Pune Street Scenes IV: Pune Trishundiya Ganapathi Temple Interior

This is the second part that follows the earlier blog. It is an attempt to understand the story of this strange temple in terms of the gods within. I might as well forewarn at this stage that I found out nothing about why and when it became known as the triple-trunked trishundiya Ganapathi temple. It was sufficient for me just to see and speculate.

What I do not know about temple architecture and sculpture will most likely fill all the books written on it. One of the things about temple sculpture is that it is living worship that has been metamorphosed into stone. What the living culture is or was we do not know. We know now how quickly a traditional culture can disappear when faced by compelling social changes, such as invasion of the unnecessary kind (armies, fashion, multi-media). The records that survive are the ones of the approved kind, if not of the popular kind. The kinds approved by governing authorities are the ones which last longer. The builders of these architectural records may have little association with the ordinary people even in spirit. There are more temporary records written on the mind and the soul, or on paper or carved from wood which decay faster than the basic sentiments that they have been built on and continue to be associated with. An analysis of these records then is as inconsequential as a so-called “scientific” discovery of the material money-making kind can be in the long run (celestial time scales, as one would say).

One can make an effort nevertheless. One owes it to those who chipped away for the sake of a god of daily things who filled their bellies and perpetuated a basic happiness that lingers and that we thank god for. This, after all, is the symbolic necessity of a temple. Worship at a temple is not always necessary. Study of an unstudied temple may serve as a futile speculation on a dead past. But study we must, if only for an unstudied blog.

We came as early as we could to have a look at the interior of the trishundiya ganapathi temple. The temple was open. It was around 11.30 in the morning (see clock in Fig 2) and the temple would close at noon. We had to hurry. Devotees were going in and out without any constraint. They spent a little while sitting and meditating, went clockwise around the temple from outside (see Fig 1 right for the plan of the temple, click on picture to expand). We expected to see an old wooden statue of ganapathiji with the wooden grains of the sculpture showing somewhat --- probably hidden under layers of oil accumulated over centuries?. As it happens in India, there was indeed a trishundiya, but there was so much else!

Among the first things that hits you when you enter through the eastern portal is the signs of daily life inside the structure. As mentioned in the earlier blog there is a hall with a dome when you enter. On either side of the hanging temple bell two ceiling fans also hang with ill concealed electric cables. On both walls are signs (Fig 1) of daily living --- washed vessels after tea or some other hot drink has been made, or a plastic bag with the days requirement --- in niches made originally perhaps for equally holy gods of big or small things. The hall under the dome is not well lit. It is sufficiently lit to take pictures without using a flash what with all the camera gadgets we have nowadays. I did use a flash, however, apologizing to the gods (including my wife) several times. By the way, as a sign of regular and popular usage, there is a small black-board on which the timings for the next chathurthi (fourth day of the moon) is displayed.

The rough plan of the temple is given in the extreme right of Fig 1. There are some sculpted pieces (Fig 2) on wall 1 which separates the outer hall with the dome and the interior of the temple. The entrance to the interior is through a decorated wooden door which I forgot to examine in detail. The entrance to the sanctum sanctorum is through a raised step on which there are two conches indicating a connection to Vishnu.

There is a gajalakshmi-like structure resembling that in the front at first glance but very different in actual content. Although the outer sculpture (left of Fig 2) may have been touched up with plaster later the basic style of the sculpture seems to be similar so that they were constructed at the same time or by similarly trained craftsmen. The elephants to the right are distinctly seen to hold pots from which water is being poured to bathe the figure.

Instead of a lady sitting between the elephants the figure seemed to be that of a man. This figure with two hands was not holding anything that looked like lotus that Lakshmi would normally hold. Instead the figure seemed to hold a bell in the left hand and a small vessel in the right. In the rituals for worshipping Vishnu it is proscribed that one rings the bell with the left hand and make an offering with the right hand. Apparently the figure is not that of a deity. I could not get a ready reference to this posture. Instead I found that bells and vajra or dorjes are used in many Tibetan Buddhist rituals (see inset) with bell symbolizing a feminine principle and the vajra, which is the thunderbolt that destroys ignorance. For some reason this is considered the masculine principle while the bell suggests the emptiness of the feminine principle. Tantriks and other ladies would know what this means (?). In any case, the union of these two principles gives the enlightened mind --- the Buddha.

There is another aspect of the figure on the right of Fig 2 that is interesting. The feet of the figure are joined together against each other as they are in baddhakona asana pose. In the poses given by yoga practitioners on the internet, however, the hands usually hold the toes on the feet and the body is bent downwards. Interestingly a lady from New York pointed out in her site that the name of the asana is also given as Lakshmi. So I looked up the gajalakshmi poses on the internet and the only book I have on Early Buddhist Rock Temples (by Vidya Dehejia, Cornell, 1972) as well as the internet to get at the origin of the Gajalakshmi pose. As put down on rock, the so-called Gaja Lakshmi pose actually has Buddha’s mother being bathed by elephants (see the previous blog). I first heard of this pose from Lalitha (everybody believes I could be that ignorant) and I assumed from Ravi Varma’s famous paintings that the elephants used a garland. A quickly finished wooden panel by Andhra craftsmen that decorates the entrance to my flat has the elephants garlanding Lakshmi (Fig 4 top left) with her right foot down.

I found from Dehejia’s book that the early Buddhist temples had, Maya, the mother of Buddha being in the Laksmi asana pose (feet pressed together) as in the reconstructed pieces (Fig 4 left bottom, I have reconstructed the photograph some more) in Dehejia’s book and (fig 4 right top) in the arch above the entrance to Nadsur’s vihara VII. These figures clearly show that the elephants are pouring water, so that gajalakshmis bathe and do not garland. I found on the internet an amusing engraving on the pillars of the North gate of the Sanchi stupa two ladies bathing a child (fig 4 centre left down, North Gate Sanchi) with the composition of the figures (hands instead of trunks, for example) resembling that of the Gajalkshmis at first glance.

The Lakshmi asana pose with the feet being pressed together is not a necessary ingredient for the figures being bathed. Maybe human bodies were more supple in earlier times to take up the lakshmi asana pose without bending their bodies? In images from Sanchi stupa (railings of Bharhut stupa from the railing of Stupa II) the ladies could be standing (fig 4 right) or have their left foot down Fig 3 in the middle).

After all this one could conclude, I guess, that the figure in (what may be identified as) the Lakshmiasana pose on Wall 1, just represents that of a devotee being welcomed into the interior of the temple. Now for the trishundiya!?

The sanctum sanctorum is visible through a grilled door (see Fig 9, see later). On top of the grilled door on wall 2 (see Fig 1, right) that separates the sanctum sanctorum in which the main idol is kept there are sculptures (Fig 5 right). The nature of the sculptures seems to be similar to that in Fig 2 except for the central figures and there are no elephants of the gajalakshmi kind. There is also a plaque (Fig 5 left) with engraved scripts on Wall II on top of the grilled door is made from harder rock and must have been placed later on the original wall.

The plaque with scripts seemed to be in a place meant for it. There are three scripts (Fig 6). Two of them on the left are probably in Devnagari script. The script on the extreme left is raised and seems to be Sanskrit (though Sanskrit scholars I know did not seem to have the patience to go through it and read it and translate it). The second Devnagari script (middle of Fig 6) is engraved into the tablet on which the scripts are written. Both the scripts on the left begin with invoking Lord Ganesha which is normal in the temples here usually classified as Hindu temples. The way the scripts are written they could be slokas which are part of a prayer to Lord Ganesha. There may be two scripts on the right. I have no idea what they could be as yet. It could be a simple puzzle for all ye learned scholars.

There is apparently a sitting Vishnu with bhudevi and sridevi on his lap and seated below the head of what looks like a garuda head in the sculpture on top of the door to the sanctum sanctorum. There are two bearded rishis standing on a lotus flower on either side of the door way (left and right of Fig 7) in the usual guardian style. The jats of Punjab, so the legend goes, owe their origin to Siva’s matted hair; it is also said that the jats of Punjab settled in the region around Pune-Satara in the eighth century. and his followers are usually described as wearing jataa or "twisted locks of hair" as in dread locks in a manner similar to that of the catai worn by Dravidian.

In the centre of the piece above the door I thought after a first glance that it was Vishnu with sridevi and bhudevi on his lap. The main figure(Fig 7 centre) had a varada hasta (boon-giving hand; Lalitha said that the boon-giving comes only after sufficient obeisance is made) pose of his right hand typical of Vishnu. In the dark light (Fig 5 right) one could not make out assimilate and analyze the details quickly. With the help of digital photography and a flash one could analyze later with the internet and google. Thanks to the flash and Lalitha, one noted several things: the figure was not sitting on a Garuda so it need not be Vishnu: there were obviously a nandi and a variation of a lion (not a tiger because there were no stripes to rank it as such) which are the vahanas of Siva and Parvati or any of Siva’s consorts; there were snakes of the cobra type around the neck and the waist of the main figures not usually associated with Vishnu even in his wildest days. The problem was that Shiva in a seated posture is rare especially with a varada hasta hand unless he is in the nataraja pose (search internet) when the left hand is in the varada hasta pose and vertical on top of the big toe of the raised left leg (that’s how you are supposed to make out a genuine nataraja from a quick-buck one, anyway).

One of the things I noticed last but liked best was the lying sprawled out lion at the base of the central figure. This was a lion completely at ease. It was not like the lion in the crouching-lion-sitting-bull pose of the vahanas on either side of the central figure. To add to my confusion was the figure of the garuda spreading its wings that was discernible on the top of the structure that is expanded processed and shown in the top right of Fig 7. Ask any garuda and he would swear that he appears only on Vaishnavite temples. So what was Siva doing there? A quick search through the internet did not give anything special about Siva with a lion at his feet and a garuda above his head. It would have seemed that the sculptor had missed out on a few rules.

Missing out on rules in art should always be encouraged. The followers of Vishnu at some stage may not have thought of temple sculpture as art but as a discipline. There were Agamas (see Tirupati as Buddhist Shrine by K. Jamandas of Dalit E-Forum, Chapter 11 for a sufficiently “biased/learned” version) which described the norms for Vishnu images as existing at that time based on what some may call empirical images of Vishnu imagined from some folklore or harikatha. Dravidian rock cut shrines such as those at Mamallapuram in Chennai or the 7th - 8th century Kailasa caves at Ellora seem to have followed some sort of earlier rules (Vaikhanasagama). There is a contention that these Agamas (“for people who have no other purpose on Earth but to worship Lord Vishnu”) were formed around the 9th century AD so that sculptures earlier than this date may not have been as per the present Siva-Vishnu distinctors. The Siva-Parvathi sculpture (shown in negative in Fig 7 bottom right; click to enlarge) from Kailasa temple of Ellora in Plate XXVa of Havell’s Handbook of Indian Art (1920) (available on Internet) is similar in the style of the hair and the face to that in our own Trishundia. The Dravidian people who sculpted Kailasa probably strayed away from those caves to find their Punya in Pune and carved part of these temples as a time-pass (?). Who said no? and who says yes?

There is another line of thought that occurs to some devious minds especially when one is brought up in the atmosphere of plagiarism current in today’s (today could mean from any time) minds of scientists and bureaucrats, the present day avatars of kings and other less pedigreed royalty. This line of thought would suggest that there was a pre-existing Vishnu idol with sridevi and bhudevi on his lap which was then changed into Siva. If one looks casually at the image one can imagine the remnants of Vishnu’s symbols such as the conch and the chakra. In this case Vishnu could have been saddling a garuda, which itself would have been resting on a sprawled out lion. The head of the Garuda would have been transformed into the head of a cobra. The two animals by the side would have been carved out from elephants in the Gajalakshmi pose (compare with other structures). All this speculation may have been inspired by Jamandas’s suggestion that the Vishnu in pre-agama pe-9th century Tirupathi was actually a Buddhist shrine and the extra arms carrying weapons were added later. Or as the some Iyers insist, Tirupathi was a Siva temple that was turned into a Vishnu temple.

Searching through the internet for the role of lion in sculptures or images I came across a gang-of-4 hari (god) reference in hariharihariharivahan Lokeshvara of Nepalese origin. This is a reference to a god-on-god-on-god-on-god vehicle which is Avalokiteshwara (ava means “down”, lokita means lok or “people”, svara may not be from isvara as we would think but a sound perceiver, the Buddha of compassion or Padampani the holder of the Lotus incarnated in the Dalai Lama among others) on Vishnu on Garuda on lion. A figure of this kind is shown in Fig 8 (left, after suitable processing; key word hariharihariharivahan lokeshvara). It is compared with a processed image of Fig 7 centre (Fig 8 right, with suggestions about garuda head). In the centre of Fig 8 is an ancient tribal image of Parvati with a different posture on her lion from the hills around pune (referred to in Part I blog of trishundiya exterior).


As one looks at the sanctum sanctorum there is a warm and peaceful scene. One always finds a devotee sitting peacefully (Fig 9 left) in front of a grilled door separating the sanctum sanctorum from the inner chamber (see Fig 1 right). There is a gold-coloured stylized representation of a tortoise (Fig 9 left) which seems to be characteristic of old temples around Pune. The present tortoise seems to be of more recent fabrication. I (shamelessly, sorry about that) took a shot of the Ganapathi (painted ochre like most old Ganesha idols in Pune) through the bars on a third day (garlands were changed comparing figures on the left and right) to get a more focused picture. There was no way to say whether ganapathiji was made from wood or plaster and mortar or rock. Both the tusks seemed to be of the same size. Legend requires that one of his tusks be broken off. Two of the three trunks were hidden behind a garland; the central trunk hung in the centre curled towards Ganesha’s right. His left trunk tickled the chin of a lady on his left lap whom he held with his hand (Fig 9 left below). It must be his mother gauri. He wore a snake as his head-band. A shaivite symbol of horizontal lines made in (what looked like) steel was placed on his forehead. The peacock’s head was visible. Ganpathi baba can be loved in many ways but he is always beloved. Behind trishundiyaji there is a niche (Fig 9 bottom right) of the same style as those in nearby temples. The wall inside this is bare except for some brass-like carved plate whose origin is not clear. A head is barely visible. There is a wooden almirah painted blue which is visible and which may be holding some god-clothes and utensils or those of his servants.

It was rather dark behind the main idol. The curse of the digital camera is that one can image process and get more information (valuable or otherwise) even at an amateur level. So behind trishundiyaji I found on image processing two features. The first of these is a reclining image of what seemed to be Vishnu and the other seemed to be David’s star.

The reclining Vishnu has been discussed in the previous blog. The snake on which Vishnu is reclining is similar in some way to that of the Vishnu sleeping on Shesha in Aihole’s 7th century Hucchappaya temple, now resting in the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai. The distinguishing feature of this model of the coiled snake is that the coils stretch out in u-turns on a plane like a bed instead of coiling like a helix vertically to form a cushion. One can discuss the nature of coiling later when there is more evidence accumulated (on my part). At present it could be sufficient to point out that there is some resemblance between the two snakes in Fig 10. The head-gear of Vishnu is less elaborate in the trishundiya temple (Fig 10 right) and could suggest an earlier (more primitive) origin. There is no lotus or Brahma appearing (as far as the image could be processed) from the navel of Vishnu, so that this is an image of Vishnu taking rest (if the agama rules were available then).

The second aspect is that on top of the reclining figure is (Fig 11 centre) what seems to be a David’s star (Fig 11 left, 3rd century seal of Solomon from a synagogue in Galilee) that is said to be typical of Jews. So you ask “How did Jews get into this?” But that is only if you have a Western mindset. You don’t ask if you are convinced that David’s star has interlocked triangles which the symbol in the centre of Fig 11 does not have. You also don’t ask this if you are an older day Bengali--- of the tantrik kind. So was this a tantrik temple? One entry in the internet writes one line about this temple being a 4th century tantrik temple! The walls of the temple behind this tantrik work has two faces on either side carved on the wall. They could be more ancient. On coming out of the temple while looking up to see whether you are clearing your head you see Tantrik signs (Fig 11 right; click on figure to enlarge) more clearly. What we should have noted first, we noted last!

In tantrik yantra tradition, the triangle is a feminine symbol of creation. Before one creates one requires a mind. So within the first triangle is a dot, the Bindu which is said to symbolize intense concentration. In tantra the bindu represents Siva. When two triangles are superposed in opposite direction they symbolize Purusha (or Shiva Kona, pointing upwards to represent the element of fire which is always upwards) and Prakriti (Shakti Kona, triangle pointing downward is the feminine yoni symbolizing the flow of water which is always downwards), who participate in the process of creation. This is the Shatkona and not David’s star. The external limit of the Yantra is the Bhupura which is the square. If Siva can be associated with tantrik yantra designs, the Sriyantra is usually associated with

The overlapping squares the vertices of which gives a regular octagon is sometime known as the star of Lakshmi. It is also known as the Rub el Hizb (with a small circle in the centre), an Arabic character associated with Islam which may account for the preponderance of the octagon in Islamic architecture. In tantrik worship the octagon is sometimes referred to as an Ashtar and is the prime form of Shakti or Parvati. The Ashtar also has an important place in Shree Yantra which is usually associated with Lakshmi, Vishnu’s consort, especially when it is a matter of accumulating wealth. There are sixteen- and eight-petalled lotuses as boundaries in this yantra, all enclosed in a square with four doors one on each side.

From beginning to end this temple should be a tantrik structure! Tantrik traditions come from shamanism of which the pre-buddhist bon religion originating in Tibet is one aspect. In shamanism as in Judaism or islam god does not have a shape. That is soul of the spirits we worship. When we give it a shape we freeze our understanding. The trishundiya temple is then a record of a series of frozen beliefs. These frozen moments may still come to life when seen (reflected upon) in rapid succession even though different sequences may give a different story. It is then that your mind becomes alive again. Trishundyaji has many purposes. This could be one of them.
As I come to the end of this post, I realize that I did not look back to see what is on the wall behind nor did I peek over trishundiyaji to see what was directly behind him. I did not speak to the inhabitants of the temple about their thoughts on it. I also did not ask them about the water tank with a maze beneath the temple that is open only on Gauri Pornima day. After all, in the Pune Gazeteer of 1881, mention is made that the “…chief objects of note in Somvar ward are Nageshvar's … and Vishnu's temples …, the latter with a water-lead and a public cistern.” Could they have been to what is now the trishundiya temple?

Pune Street Scenes III: Pune Trishundiya Ganapathi Temple Exterior

I thought this will be a brief blog about a curious trishundiya (three-trunked) ganapathi. It turned out right from the beginning that the ganapathi could be said to be the least curious feature of the temple. It required considerable unbiased erudition to understand the structure. This erudition is a rare commodity in centres of learning mainly because they depend on non-controversial “soft drink” sponsor for their research funding. It may sometimes be preferable to take an unbiased view by satisfying the first requirement, which is not to be learned. That I am. I have taken some post observation (photography) learning through the internet. I have come up with something which I must now put on the blog so as to remain reasonably self-consistent. So here goes. It is twelve page long and has sixteen pictures. So take your time.

One of the first things that anybody says about the trishundya ganapathi temple in Pune, Maharashtra, India is that the Ganapathi in the temple has three trunks and is the only one of its kind in India. One can have a ganapathi with five heads and five trunks or three heads and three trunks. The trishundya ganapathi has one head and three trunks. The ganapathi is seated on a peacock instead of the rat that he is supposed to be carried by. That is indeed unique. The second feature is that the temple is unique because of the carving of a rhinoceros which is not usual for temples in Maharshtra or in the southern parts of India. Indeed, I have not found on the internet (as yet) an example of a rhinoceros sculpture on a temple anywhere in India.

The approach to the temple itself from the newer parts of Pune is not straightforward. It goes through gulleys and there is no premonition of things to come as you walk down the lanes. You finally see it (Fig 1 left; always click on picture to expand) between two nondescript residential buildings. Once you are seated there (on one of two newly provided benches) you can say you are looking at something pleasant (Fig 1 right).

What hits you, however, once you have got used to this strange manifestation of beauty --- for beautiful it is even if it remains ravaged by the passage of time and irreverent use of enamel paints --- you are struck by the uniqueness of it all. I will not be able to do it the full justice it surely deserves except to draw your attention to some details and make my usual un-refereed comments. Except that one does not know where to begin; and, more importantly, there is no external sign of it being a Ganapathi temple of the Shiva-kind.

We came looking for the unique sculpture of the rhinoceros. At first glance it was a “rhinoceros”. Further inspection made it a rhino of the most unusual kind (Fig 2 left). Then you ask yourselves “what on earth is it?” or more appropriately “what on earth is it not?” It is apparent that the sculptor had not done a rhinoceros before and indeed had no idea what it was. The rhinoceros had its front left foot chained for some reason. Apparently the sculptor used a faithful drawing of a rhinoceros in captivity. The sculptor was apparently familiar with sculpting bull elephant and garuda for temples. So the rhinoceros had the body of a bull, feet of elephants the head starts of as that of an elephant and ends up with the beak of a garuda and a horn is later stuck into the “beak”. Why on earth did they have to put the rhinoceros in unless it was purely for fancy? I must straightaway say at this point that I have no idea!

There is no external sign of it being a ganapathi temple. There were two happy looking Ganapathi-like elephant-headed tigers sculpted in the same manner as the lions in temples (Fig 2 centre from Devgaon mandir near Kittur that is supposed to be in the early Chalukyan style) There is also a figure on the door frame (Fig 2 right) of the Lakshmi Narayan temple nearby with a lion-like body and mane but with an elephant-like head which has teeth instead of tusks. Such a head is common in the temples of Bankapura, Gadag-Lakkundi and is a characteristic of the Hoysala/chalukyan temple sculptures (I really cannot distinguish between them) and will not be discussed further in this article. The creature on the right looks like a hybrid of the other two so I guess the unique feature of the figure on the left is that it is the last in their evolution.

The temple has two pairs of elephants on either side of the entrance (Fig 4 left). The style of the elephants, with warriors on them, resemble the dozen or so elephant pairs, each of different style, surrounding the Dodda Basappa temple in Dambal near Gadag (one of them in Fig 4 right). There are attendants of the elephants with sticks that could have come from any style including the style at Sanchi stupa. The same could be said for the two guardians of the temple (seen in Fig 1).

The most noticeable feature on the sculpture on top of the main entrance to the temple is a Gajalakshmi-like sculpture which is considered to be typical of Vaishnavite temples (Fig 5, click on figure to enlarge). On the other hand, the Sanchi stupa has on their panels Maya, the mother of Buddha seated on a lotus flower with elephants on either side bathing her from a vase held by their trunks. Since the figure outside is disfigured we wont be able to say now whether it is Maya being bathed (sprayed?) or Lakshmi being garlanded. The original story is that it was the Ushas maidens rising from the cosmic ocean when Brhama’s lotus unfolded its petals, that were bathed by Indra’s elephants, who were the rain clouds. It is also said that Ganapathi’s elephant head is the head of one of Indra’s elephants. Come round a full circle? No wonder, we Indians (in Hindus-being-Indians sense) don’t have the fear of Gods. We have no option but to love them!?

On top of this “gajalakshmi” is a structure reminiscent of a Kirthimukha origin indicating western Chalukyan influence? The elephant-like creature supporting this structure is also associated with this influence. It has two huge fang-like teeth instead of tusks. One can go on about this Chalukyan influence with its connection to the “elephant” head in Fig 2 right with teeth instead of tusks. It must await another day when I would have learnt some more. Crowning the centerpiece is a proud peacock flanked by two adoring peahens that only our gods (and James Bond?) seem to be successful with. There are monkeys with genuine monkey tails ascending this sturcture. By the way, it may have been noticed in Fig 2 centre that the “lion” seems to have two tails: a monkey-like tail at the back and a lion-like tail that juts forth between its legs. Which came first? the monkey? the tiger? the sculptor’s licence?

The figures on top and on either side of the peacock and peahens (click on figure 5 to enlarge) at the same level has a simple style which I cannot recognize. One of them (immediately to the right of the peacocks) would be a Madonna with a baby in modern terms (see Fig 6 left) although I cannot say what it is in temple terms. There is at least another “Madonna with baby” on the right. These figures seem to have huge ganesha-like ears. From ground level, I was not able to make out whether these ears were added later or not.




There is a genuine Ganesha figure (Fig 6 centre) on the top part of the back wall (just below the roof) of the temple. There is no rat vahana for this ganapathi. The trunk is moved to the left like some of the older ganapathis in Kasbapet or like the lady Ganapathy (Fig 6 right) in Bhuleshwar which I could write about, but later. I included the lady ganapathi also because I sort of imagine (especially after the Bhuleshwar trip) that the ganapathi of Fig 6 has a bikini top. The style of wearing the cloth on the ganapathi may be imagined to be similar to other vasihnavite figures on the walls of the temple (Fig 8). By the way, did you notice the naamam sign on the Bhuleshwar lady ganapathy's right ear? Wonder if it is a hearing aid?

The figures in Fig 7 look like vaishnavite figures either in their head gear or with their naamam-like symbols on their forehead. The guardians at the door (Fig 1) could be from any time except that the trishul or the naamam on the forehead could indicate a Vishnu origin. The so-called naamam sign appears on the hood of the snake of frontispiece picture of an 1889 book on Buddhism by Monier-Williams. It is a Brass Buddha idol (Fig 8 left) in the Mućalinda Serpent pose (serpent not shown) with five rays of light emerging from the crown head. The symbol (I could not get the Buddhist name for the symbol as yet) is similar (you require to be sympathetic and willing to agree some times) to the Persian script for Allah (shown on the top right of Fig 8 left). The naamam-like appears on a door carving in the neighborhood to the temple (Fig 8 centre) as well as on a pillar of a carving for a niche on the wall (Fig 8 right).

The design on the top of the pillars consist of dwarfs in a pose found, for example, in the sun-temple at Modhera (Fig 9, bottom centre) which was built between the 10th-11th century AD by Solanki Rajput kings (?) who were Suryavanshis or descendants of the sun god. The solankis ruled the western and central parts of India between the 10th and 13th centuries AD. Most of the figures in the trishundiya temple pillar tops have vasihnavite head gear. They are also holding bells of the type (without the chains) seen on the top of the walls in Bhuleshwar (about 45 km from Pune) built around the 11th century (so they say). The bells are also hanging from the mouth of a recognizable lion-like face (Fig 9 top left) unlike the stylized kind seen in Fig 2 centre. The lion face found below an urn is comparable to that found in the 10th-11th century Pataleshwar cave temple in Pune. The urn and the lion face are also found in the Modhera sun temple (fig 9 bottom right).



There are arched niches (Fig 10) on each side of the temple containing different idols. I have not tried to find out (as yet) the actual orientation of the temple. The styles of these arches are nearly the same so that one could assume that they were built around the same time. Taking a rough guess from the direction of the shadows, the arched niches from left to right in fig would be north, west and south so that the front of the temple would be facing the east (which is probably not correct, but we will continue with this orientation from now on probably because I am under the impression that vaishnavite temples should have one entrance facing east).

The pillars of these temple-like niches on the walls are shown in Fig 11 with the pillars from left to right being east, south, west and north. In this representation of the orientation the south and west sides of the temple show the most weathering. If the temple is weathered because of the prolonged activity of the south west monsoon in Pune one could expect the south and the west sides to be the most weathered. Its normal to get wrong answers when one is making calculated guesses. So we do not worry about the orientation?

The important feature of interest is the figures in the niches. On the west (right of figure ) is a nataraja of a northern style and on the east (left of figure ) is a Vishnu made in a southern (Trichy?) style. In the cenre is a lingam with a serpent coiled around it with a dove flying towards the top of the lingam and a boar-like creature going down it. This aspect of the lingam was not known to me and I thought that this feature is an unique aspect of the temple. . The connection of the serpent with the lingam would make it a shaivite temple. A search through the internet gave me the following “In tantric yoga kundalini is visualized as a female snake which represents the energies of the adept. … … Furthermore, the force which the snake signifies is female just as the transformative force signified by the opposition of the auspicious and the inauspicious, namely sákti, is a female.” from Purity and Auspiciousness in Indian Society by JB Carman, F Apffel-Marglin Brill 1985. This did not look satisfactory.

I took some time to find the story about this lingam from the internet but once I got the key search words (Vishnu, Brahma and lingam) I found the legend behind this figure easily. A typical story is as follows (Handbook of Hindu Mythology, G M Williams, ABC-CLIO, 2003):-
In the Śiva Purâna¸Brahmâ Vishnu and Rudra (Śiva) were arguing about creation. When Brahmâ and Vishnu told Śiva that he was the lord of everything and for him to create as he wished, Śiva dove into the cosmic waters for more than a thousand celestial years. Brahmâ and Vishnu decided not to wait for creation any longer; so Vishnu gave Brahmâ enough energy to bring everything into being. Just when Brahmâ had finished his creation, Śiva emerged from the water and angrily destroyed everything by fire. The frightened Brahma worshipped Śiva lavishly, whereupon the pleased Śiva granted Brahmâ a boon. Brahmâ asked that everything be restored. Śiva restored Brahmâ’s creation, discovered that he had no use for all the creative energy he had stored up, and tore off his linga. The discarded linga extended deeper into the cosmic waters than Vishnu (as boar) could dive and higher into the cosmos than Brahmâ (as dove) could soar. So they instituted worship of the linga with heart and mind focused upon Śiva, because all desires would be fulfilled by Śiva.

The top of the temple was visible when we went to the steps of the house in front. It is also visible from far away (Fig 1 left) but we did not notice it probably because the dome, being freshly painted, merged with the background of residential buildings. It looked at first (Fig 13, centre click on picture to expand) like a brick and mortar structure plastered with cement and was thoroughly uninteresting. Inside the temple (seen the next day, although Lalitha seems to have worn the same sari which is extremely unusual), however, this dome was surprising because we did not see it first from outside. There were obvious signs of leakage which must have been uncomfortable for those living inside during Pune’s four-month-long monsoon period. Any plastering work on top must have been done much later.

I looked up Sir Banister’s “History of Architecture: on the Comparative Method”, 16th Edition 1959, which had nothing on Indian or Buddhist architecture. The closest I could get to was the funerary Lion tomb of Cnidos (in Cyprus, ~ 350 BC) discovered by one Newton of the Dilettante Society (an amateur group of the not so idle rich and noble that was founded around 1740. The Cnidos lion (made from a single block of marble) itself was about ten feet long and six feet tall ended up in the British museum. The dimensions and design of the Cnidos tomb is not more than twice that of the trishundiya dome. If your imagination is unfettered by what could be facts, you could conclude (as would Watson to be corrected by Sherlock Holmes) that it could have been a Buddhist stupa with a Buddha figure on top (instead of the lion on the Cnidos tomb).

There are animal figures on the top of the walls supporting the roof. Elephants, horses and lions/tigers could be discerned as brackets. There are coconut coir ropes freshly tied to these animals and must have been used to tie poles for scaffolding for other work. Which will fall first? The rope? Or the sculpture? Below these brackets are carvings of what I think is a lotus flower which I refer to later (in the next blog?).

It took us a second visit to notice Vishnu reclining on a snake which accompanies him in every reincarnation. There seems to be a tortoise flanked by a fish and a crocodile (?) supporting the snake which in my (uninformed perhaps) opinion is strange if not unique. The snake itself is known as Ananta Shesha Naga. The snake is supposed to float on the cosmic ocean which could account for the fish and the tortoise. Like Atlas, the snake bears the earth on his head. When the snake shrugs, like when Atlas shrugs, earth quakes. The snake is without end in time and so the name Anantha Sesha. There are well eroded image of what must be Sridevi at his feet in the style of Fig 6 left. There seems to be (if you imagine or stare hard enough) Brahma being born from a lotus flower on Vishnu’s navel which awakens Vishnu. In this case the two standing human figures at the sides could be those of the demons Madhu and Kaitava whom Vishnu kills as the first thing he does on awakening. So this sculpture would signal Vishnu’s awakening. The way the coiling of the snake is represented gives some indication of the culture of the sculpture.

The much eroded nature of the Vishnu sculpture as contrasted with that of the peacocks below, for instance, which seems to suggest the use of some sort of plaster that resembles a rock. Such a plastering could have also been carried out on some of the portions of the sculpture in the front especially those with sharp edges. It is likely (un-refereed opinion) that such a work was carried out only to sharpen pre-existing features rather than impose new features. Examples of such plastering could also include the work on top of the niche in Fig 10 right. A temple niche in front of the temple (left of Fig 16; click on figure to expand) clearly shows sign of plastering on the right of the arch which has fallen off on the left. Similar plastering work is visible on the wall behind the unplastered living lady of Fig 16, right. It is said by the locals that the three “soldiers” on the left are carrying what looks like rifles and so must have been the work during British times. On the other hand it could have been a more recent dressing of an older figure once the plastering skill is taken into account. The plastering work resembles that in Bhuleshwar or Saswad, for example. The absence of such a plastering of Vishnu, suggests that the reclining Vishnu was part of the original structure.

So, the trishundiya temple is turning out to resemble more a Vishnu temple from its external appearance than a traditional ganapathi temple of Mahrashtra. The existence of a Vishnu temple in Somvarpet of Pune was recorded in the Pune Gazetteer of 1881. Local people tell us (reading from a notice outside the temple) that the temple was constructed in 1754 or so. I won't say “hogwash” to this. Instead, I think the temple was “renovated” or reconstructed around that time. I have to go back and confirm all my speculations but then it may spoil my images. I could say, for examples, that the trishundiya ganapathi (whch is seen inside the temple) was installed during some popular socially acceptable times such as Tilak’s ganapathi puja pre-independence movement.

In the meanwhile I certainly think that knowledgeable and sensitive people should take some time out and restore parts of the temple the way it deserves --- and deserve it certainly does. This temple seem to record the passage of time in Pune and must have existed for much longer than what is officially said. It could be from the 10th century when it pre-dates the official history of Pune. The early history of Pune is said to involve settlements on the banks of Mutha river when it started out as Punnaka - an agricultural settlement in the 8th century and is said to derive its name from Punya Nagari or the city of virtuous deeds. It was ruled first by Rashtrakutas and then by Yadavas before the Muslims and the British came into town. But long before that Buddhist caves at nearby Karla, Baja and Bedsa cave existed. Considering the number of rivers and streams flowing in Pune area it is difficult to imagine that truant or tired Buddhist traders would not have sought rest in this area and rested by a stream in wooden or bamboo shelters and built a more permanent adobe in stone to be later occupied and modified by various rulers and their cultures.

This temple could even be from earlier times if we want to examine the large ears of the figures carved on the top left of Fig 7. I have not found convincing examples as yet. In one entry in the internet there is a figure of Jivai mata in the Jivdan forts of the Shayadri range. This region is supposed to begin from the Satvahan era( see ajayglance of Jan 21 2008 in natureglow.blogspot.com)who participated in the Buddhist sculpture, say, at the Karle caves near Pune. The figure of the devi also has large ears similar to those shown in Fig 7. Maybe there was pre-satvahana structure in this spot?!

As a record of the history of the peopling of Pune, the maintenance of this "trishundiya" temple surely requires a little more sympathy from those who matter in Pune. To begin with, surely one can find a way to get rid of paint marks and painted faces on sculptures (Fig 1 right), vegetation on the sculptures (Fig 5) electrical cables and fittings (Fig 5, Fig 9 bottom left), ropes and other strings tied to figures for hanging things (Fig 14) and improper and obstructive locations of benches (Fig 16 right).

Pune Street Scenes, Part II: Tulsibag, Saswad, Lakkundi

It is difficult for any true Puneite not to visit Tulsibag (written differently as Tulsi baug or Tulshi-bagh) and having gone there not to have spent a few minutes relaxing in the ambience of the Ram Mandir. I somehow managed to spend nearly nineteen years in Pune without visiting the Ram Mandir although I have been to Tulsibag and its environs shopping for various indigeneous produces in its herbal medicine shops and around the mandai vegetable market. I wonder why I did not go there. Probably I have an allergy to “Bhagwan” (of the living or imagined or mythological types) Ram (maybe because of Bengali youth) .

Tulsibag is a crowded street (Fig 1; click to expand) typical of the shopping alleys that lead to important places of worship all over the world. Unlike other places, however, this tulsibag lane has almost anything you wanted to buy and will want to buy each time you visit the place. Unless you are like me, you also will not find anything cheaper any where else than what you pay for in Tulsibag. It is busy all the time and in the afternoon sun you may suddenly think that you are surrounded by a bevy of smartly dressed girls --- maybe a typical affliction of old age.


It is also difficult to associate a Ram Mandir with the Marathi manoos and his Shiv Sena inclinations. The Ram Mandir is probably a creation of the Poona Brahmins who were, at the time of construction of the Tulsibag temple, surviving defenders of the hindu religions after the political power of the previous Hindus (shivaji?)had declined. The Poona Brahmins, including the famous Balshastri Jambhekar, gave guidance in religious matters to outsiders and meetings were held at the temple to decide on various religious issues such as the holding of purification rites for those who had strayed to other religions and wanted to be re-admitted to the Hindu fold.

One may enter the Ram Mandir complex from the Tulsibag shopping street side or from the another busy road with heavy traffic which takes you to vishram bag wada. I will write about this later (I hope). On entering from the shopping street side you first encounter a rather dilapidated structure with a crude iron staircase seeming to lead nowhere (not even only for show). There are remnants of what could have been a magnificent wooden structure made out of thick wooden blocks that could have lasted forever. They reminded me of the more-than-2000-year-old wooden structure on top of the Karla caves near Pune and you wonder from where the wood in Karla came and what kind of wood. There does not seem to be local trees of that type remaining in and around Pune. I guess the wood in the Ram mandir is of the kind used by the Deccan Sultanate for their structures although I have not seen any sultanate-type structures in Pune. The temple is not very old (by Indian standards)having been built in 1761; I suppose access to teak and mahogany would have been possible.

The maintenance of the place has not been kind to it. The right-hand side of the wooden structure has broken off (Fig 2 left; click to expand) and has been kept from falling away by a thin wooden strip iron-nailed (!!!; this must be sacrilege because old temple structures did not use nails of any kind) onto the wooden structure. In this particular structure there are one-foot wide wooden planks which have been joined together. I will have to learn more about carpentry to comment on it properly, even though I will continue to make comments simply because it is my wont?

If you happen to look behind you after you enter you will see (Fig 2, right; click on photo to expand) a red-colored building with Hanuman painted (native Waarli style?) on the top right-hand (facing the building) corner and Garuda on the left. The way the window is constructed with its hinges and metal strips indicates > 100 years vintage. There is a daily life being led behind these walls. For example, if you look through the window on the left hand side of Fig 2 (right, click to enlarge the picture) you see probably the red cloth of the altar of a family deity. You also see a blanket- or carpet-like object with floral design inside the room. These floral designs are similar to what you see on the roof of the temple (see later).

If you go to the other side of the temple (Fig 3, a sketch of the view of the temple from the front is given in the inset on the left; click to enlarge the picture), the structural framework is better maintained. One notices the planks of wood used to make the structure. More interestingly there is an intricate “grill work” in the woodwork on top of the arch. At first glance one would think it is a metal grill. On looking closer (click to expand picture) one finds that there is a prominent crack line in the grill that coincides with the point where the joints of the planks in the main structure have been made. So, one could think that the “grill work” carvings were made on the planks after they were fitted together. But there is another crack line below the main crack-line which does not coincide with the plank-joints! So, was the grill-work made separately and then fitted into its slot? And, what super-adhesive kept the "grill work" attached to the main frame so that it would rather crack than detach (if you get what I am getting at)?! If you look closely at the other un-filled slots, there is no evidence at first sight (or even my closer examination) that there is any evidence for the inlaid work to have been chipped away or broken away.


Other than this piece of wood-work there is hardly anything of instant admiration as far as the wooden sculpture inside the temple is concerned. The temple inside has the usual green and orange and brown-coloured pillars and arches as well as some glass lamp jars (not seen here). The hall in front of the sanctuary does not look like much but it is a nice place to sit and meditate and rest --- even if you are careful with your belongings.


The ceiling of this hall and the adjacent slanted roofs hold surprises (for me, at least). There is a mosaic of engraved work which is uniform over long distances. A floral motif has fallen off in the centre (Fig 5, right; click to enlarge) so that the decoration must have had a Lego-set approach. The work is typical of Muslim (deccan sultanate?) or Christian architecture (European artists?) although I wonder whether the Poona Brahmins, so concerned about conversion and re-conversion, would allow meat-eaters into their temples --- unless they felt white is right, in which case the artists may have been Europeans. Similar ceiling designs are found in the cathedrals in Goa (if my memory serves me right). Actually, the temple is known as a Peshwa temple. The Peshwas built Pune including Shaniwar Wada. There are painting of the Shaniwar Wada (in the British Museums, where else?) in which there are Englishmen who are obviously being treated well. It is not typical (in my opinion) of Hindu artists to repeat their art in a mosaic. They have such a vibrant and multifaceted artistic temper (so many gods!) that it is very unlikely they could repeat art over and over again in the same area. I am at present not aware of whether the engraving was made in plaster or wood and what kind of paints was used. The roof on the left had cracks (see right hand corner) and there is sign of collapse at the center.

Before we become too concerned with the rights of Indian ladies in western dresses in pubs and bars that is being highlighted (highlit?) these days in the Indian media, it may not be too much of a moral policing, if some attention was paid to maintaining the work of these artists if not our culture. On the other hand, it is perhaps a blessing, in some way, that no maintenance was attempted as it is very likely that the corporation would have gone about the job thoroughly in the way they only can.


The borders (Fig 6, left; click to enlarge the picture) of the work on the inside of the slanted roof were different from the main work. The work on one border (to the left facing the sanctum sanctorum) has a slight variation of the floral arrangement while that on the right is very different. The one on the right has work that resembles the “grill work” of the structure in front (Fig 3). The engravings on the borders were on wood. For comparison with other pre-Mughal art I have included a panel from the temple at Deogambe near Kittur which has early Hoysala architecture. The floral motifs here at (Deogambe) could be related to the ram-mandir motifs at least for the border of the left roof.

If I am to believe what is said in “The New Cambridge History of India” authored by > 20 writers, 3 of whom have Indian names, there were no temple building traditions available at the time the Ram Mandir was built. Hindu religious architecture in Deccan was effectively brought to an end by Delhi conquests by the end of the seventeenth century with no living tradition to draw from. According to this book, Maratha temples relied on sultanate and Moghul architecture for techniques and decoration from mosques and tombs. There is no dipamala in the ram Mandir complex, which is characteristic of maratha temples associated with Shivaji (my observation).

The idols of the Mandir (made of white marble) are placed on a square sanctuary made from huge rocks. There are no figures carved on these rocks except for a carved grill work which had some resemblance to the motif on the ceilings.

There is a decorated brick and plaster twelve-sided tower which is nearly 150 feet tall and which rests on the square sanctuary (Fig 7, left). It is perhaps the tallest temple tower in Pune. The style of this tower (click to enlarge picture) resembles in my mind to that (Fig 7, right)of a temple in the Gadag-Lakkundi region. A characteristic of the Ram-mandir tower in Tulsibag is the number of golden finials on the tower (fig 7 left; click to expand). In the comparison of the two styles I have marked the finials in the Gadag-Lakkundi towers by a yellow dot (fig 7 right; click to expand).


The ram mandir at Tulsibag is supposed to be similar in style to that in nearby Saswad. This is sometimes interpreted as being the influences of carried-over skills from the 11th and 12th century Yadav traditions that built Saswad. Both these places (Fig 8; click to expand) have large and small towers; I have not yet familiarized my self with the gods that live in the sanctuary beneath these towers. The temple at Saswad has prominent dipamalas which the ram mandir in Tulsibag does not have. The smaller temple in Tulsibag has different geometrical patterns in the niches of the tower (two shown in the inset of Fig 8, left inset; click on figure to expand) while that in Saswad has human figures. This could attest to the absence of Hindu temple skills in Pune at the time the ram mandir was built.


Finally, in the last set of pictures below, I have compared (fig 9, click on figure to expand) the way various niches in the towers are populated by gods and humans in the temples at ram mandir (left), Saswad (center) and at Gadag-Lakkundi (right). Detailed comments on these figures are not possible at this stage (if only for the sake of brevity). It is true that at the times of the Saswad revival of temple building, the figures of local patrons (made from plaster and without stone) with their typical head-gear were introduced into the towers. This aspect continues, for example, in the shape of the two photographs hanging in the common hall in the ram mandir (fig 4, left). The shape of the head gear has undergone little change between these photographs and the figures on the tower. It is clear that there is a continuity of tradition from the Gadag-Lakkundi times (any where between 6th to 10th century AD) through the Saswad times (after 12 th century?) to the ram-mandir times and which continues to the modern times in the towers of new temples being built in and around Pune. This continuity could be discussed in a future blog. The Gadag-Lakkundi-like temples could have strong Buddhist-like influences especially when one considers the peepul-leaf-shaped niches of the minor figures (fig 9 right).

Twentieth January 2009: Mubarak Ho Obama

Twentieth January of any year happens to be my official birthday. It’s just another birthday. I will be 67 years older. The numerals 6 and 7 add up to 13 and would be an unlucky number in some systems. 13 is not specifically listed as an unlucky number in Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, or Marathi systems. So I guess it’s alright. Some may also ask unlucky in what? Good question. In any case we should not wait upon luck. Right?

Twentieth January 2009 should be a special day when one is conscious of some seeming disparities based on colour perhaps. It is the day Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) becomes the first black (non-Christian?), president of USA. Barack is a Hebrew name meaning "lightning" or "farm for grains". This name could have come from the lost or nearly lost Jewish community of Sudan. Jews were black in those days, perhaps. This may not be of much comfort to modern Israelites still desperately seeking a legitimacy, but Barack would still be a Jewish name. Barack could also be short form of Mubarak? Mubarak means blessed.

You may ask “So what?” We and rest of the non-white world have been having black and yellow presidents including some black-“Aryan” presidents in India. We also have a Husnī Mubarak as a president of Egypt serving his promised last term for the last 15 years!

Maybe it would have been really something if we had a more than half “red” president from the native population of the American continent.

How does BHO’s election affect US and thereby the rest of the world --- as the USA-ians would have us believe --- by which we can now safely include the non-white world? There are two parts. The first conerns the color of the skin and governance. The second is a brief examination of BHO's background about which many of us in India are ignorant about.

The colour of the skin.

The colour of the skin should not matter. There is this Out-of-Africa (OoA) model for the evolution of man when an African eve 50,000 - 200,000 years ago was our common ancestor. The last ice age was 12,000 years ago! I don’t know what this meant for the survival of the first OoA humans. They seemed to have managed well since that age. Was she black? Did they have Gods?

Many early Gods in India and elsewhere were black in colour. The early Madonnas were black (see Fig 1; left Madonna of Czestochawa, center Dear Lady of Einsiedeln, Switzerland; right ma Kali dancing on Shiva, who also should have been black). There is also this notion that the word Negro is a natural name for Africans. Black people of original Egyptian community called their Pharaohs “En-ger” or “N-G-R”. This name may have been generalized by the Romans for all black people. Maybe stupid but plausible if you think of the illogical way the Roman numerical system developed. “Niger” is the Latin for black; Negro is the Italian name; Negre is the French name.

Barack Obama Sr’s family members are from the Luo ethnic group. It is a part of a larger group of East African Luo peoples which include people from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and southern Sudan including a black Jewish community perhaps if the Barack name is from Africa. Some of these people must have contributed to the early civilization of Egypt. The history of Egypt it self should be sufficient to show that from the color of Obama’s skin, USA is in as good a hand as any other. Maybe it is a little better in Obama’s hands if it is to be a new start for a new civilization. Amen.

BHO’s Egyptian father’s skin is not that of a typical stereotype of the modern Egyptian. Egypt is a good place to examine effects due to changes in the color of the skin of the rulers. The oldest Egyptians were Ethiopian or Sudanese people who were the builders of the Sphinx and the smaller pyramids (as in Djoser built of stone > 4500 years ago) in the same manner as those now (reportedly) existing in Ethiopia (built around 300 BC for burials) and as the bigger pyramids built later in Egypt. The Ethiopians/Sudanese concentrated on Ethiopia/Sudan after the Arab invasion of the delta of the Nile.

One of the more prominent features in Egyptian culture is the role of the serpent. It may be of interest to see how the serpent figures in other religions. The most potent symbol is the uraeus depicted as a Cobra. When worn on the Pharao’s crown the uraeus is depicted as a fiery cobra that could spit poison. Is this the snake that led to the Adam-and-Eve origin of aadmi (man in Urdu). I will use this to suggest that the symbol remains although the race changes.

The Uraeus seems to first appear (Fig 2; click to expand) with the change between the 11th and 12 the dynasties and the appearance of the Hyksos kings. Mentuhotep III the last-but-one king of the 11th dynasty does not have an uraeus while Amenmhet I, the first king of the twelfth dynasty ruling from 1991-1962 BC has an uraeus. However, an ivory label on the sole of King Den’s (~ 3000 BC) sandal shows clearly an ureaus on the head of a striking wrestler. There might have been a time when uraeus was not used (like now)

Senusret III was (1878-1839 BC) was the fifth monarch of the Twelfth Dynasty. He seemed to have mongoloid features which may not have been a sculptographic error.

It was during the 12th dynasty that the Hyksos (Greek origin; heqa khasewet = foreign ruler in Egyptian) people of Asian origin invaded the eastern Nile rising to power in the seventeenth century with six kings forming the fifteenth dynasty. The Hyksos people respected native religions and introduced the use of horse and chariot. Ahmose I, founder of the eighteenth dynasty, ruled after his father (or grandfather) rebelled against the Hyksos then ruling Lower Egypt. The similarity between the heads of Mentuhotep and Ahmose is remarkable including the bulge of the eyes. The Uraeus snake is clearly visible on the head of Nefertari (1291-1255 BC), the first of King Ramesses II the great and to Amenope I of around 1000 BC and on to Khleopatra around 50 AD.

So, there you have it. Egypt was ruled by people of all colours. Did they get their influences from others?

A Cobra coiling on the head of Shiva (Fig 3 left) is a very common image in India. The name for the Egyptian asp or cobra is Naja haje, naja being closely akin to the Sanskrit naga. The snake is free and not confined when associated with Shiva. I do not remember seeing any image of Shiva with an uraeus snake. Krishna (right of Fig 3, click to expand) has a head-band which could have evolved in its from from the uraeus; The male Marapachi doll (made out of wood) which is used in the Navarathri (nine nights) festival) (fig 3 centre, click to expand) and used to celebrate harvest festival in South India has an Uraeus-like head-band.

Having a particular is not important. Having a particular symbol is important. How does Obama fit into this?

Barack’s Life --- So Far

Bill Clinton is the first white President who is known as a true black President because he looked after the black constituency to bolster his presidency. Barack Obama may be the black president who was compelled to look more after the interests of the establishment to bolster his attempts for a second term. He is already spending more than four times what other presidents spent for their inauguration.

Barack is no poor black kid from the Ghettos. His grandfather was a domestic servant to the British, which we know in India to be a fortunate situation because the Sahib has contacts. His father, herding goats as a young kid, went to the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii on a scholarship like all good third world boys in those days --- remember Ganguly in Namesake?. There Barack’s father (Fig 4) met his middle class white mother, Ann Dunham. Ann’s father fought in Patton’s army, and Ann’s mother, Madelyn Dunham assembled bombs (?) during WW II and later became one of the first female vice presidents of the Bank of Hawaii.

Barack Jr was conceived three months before their marriage. "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind." Barack Jr would say later.

Ann’s parents got themselves a house in Hawaii (when Hawaii was not part of the federation of USA?). Barack Sr left Ann for studies in Harvard which is any third world student’s ambition. Barack Sr was an atheist (usually influenced by Marx) like all third world kids who would not adopt Christianity. This should have spelt problems but Ann liked all religions. There were other problems. Barack Sr. was already married; his first wife had given him consent to marry a second time. Ann did not know this. Ann stayed behind with her parents in Hawaii. Ann and Barack Sr divorced when Jr was two years old.

Barack Jr. got his whitely acceptable charming looks (“awesome charisma”) from Ann Dunham (Fig 4) who had Irish, English, German and Cherokee blood in her. So America now has at least a partly “red” president. Ann then married a rich Indonesian oil executive. They moved to Indonesia when Barack Jr was 6, studied in Indonesian schools in the Indonesian Language, and then left at the age of ten for Hawaii to live with his grandparents. The elderly Dunhams looked after Obama (whom we will call BHO from now on) like one would a prince.

BHO went to what was once Oahu College and is now Punahou school, the “greenest”, largest independent school in America, having an asteroid named in its honour (115801 Punahou). Academic standards were not the only criterion for admission to the school which had a sports program considered to be the best in USA by Sports Illustrated. Between Punahou school and Columbia College of Columbia University, Obama was for two years at more-than-120-year-old liberal arts Occidental College with a rigorous academic program. Columbia College itself is an exclusive college which was started more than 250 years ago as King’s College before independence by the Church of England and with a Royal Charter from King George II of England, the last English Monarch to lead his troops in person in battle. It was during his reign that England expanded its colonial power clashing with France and India. It was also during this reign that the song “God Save the King” was developed --- perhaps because of the king’s direct participation? BHO majored in political Science and graduated with a B. A. (political science) in 1983 from Columbia.

This made Obama make the statement before his political career (he ended the reign of King George the second of USA) began that
“For my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know."
Obama himself let everyone know more about the Dunhams.

He joined the Harvard Law School at the age of 27 and graduated magna laude at the age of 30. He “ … saw a degree in law as a vehicle to facilitate better community organization and activism”. He was the first black man to be elected president (with the help of a swing vote from conservatives) of the Harvard Law Review. This election gave him wide publicity and very important consequences for his ambitions.

Obama received a $125,000 advance from publisher Simon and Shuster in 1992 for his autobiography with which he and his wife traveled to Bali for peace and quiet, could not complete an acceptable draft, returned part of his advance payment, came back to Chicago, signed a new contract with Times Book for $ 40,000 and completed the manuscript of his autobiography, Dreams from my Father, in time (Fig 4) when he was around thirty four.

Among important world leaders who wrote their autobiography at Obama’s young age is Adolf Hitler who wrote Mein Kampf around 36-37. It has been written that the
" … autobiographical details in Mein Kampf are often inaccurate, and the main purpose … appears to be to provide a positive image of Hitler."
Obama positioned himself squarely in the center of a relationship between the heritage of his father and his mother as seen from the cover of his autobiography.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi wrote their autobiographies around 55. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not write one. Harry Truman wrote autobiographical anecdotes between 46 and 84. Kapil Dev brought out his first (of three) autobiography. Diego Maradona at 47.

According to many stylometric analyses by several groups of Ayers’ Fugitive Days (see below) and Obama’s Dreams of My Father there is a strong likelihood that Bill Ayers ghost-wrote or was a “book doctor” for some important section of Obama’s “fulsomely praised” autobiography. This plagiaristic leaning should not surprise ordinary Indians, as their current important people do not have the time that Nehru or Gandhi spent in jail, to write their own books. After all, modern leaders have to master the way they deliver their speech-writers’ speech-scripts, which are now similar to cinema-scripts.

Barack’s Record.

Barack himself would require a lot of wisdom (and luck) to complete his first four years and launch out on the second four years. Obama had his luck when he ran against Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate. Keyes ran late in the election season because the earlier candidate stepped down because of a sex scandal. It could also have seen some Obama manipulation, since the scandal surfaced when media forced the unsealing of Ryan's confidential divorce records.

BHO does not seem to have all the luck to start his office. To some it could seem that Bush has gone about systematically scorching the ground he has left behind. The economy is down as never before. People who made money through collapse of stock market (manipulated or not) and oil prices have all their cash stacked away so they have nothing to fear. The Israelis have got a strong commitment and an anti-people-of-Palestine pact from USA (Condolezza Rice) that would bind BHO.

Is Barack a wise man (color is not important) or simply a smart man (color could be important for playing one’s cards). He has already used up considerable amount of his share of luck. He has not come up with some dedicated work like a Martin Luther King. He does not have his own dream he could proclaim about. In his autobiography he rooted for change first with
“Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do, I'll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.”
The “change” that seems to have got him votes from the white community was the delivery from King George II of USA, not the promise to the black people of his father’s kind. Being a member of a seemingly underprivileged or exploited community always gives avenue for exploitation by members of these communities. Man always looks for the seeming uplifting of people they have downtrodden, although many times with ulterior motives on both sides.

Obama has used various contacts to leverage himself without taking that little element of risk that is beyond what is finally acceptable to the establishment. The information we get about him from the internet are the following:-
Saul David Alinsky (1909-1972). BHO began his career working with “Developing Communities Project” associated with Alinsky, who is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing for acting in common self interest. Alinsky coined the term “Think globally, act locally”. In Alinsky’s final work Rules for Radicals he wrote “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away".
William Ayers (1944-). Obama has a close association with Billl Ayers (son of wealthy Chicago philanthropist Thomas Ayers, CEO and chairman of the largest electricity unit in Illinois), who was, in the 1960s, a leader of a terrorist Group Weatherman, whose ideology included “Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents”. When Ayers bombed Pentagon, he reminisced “The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.". Probably, it was the same thing the 9/11 terrorists were thinking.
In his book Fugitive Days Ayers has written "There's something about a good bomb … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind.” Ayers is proof that a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) terrorist has hope in USA as he is now a respected Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

BHO was hired as a summer associate in a Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin where he met Michelle his future wife. Sidley Austin is associated with Bill Ayers. His father was a good friend of its owner. Bill Ayers’ wife, a member of Weatherman, was working there when Obama joined.

Jeremiah Wright. BHO has been associated with Jeremiah Wright, a pastor of the predominantly black Trinity United Church of Christ which helped to “recontextualize” the turmoil in the black Christian community --- impossible to be both black and Christian --- that followed Martin Luther King’s death. Jeremiah Wright followed the Black Preaching tradition based on the experiences of discrimination of black slaves and traditionally includes jarring hyperbole. Wright spoke of the United States taking land from the Indian tribes by what he labeled as terror, bombing Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, using state terrorism against Palestinians and South Africa. He urged his parishioners' not to go "from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents."
In one of his sermons shortly after 9/11 he used the phrase “… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." BHO began distancing himself from Wright six years later only after 2007 when his candidacy was announced.
Obama balanced himself again between whites and blacks in his A More Perfect Union speech by saying that he would disown the black community if he disowned Wright, “his old uncle”, as he would disown the white community if he disowned his white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. It seems that a large majority of Wright’s sermons is filled with such “radical” (read true?) pronouncements so that Obama’s attraction to Wright must have been because of the politics. Obama and Michelle Robinson were married by Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

BHO is known to kick the ladder he used to climb up (Which Third World Leader doesn’t?). Just as he has dropped Wright he has dropped Howard Dean and Rashidi, who organized the massive internet effort (see my blog Obama! Obama! Obama Mama Mia!”) to get him elected.

So what have we left? If wishes were horses beggars would be kings. If knights became asses Kings would become beggars. Not such a bad thing on hind sight.

Obama said in his A More Perfect Union speech citing Faulkner,
"The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."
Will he bury the past? Does he need to bury the past when color of the skin is not an issue? Will he become a god-like white or will he be black that absorbs all colours and cannot be stained? Que sera sera.

Thought of Food 2: Desi Tabbouleh for Nerds (and +65s)

The demography of the recently upwardly mobile section of highly trained younger generation, aspiring once upon a time to be computer nerds, and now pursuing a mostly clerical software profession far outside their line of training, shows a certain unnecessary bulge in inappropriate parts of their bodies. One of their problems is that, after they return home after a long and tiring day of activity at different levels of sense and sensibility, they have to cook and cook fast. There are plenty of reasons why fast cooking has to be avoided. Ask the terra-madre people. There is also possibly convincing arguments why slow and prolonged cooking should be avoided. I have added this at the end.

In Pune, I find that the growth of the bulge is particularly true for non-Mahrashtrians. One may think that this may be so because of the very healthy lentil (mainly sprouted) and bhakri roti meals that the Maharashtrian families have. It could also be because of the family care and attention that the local Puneites get from their homes. However, I find that Maharshtrians outside Maharashtra are usually as trim as Shivaji may have liked them to be. So I guess that it must be in the Maharashtrian food that the secret of the slim tough body of the Marathi manoos lies. The average Maharshtrian spends little time on his cooking.

With the notion that what is good for the young Marathi (if not Maharashtrian) should also be good for young nerds as well as the plus sixty-fives, I am proposing a recipe for a salad which could solve some problems of the bulge and some problems of cavities in the soul.

I have borrowed some of the ideas from a Kosher Tabbouleh salad made from what they call bulgar and what we call daliya and the common man calls broken wheat. The bulgar is soaked in cold water for a few hours and then mixed with various non-non-healthy and standard ingredients such as tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, garlic, parsley, mint, salt, lemon juice, and olive oil, tossed and served. The dish is easy to make and when taken with bread of the pita variety made a wholesome and simple meal (for Jews) without requiring a flame. It could be stored easily for a few days in the fridge and new ingredients may be added to rustle up different salads in a few minutes on different days. One could contentedly sit with it in a bean bag in front of the television and spend a few half-hours chewing and savouring every ingredient with or without company even in the evenings of a week-day.

Instead of bulgar, I have used a mixture of full wheat (preferably of the organic variety available easily from Navdanya outlets) and ragi (finger millet) as the starting base. I have also made various other substitutes of the desi Indian kind --- one advantage may be that one need not be dressed formally when eating Indian varieties at Indian homes. Half or most of the fun in eating western food is what one gets with an association with western images (mainly virtual). For the +65s, at least, this is not necessary unless one is exceptionally young-minded.

The basic ingredients are
Nachni, or Ragi or Finger Millet and wheat in desired ratio : one cup
Santara or KamlaNeboo (mandarin): one whole fruit
Moong daal : one table spoon
Bengal gram or chana daal: one table spoon
Spring onion: 6-8 stalks
Spring garlic: 4-5 stalks
Spring fenugreek: several
Tomato: five to six
Cucumber: two
Mustard Oil: 1-2 table spoons (in winter)
Lemon: one fruit
Green chillies
Flax seed: half – one table spoon
Coriander seed: 1-2 table spoon
Coriander leaves: A handful

The procedure is as follows:-
i) Whole wheat and ragi are taken in the desired ratio. In this case I took 1:9 wheat is to ragi by volume. Ragi is at first difficult to chew and it may be preferable to increase the relative quantity of wheat. I think more than 1:1 ratio of wheat : ragi would be less than optimal. A cupful of the ragi-wheat mixture is soaked in water overnight, and then allowed to sprout by draining off the water, tying in a wet cloth and allowing the water to drip or strain off by hanging the tied cloth. The time to sprout (as in fig 1 left) depends on the ambient temperature and may take up to two-three days in cold Indian weather conditions.
ii) The recipes for Tabbouleh salad usually require olives and olive oil. These are now commonly available in India and one may use them. Loose-skinned santara orange (Maharashtrian) or kamla neboo (Bengali) (Fig 2b) is my replacement for olives. The moong daal, bengal gram, orange peel (half of the peel in this recipe), cut green chillies (Fig 2 right bottom) and the orange pods are cooked with one-teaspoon of water and some salt to taste (half to one level teaspoon).
iii) Dried coriander seeds (more the merrier in my case and can be used by handfuls if one so cares or dares) were soaked in water overnight.


iv) I find the addition of flax seed (native to India and available as jawas in ordinary shops at one-third the price in health-food shops) adds immensely to the flavour.
v) In the markets of Pune you many times obtain tender methi (fenugreek) green sprouts (see inset of fig 3 right). You also get plentiful of spring onions and spring garlic (fig 3 right). Chop it up to your heart’s content


vi) Tomatoes and cucumber (fig 3 left) are also chopped. Cucumbers should not be peeled (especially if the skin is appropriately bitter enough to make you feel like a saint), but I peeled it in this case.
vii) The various ingredients are mixed together and tossed in a salad bowl after squeezing out the lemon juice and adding a generous tablespoon of the appropriate oil (mustard oil in this case). In the picture (Fig 4) I have added some lettuce leaves for decorative purposes.


Alternatives
i) The sprouted ragi may not be easy on the palate while chewing. One may soak the sprouted ragi in boiling water for some time.
ii) Instead broken moong daal and Bengal gram one may add baby corn and mushrooms
iii) Instead of peeled oranges olives may be added.
iv) Walnuts, raisins, pista, almonds may be added at different stages of boredom.
v) Pickled shrimp is a good addition when done in moderation.
vi) I usually add some home-made wine from aamla (Indian gooseberry), or mango and so on.
vii) Left over salad may be added to daal (loosely called lentil soup) when it makes a wonderful dish after boiling for some time.

The salad is preferably taken with whole-wheat phulkas. Good, well-set Iyer yoghurt from cow’s milk is a very pleasant accompanying dish. Bengalis should not add sugar to the yoghurt for this salad.

Some Food Wisdom (?)
i) The advantages of increasing the content of ragi (or nachni in Maharashtra) is that its nutrients are absorbed easily, it is easily digested by all age groups, and is very eco-friendly because it is grown without irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers. Sprouting ragi increases the bioavailability of its iron to 88%, because of which a paste from powdered sprouted ragi has been used for weaning baby away from mother’s milk.

ii) The rind of the santara fruit contains a oil of neroli which is used in eau de cologne; the juice contains as its major inorganic ingredient the citrate of potash. This orange is a blood purifier and appetiser while the peel is valuable for checking vomiting and preventing worms and also as a carminative (preventing gas, good for +65s). I have used the entire fruit cutting it in manner as shown in Fig 2b. The cellular pulp is indigestible but harmless. Instead of nuts the recipe uses soaked yellow moong daal (split and de-husked mung beans from which bean sprouts are made) and Bengal gram which is a valuable anti-diabetic food and its water extract increases glucose utilization. Green chillies have also been added (fig 2c). It contains Capsaicin which reportedly cause death of cancer cells (at least in rats), reduces amount of insulin required to reduce blood sugar.

iii) There is a difference between dry coriander and roasted coriander when pyrazines are formed as the main flavour. Pyrazine as part of pterin is found in folic acid. Folate is necessary for the production and maintenance of new cells and is useful in periods of infancy and pregnancy as well as in anti-cancer treatment.

iv) Flax seed are thought to be known for more than 5000 years as flax plants are among the oldest fiber crops in the world. Flax seed adds an almond-like flavour due to the presence of aldehydes in the seeds. Flax seed contains omega-3 (double bond at the third carbon atom from the methyl group of the carbon chain) fatty acids as well as lignans which benefit the heart. Flax seeds are also beneficial for diabetics as it is supposed to reduce the blood sugar levels. Flax seeds contain lignin, a phytonutrient (general name for plant compounds which have health-protecting qualities), about one hundred times more than in wheat bran, millet, oats etc. A very interesting information is that raw flax seed (like the product of more than 2500 plant species) contains cyanogenic glucoside and usually also beta-glycosidase. They act together in the presence of a plant predator by breaking down to a sugar and a cyanohydrin that rapidly decomposes to hydrogen cyanide and an aldehyde. A similar mechanism is thought to be operative in anti-cancer protection mechanisms.

v) Fenugreek is a good appetizer, good for diabetes mellitus. It could be true that the healthiest (greenest) looking vegetables in Pune are grown from the waters of the dirtiest sewage. This is the reason raw salads are not commonly taken by the “native” populace. However, exotic salads and non-native vegetables available from fancy food shops catering to the ‘nerds” and +65s have their own share of exotic and carcinogenic pesticides and colouring matter. Given a choice I prefer the good looking local vegetables, once sufficient care is taken to clean them. I (+65) have not had an unusual share of this problem; actually, I rarely have a problem maybe because of the resistance I may have built up. Besides, bacteria are necessary (they call it healthy or good bacteria). Bacteria are being sold under the name of “probiotics”.

Energy economy of Cooked Food

The amount of usable solar energy that reaches the 10% of the unused land mass on earth per year is around 10^24-10^25 Joules. We may make an estimate of the total energy required to cook food for the world’s population of 5 billion assuming that one requires (on an average) the equivalent of boiling one liter of water per individual per day. This amounts to using about 10^17-10^18 Joules per year or roughly 10^14-10^15 watt hours per year. This would mean that that we would be using about a part per million of the solar energy simply for cooking food and about 0.01% of the present total energy requirement of the world. In economonically advantaged families we begin to use use much more energy for our food. It may not be much but every drop unboiled water helps in minimizing energy squandering. Saving on energy on cooked food becomes absolutely necessary and easily achievable since and other living beings do not depend on cooked food. But this is another issue.