Madhu-puri. All native scholars regard this as merely another name for Mathura, regardless of the fact that the locality is several miles from the river, while Mathura has always, from the earliest period, been described as situate on its immediate bank. The confusion between the two places runs apparently through the whole of classical Sanskrit literature; as, for example, in the Harivansa (Canto 95) we find the city founded by Satrughna distinctly called, not Madhu-puri, but Mathura, which Bhima, the king of Gobardhan, is repre sented as annexing :-

शत्रुघ्नो लवणं हत्त्वा चिच्छेद स मधोर्वनं ।।
तस्मिन्मधुवने स्थाने पुरीञ्च मथुरामिमां ।।
निवेशयामास विभु: सुमिचानन्दवर्द्धन: ।।
पर्य्याये चैव रामस्य भरतस्य तथैव च ।।
सुमिचासुतयोश्चैव प्राप्तयो र्वैष्णवं पदं ।।
भीमेनेयं पुरी तेन राज्यसम्बन्धकारणत् ।।
स्ववंशे स्थापिता पूर्व्वं स्वयमध्यासिता तथा ।।

When Sumitra's delight, prince Satrughna, had killed Lavana, he cut down the forest of Madhu, and in the place of that Madhu-ban founded the present city of Mathura. Then, after Rama and Bharata had left the world, and the two sons of Sumitra had taken their place in heaven, Bhima, in order to consolidate his dominions, brought the city, which had formerly been inde pendent, under the sway of his own family."

Some reminiscence of the ancient importance of Maholi would seem to have long survived ; for though so close to Mathura, it was, in Akbar's time and for many years subsequently, the head of a local division. By the sacred wood is a pond called Madhu-kund and a temple dedicated to Krishna under his title of Chatur-bhuj, where an annual mela is held on the 11th of the dark fortnight of Bhadon.

From Maholi, the pilgrims turn south to Tal-ban, ' the palm grove,' where Balarama was attacked by the demon Dhenuk. The village in which it is situated is called Tarsi, probably in allusion to the legend ; though locally the name is referred only to the founder, one Tara Chand, a Kachhwaha Thakur, who in quite modern time moved to it from Satoha, a place a few miles off on the road to Gobardhan. They then visit Kumud-ban, ' of the many water-lilies,' in Uncha-ganw, and Bahulaban in Bathi, where the cow Bahula, being seized by a tiger, begged the savage beast to spare her life for a few minutes, while she went away and gave suck to her little one. On her return, bringing the calf with her, the tiger vanished and Krishna appeared in his stead ; for it was the god himself who had made this test of her truthfulness. The event is comme morated by the little shrine of Bahula Gae, still standing on the margin of the Krishna-kund.' (read note 9) They next pass through the villages of Tos, Jakhin-ganw, and Mukharai, and arrive at Radha-kund, where are the two famous tanks prepared for Krishna's expiatory ablution after he had slain the bull Arishta. (read note 10) Thence they pass on to Gobardhan, scene of many a marvellous incident, and visit all the sacred sites in its neighbourhood ; the village of Basai, where the two divine children with their foster-parents once came and dwelt (basae) ; the Kallol-kund by the grove of Aring ; Madhuri-kund ; Mor-ban, the haunt of the peacock, and Chandra-sarovar, the moon lake ;' where Brahma, joining with the Gopis in the mystic dance, was so enraptured with delight that, all uncon scious of the fleeting hours, he allowed the single night to extend over a period of six months. This is at a village called Parsoli by the people, but which appears on the maps and in the revenue-roll only as Muhammad-pur. The tank is a fine octagonal basin with stone ghats, the work of Raja Nahar Sinh of Bharat-pur. After a visit to Paitha, (read note 11) where the people of Braj `came in' (paitha) to take shelter from the storms of Indra under the uplifted range, they pass along the heights of the Giri-raj to Anyor, (read note 12) the other side,' and so by many sacred rocks, as Sugandhi-sila, Sinduri-sila, and Sundar-sila, with its temple of Gobardhan-nath, to Gopal-pur, Bilchhu, and Ganthauli, where the marriage 'knot' (ganth) was tied, that confirmed the union of Radha and Krishna.

References