The CWG Syndrome in the Bt Brinjal: Part I. Commonwealth Games

There seems to be two important issues right now that could change the way we think the world thinks of us. One of these, of course, is the Common Wealth Games. India’s role in these games is that of a stakeholder. They are allowed by the Common Wealth Games (CWG) company to run the Games commercially. It is like holding a Beauty Competition.

The other is the Bt brinjal problem that I will discuss in Part II and introduce briefly in the last part of this blog.

Olympic Spirit and Professional Games.

There is little of the original Olympic Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (healthy mind in healthy body) spirit left in such games ever since professional athletes were allowed to participate in the games, upholding thereby the true American Spirit. The classic case cited in favour of professionalism is that of Jim Thorpe who finished in the top 10 of 17 field and track events in the decathlon and pentathlon of the 1912 games. He lost both his gold medals because he took a small salary as a baseball player earlier. That is unfair.

Now, the athletes get their due amount of money. The spectacles of their fights make their adrenalin flow to the enjoyment of otherwise challenged spectators.
For the spectators, these Games are like watching cock-fights or bull-fights or gladiators.
Animal rights people should ask for a ban of these games, really.

Why should we worry about the way we run our games? The athletes’ life is now a life of stress anyway because they run to make a living. They no longer compete for fun, as in truly upper-class British traditions.

It is no fun when there are others who take performance enhancing drugs. A country’s stature is measured by the way they use drugs in before the regulators regulate about them. It is not whether or not you use the drugs but how you hide them. The Games are no longer fun for the athletes who are now meant to be mainly a part of the spectacle getting their payment as bit players, mainly.

It is this magnitude of the spectacle that judges a country.
The country and its propaganda machine should insist that the games would be successful.
The success of the spectacle is aimed to enhance the commercial prospects coming from increased trade including the hospitality industry involved in tourism.
The competitors of this country would do their best to propagate stories to the opposite effect. One would not require staging a terrorist attack or explode a bomb.
One could simply bribe television channels to criticize the authorities in the best of democratic traditions but probably as commercial quislings of another country.

It could also be at the instance of another commercially successful Indian sports body?

Of all the organizers, Suresh Kalmadi seems to be the only one who looks convincing when he say that the games will be a success right from the beginning.
Among the TV channels NDTV 24x7 is the only one that is paying more positive attention to the games.

The success of a hostile campaign is now visible as the common cry of a national shame.
The detractors have won their day! They have highlighted all our national characteristics that we assume to be so unharmfully (Mr. Chips would not have approved of this word, I am sure, but do I care?) natural to us who are brought up on our open fields and our private wastes.

The CWG may come and go. We will go on forever adjusting as we trudge/prance along our manipulated ways.

It could happen that we don’t have to be paid to be a professional quisling or mercenary.

Our problem as a nation is our identity crisis. We would like to do things the way other countries do but – and this should be admirable --- we would like to do it our own way. The only problem is we don’t know which one of our many ways is our way or when it is our way. That is a real identity crisis. That becomes a serious problem when we have to act together as a country. Our built in hierarchical culture requires a well-established hierarchy that gives orders that can be obeyed and keep us together (read Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus, first paragraph given below but certainly not the most important part regarding hierarchy). So we get together and obstruct others who try to do it one way.


CWG and Kalmadi Bashing

The above concerns are reflected, for instance, in the way we approach the holding of the CWG which would take place largely mainly through the efforts of Suresh Kalmadi, no question about that.

After the CWG was announced to be held in 2010 we relaxed, probably sitting on each other and working out one’s role and one’s gains and which political party would be in power.

We had a upper class as well as upper caste socialist as sports minister who wanted to spend money on other sporting matters for the poor people (read lower castes) and not “waste” it on upper-class CWG.
He did not motivate himself to do anything for the CWG for the years he was minister.
He also publicly swore that he will take himself out of the country during the games than do anything to help the CWG.

However, once the stability of a particular political party that was to be in power was established, things started moving although without the active patronage of any particular person in power. The minister was not re-elected.

It became Kalmadi’s baby.

Kalmadi should have become the sports minister but he could not. His erstwhile buddy, Sharad Pawar, from the same state ran the more powerful cricket lobby (BCCI), which was a more coherent coalition of members from all political parties.

Pawar (probably through his nephew Ajit) and Kalmadi have been deemed to be at each other’s throats for many years now. It is crucial to the NCP fortunes in Maharashtra that the congress image is dimmed by the attack on Kalmadi.

The failure of the CWG would be a blessing to the BCCI now faced with its Modi problems

If I was Pawar, I would not have liked Kalmadi to get high-profile mileage from a quasi high-profile CWG games. Pawar actually was Pawar (construe it whatever way you want, it only depends on your mind).

A systematic campaign aimed at shattering the cohesion among various games bodies that were part of the Olympic charter (does not include cricket) was successful and set the stage for an impending chaos in the organization of CWG.

Then came another elderly person as sports minister who obviously had no idea about sport and their organization. He added fuel to the confusion by wanting old and experiences people out of games committees of sports bodies which they ran --- almost for ever and ever.

International sport is, of course, not run that way, especially when it is of the commercially successful kind. Blatter and Samaranch have been heading the football and Olympic movement forever. Kalmadi is part of that group. They are meant to go on for ever, catering to each other’s taste (and moolah) in the way they know well.
You can’t throw a kida in their daal if you did not know the recipe yourself!

Where is the hierarchy that ensures a smooth functioning? That is the problem!

After all International Games are more a question of making money for the sports and games, construction, hotel, entertainment drugs and flesh industry than it is for the athletes themselves. They make sure they make the money whether the Games are held or not.

The Indian sports committees spent considerable time fighting with each other and the minister. They dismissed the CWG as Kalmadi’s baby and not theirs. The Indian building lobby, who has a record of doing a shoddy job all over India whether in the private sector, would not allow foreign companies a free hand. They wanted the loot for themselves and started bad publicity. I would not be surprised if TV stations or their screeching anchors (can we please examine their own toilets at home?) actually paid money to a few to show the CWG in a poor light for their scoops.

Is it any surprise that every minute aspect of the CWG games is being scrutinized to find and blow up faults?

Poor Kalmadi! He gets the blame for our collective failure simply because he is deemed to be at the top of the heap. Not Mani Shankar Iyer, not Sheila Dixit, not the construction lobby, not the Prime Minster’s Office, not the Sports Minister not the Prime Minister’s Office itself.

All our roads and buildings and bridges collapse. Why do you think it’s not same shame for CWG?

We are like that only, nah? What to do? But things will be okay, yaar.
You only wait and see!

All our wedding are so full of tension till the marriage.
CWG is also like that only!
After that, it is laddus only! No?


How does CWG Syndrome reflect in the Bt brinjal problem?

There is another lurking and serious problem (see Part II) that could affect our lives in a way that could affect us in a way that could change our very eating style. This is the poor bacteria bacillus thuriengenesis known to us by its initials as Bt. When this bacteria is in a stressed condition in its environment it stores crystals of poisonous proteins or toxins in its spores. It is these proteins that are to be incorporated into our vegetable known to the western world as aubergine or brinjal or eggplant or what is popularly known as begun (pronounced as baingan). The debate in academic and farmer circles now is whether we can grow begun with Bt incorporated within it to prevent it from being infested with insects. Instead, the begun will be infested with insecticide. Will we allow such a change to affect our daily lives under the pressure of a western-trained intelligentsia that imagines it is working for the poor man.

It will affect the way we look at our favorite ennai kathrikkai, or baingan bartha, or begun bhaja, or panthaa bhathey tatka begun pora, or rhengan reveya, or bharlivangi, or bagara baingan. Imagine eating something with a built in creepy crawly that you can’t see.

This is certainly not a question of letting baingans be begones.

The decision on this new form of colonization through food could now be now left in the hands of our “scientists” who happily take pride in being the first to be second to western versions.
It has the potential to be far worse than other forms of colonization that is resulting in the national shame of the CWG.

Ganapati as Vinayak; Ganapati as Maurya

A Preamble

There are disadvantages in getting a formal education that is now fashioned in India mainly by the efforts of missionaries and evangelists (usually Christian/western, when they are fashionable). One loses contacts with one’s roots. These roots, if you are lucky enough, continue to influence your lifestyles. It comes in the shape of the various festivals associated with the worship of various gods of the various religions that allow such festivities.

The Ganapathi festival is one such in Mahrashtra which is celebrated with much enthusiasm and happiness as judged, say, by its commercial benefits. This spirit of the festival cannot be analyzed in terms of who Ganapati is and what he represents. The festival has a mass acceptance and so it has a validity that has to be simply imbibed and enjoyed without ever being influenced subjectively by any formal rules decreed by educational standards that establishes an established class.

So, this blog will not at all attempt (nor has it the competence) to un-establish any aspect of the festival of a god who is a family god (kuladaivat) for less than five percent of the families (mainly Brahmin) but is universally prayed to before starting anything auspicious.

I will be giving various other names such as Ganapati, Ganesha, Ganesa, Ganeśa for the same god simply because, among other things, I don’t think I have the right way to write the name in the roman script.

A Preamble

Ganapati is the village god (gram daivat) of Pune.

One of my first important impressions of Pune was the importance given to Ganapati or Ganesha or Ganesh, the character we loved as children during our Bengali childhood days during Durga Puja. I know I (knowing my mother) liked him because of the story that he would go round his mother when he had to go round the world. I heard about the famous ashtavinayak (eight ganeshsas) scattered around Maharshtra and how it is auspicious to have a darshan of these vinayaks. I imagined the images of the ashtavinayaks to be the kind that we are used to with an actual elephants head and crown and four hand holding the modak and other (usually saivite) paraphaernelia depending on the traditions or the idiosyncracies of the worshipper.

A Mahrashtrian director of the national laboratory, where I worked, claimed to be a huge devotee of ganapati. He would have a very warm and very generous celebration during the Ganesh puja with his entire family playing very gracious hosts. There would be the usual elephant-headed ganesha idol installed for worship in his house. He is the one who literally impressed upon me the way Ganesha was so dear to everyone in Maharashtra. It seemed to be so as almost every middle class family would have loved to have done the same if they could have afforded it or if they had such a large family of friends they could influence.

The second curiosity about the Ganapati festival was the cheering crowd singing and dancing to the refrain of Ganapati bappa Morya (as above or at the end). It took me some time to realize that Morya is not the Marathi equivalent of jai ho or “long live” but was actually the name of a person. Not only that. I found out that this Morya took a nirvikalpa or sanjeevan Samadhi (live burial) from which they leave their body (die, to ordinary mortals) and attain nirvana when they do not return to their ego-consciousness. This is the way good yogis are supposed to achieve their life’s ambitions.

It is only natural now for us to think of Ganesha literally with the head of an elephant. But if you think of the elephant-head only figuratively then it’s a different matter altogether. The first thing is that you lose your childishness. The second is, of course, you have so many things to figure out figuratively.

What this blog is not about.

This blog will not be about the origin of the elephant-headed-ness of Ganesa. Every ganapati or ganesha that is installed now has an elephant head. Early (at least definitely 1000 A D) sculptures and paintings in the rest of India would have such images of Ganesha. It would be earlier by half a millennium, if you are, say, in Indonesia, making you wonder if ganesha did not come from the elephant-loving people in that region, say, Cambodia. This also does not say anything about when Ganapathi as an elephant god was established in the Indian consciousness. In the early days a god would have been worshipped only as stones; the identity of the god given to a stone would depend on the worshipper. The same would probably be applicable to clay or terracotta images which were to be worshipped and later immersed in water. Knowing an Indian mind one can hardly expect a reasonably common image for a particular god, no matter how unique the description of the image is.

The blog will also not deal with the way vinayak has been interpreted to mean a remover of obstacles. Vinayak in this case would be thought to have derived from Sanskrit rules:- from vi and ni ( = nayati) which means to lead or take away, dispel, expel which could be a way to be a “remover of obstacles”. But then, we have no information about the way Ganapathi was referred to in the other languages and their roots. One finds, for example, that Lord Ganesh is known by varied names in various regions. For example, ganesa is known as Pilliyar in Tamil, Mahapini in Burma (Myanmar) Dhotkar in Mongolia, Pradganesh in Cambodia, Kalantak in the Java islands, kvanshitiyik in China and Vinayakasha in Japan where he is also known by other names such as Shōten, Daishokangi-ten, Kangiten, Ganabachi (if you ask a Japanese to say ‘Ganapati’ he would probably say ‘ganabachi’), Binayaka-ten ("binayaka" showing a Bengali connection of the japanese?).

What this blog seems to be about

This blog will be about some thoughts about the ashtavinayak-ology of the region around Pune with emphasis on the importance of the word vinayak and some implication of a possible Buddhist root.

So what is it that we learn from ashtavinayaks?
I asked Lalitha (my better half by far) what vinayak meant in sanskrit (following the scholarly-minded Indian's tradition to find all roots in sanskrit, which is incorrect, of course). She referred me to Apte’s Sanskrit-English dictionary. Under Vinayak it had the following:-
1. A remover of obstacles
2. N. of Ganesa
3. N. of Garuda
4. A Buddhist deified teacher
5. An obstacle impediment
6. A spiritual preceptor

1. A remover of obstacles. Among the six meanings the first is well known and accepted. What one means by obstacles is not clear, especially if vinayak should mean what it does in meaning No 5.

2. Name of Ganesa. So is the second one; using Ganesa in stead of Ganesha is like using Siva instead of Shiva. Siva is said to be of Tamil origin, meaning red in Tamil. The ashtavinayaks are reddish in colour.
However … …
In the Rgveda (where will we be without our Rgveda? more correct about our origins?) Ganapati first appears as an attribute of Brhaspati as a “lord” of a group of gods … Indra is known as another Ganapati in the same sense. " ... in the long and formidable list of as many as eighty-five names of gods and folk deities in the Pãpamocana Sūkta of Atharveda, Ganapati and Ganeśa are conspicuous by their absence …

3. Name of Garuda. In the 2008 online book Buddhism in South India by Dhammaratana Mahathera published by Buddhist Publication Society Kandy, Sri Lanka, it is written that “… because the worship of the Buddha was popular among the masses … (it became necessary) to incorporate him into the Hindu pantheon … Buddha was called Vinayaka and was equated to the elephant-faced god Ganesh. Vinayaka was a name used by the Buddhists for the Buddha. …” By this logic the Vaishnavites could have chosen the name Vinayak for Garuda while the Shaivites chose the same name for Ganesa.
This possibility of Ganesa and Garuda having the same name, vinayak, could solve a lingering puzzle in my mind ever since I visited the Trishundya ganapathi temple in Kasbapet, Pune. In the front of the temple is a figure which at first glance would seem to be an elephant, until you look closely and find that it has no trunk and instead has a horn. So you think, it must be a rhinoceros, wondering what a rhinoceros is doing in Pune. The rhinoceros is togged up like an elephant which is rare for a rhinoceros, even in India. It also did not look too much like the Indian rhinoceros (Fig 1 right top). More importantly, the nose part of the face did not look like that of a rhinoceros at all. I attributed it in my earlier blog to the inexperience of the artist. I thought at that time that the nose looked more like that of a falcon.

Now, after starting this blog, the nose of the rhinoceros looks more like that of Garuda (see inset in grey In Fig 1, left). I might as well add that the nose also resembles the beak of Horus, the Egyptian god with a hawk’s head (other inset of Fig 1) and many forms. It would moreover seem (to a not too prejudiced mind) that the horn of the rhinoceros in Fig 1, left, was inserted later (click to expand). The idea of having composite animal made out of many parts of other non-human animals is not that uncommon. On the railing of a stupa in sanchi from the 2nd century BC is a composite animal of an elephant, a bull and an horse (Fig 1 right bottom). As mentioned in my earlier blogs (Pune Stree Scenes, III and IV or Trishundiya Ganapati) the trishundiya ganapati temple at Kasbapet has definitely both Vaishnavite and Saivite influences (among others).
The word Vinayaki in this dictionary means Garuda’s wife, and nothing else. In this case, Vinayak definitely, if not uniquely, refers to Garuda. On the other hand according to at least one web site there is a sixth century description (which could have indeed flattered da Vinci’s Mona Lisa) of Vinayaki as
Prostrations to the Goddess Vinayaki,/who is an elephant above the neck / and below is a youthful female./ Salutations to Sakti- Ganapati who/ is vermilion, the color of the horizon/ when the sun is about to set, her/ corpulent belly hangs out enticingly / her breasts bend her waist with their/ weight and she sports ten splendid/ arms holding weapons.
(see http://www.cincinnatitemple.com/articles/Ganesh.pdf)
I don’t know whether Garuda is, like Ganesha, also a remover of obstacles. Lalitha was advised by (the equivalent of) a soothsayer we know and trust, to say Jai Garude seven times before starting out on her car journeys to protect herself from accidents.

4. A Buddhist deified teacher. The fourth meaning of vinayak being a Buddhist deified teacher is a tough one to substantiate within the limited knowledge available to this blogger. Here is one attempt.
Among the ashtavinayaks there is one, Shri Girijimataj (Girija = Goddess Parvati; Atamaj means ‘son’.), which is somewhat different from the others.
It is the only one of the ashtavinayaks situated on a hill (Lekhan hills of Lenyadri).
It is the only one of the ashtavinayaks in which it is difficult to identify a ganapathi figure (top right of the ashtavinayaks in Fig 4)..
It is the only one situated in cave which is part of a Buddhist complex of at least seventeen other caves.
The idol is the only one to be carved on a wall.
It is the only one with its face seemingly turned to the left so that only one eye is seen.
These Buddhist caves are associated with the Heenayan sect. The Heenyan sect of Buddhism, is from the Sthaviravad school in which nirvana is achieved when individual identity is removed by deep meditation which could include Samadhi. In the Heenyan sect an individual monk begins his first steps towards achieving the supernatural state of arhant by beginning his travels in a small or lesser (Heen) vehicle (yan) to cross rivers of suffering. The Vinay Pitak in the Sthaviravad school is the first of three (Tipitak) volumes which contains the rules or the disciplines for the conduct of the order.
The first chapter of the interesting book on “Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God” by R L Brown, is by one A. Narain who writes that ‘… the name Ganeśa, is not found at all in the Vedic literature…Ganeśana and Ganeśvara, however, do occur there but they are used for our Śiva … Ganeśvara is used as an epithet of the vinayakas, and it is said that these “ganeśvara-vinayakas” control all the world…’. … Vinayaka could mean a leader or guide (from vi > naya) for regulating, controlling, or implementing order and discipline …
It is only in this sense could I think of vinayak being a Buddhist deified teacher.
As I will suggest below these deified teachers may have been looked upon as obstacles.

5. An obstacle, impediment. It is somewhat surprising to think of a vinayak as an obstacle or impediment accustomed as we are to the happy imaginaries of the elephant god being a remover of obstacles.
As a frst attempt to understand this, one may imagine that a vinayak is one who enforces the Vinay Pitak, which enforces discipline or rules. He is then an obstacle --- ask any schoolboy completing his homework!
From netsay --- which could be as bad as hearsay --- I learn that there could be vinayak (gan) who create obstacles. They are presiding deities of lower level servers or assistants. The king of the ganas is ganapati. The way I understand it (now) is that the vinayaks create obstacles (citing rules, for instance) and one prays to their leader (their ganapathi) to remove the obstacles. I guess, in the modern context, the vinayak could be looked upon as, say, a government servant, such as a bureaucrat, a corporator, or a judge, or a minister. One can now understand from our modern day experiences what it means when the website says “when they (vinayaks) start harassing, people begin to behave as if insane, get horrifying nightmares and constantly harbor fear.”
Vinayak is also thought to be derived from viseshrupen nayaka or one who has all the qualities of a leader.
In Brown’s “Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God”, Narain writes that unlike Ganapati and Ganeśa which convey the sense of individual leadership or lordship “Vinayaka” conveys different and multiple meanings depending upon whether it is ‘… used in singular or plural number….In the Mahabharata too the vinayakas are looked upon as unfriendly, malignant demons like bhutas, raksas and pisacas in numbers more than two…’

I wonder whether the elephant-eared (if not elephant-headed) figures on the upper part of the front of the Trishundiya temple (Fig 2) are vinayaks (or vinayakis, since they seem to be ladies). The elephant-sized ears may have been necessary to accommodate the huge ear decorations.

It is difficult to look at a sculpture and decide who it is. For example, the photographs of the sculptures in Fig 3 are taken from Indian Archeology, A Review, 1983-1984. The sculpture on the left is that of a gana, a sort of vinayak attendant, the one in the middle is Daksha, a creator god who was cursed with the face of a goat by Siva because of a quarrel with siva who did not stand up when Daksha entered the room; the sculpture on the right is said to be Parvati. These sculptures are from the same time eighth to 12th century AD. Thes have the same style despite their different stature. They also have what could very well be a modak, Ganapati's favourite sweet in their left hand. The vinayak attendant at the left of Fig 3 hardly looks like a demon, the way we usually perceive it. It looks like a court jester. Knowing some of our present day jesters, demon may not be a misnomer.
Five elephant-headed figures in Mathura museum (which I have not seen) have been identified as a yaksa “perhaps an offshoot of Kubera iconography” (V. S. Agrawala).
Coomarasamy has noted that even Ganesa could be considered to be an yaksa type because of his big belly and irregular looks.
One of the earliest images that bears a resemblance to Ganesa is a Terracotta Ganesa (50 B C 300 A D, Fig 4 left) found in the Veerapuram district, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh. A sketch of this terracotta figure is taken from Brown’s book (Ganesh: Studies of an Asian God). There are often representations of pot-bellied figures which are identified as Kubera (Fig 4 right, From Indian Archaelogy 1983-1984, Plate 61, p 137).
All the ashtavinayaks are pot-bellied, satisfying at least one vinayak criterion.
Could the ashtavinayaks be a reference to eight of these gan vinayaks, if that is the right word?
In the earliest (Manava gruhyasutra, 2nd century BC) set of domestic rules there are thought to be four Vinayaks:- Shalakankat, KushmanDarajputra, Urimat and Devjayan. One rishi Yadnyavalkya has six Vinayaks, two (Urimat and Devjayan) from the manava gruhyasutra have been left out; two (Shalakankat and KushmanDarajputra) have been split further. These six vinayaks are Mit, Sammit, Shal, Kantak, KushmanDa and Rajputra.
Altogether we will have eight names if we make vinayaks out of all of them. I dont require making a statement that these are not the names of the ashtavinayaks but they are the names of eight (ashta) vinayaks.

6. A Süiritual Perceptor (not necessarily Buddhist, to distinguish it from 4) The last meaning for vinayak in Apte’s dictionary is ‘a spiritual perceptor’. There is no entry for “perceptor” in the Thesaurus.
The computer insists on changing the word ‘perceptor’ to “preceptor” who is a teacher, or a specialized tutor as per netsay.
According to Wikipedia “Perceptor is a renowned Cybertronian scientist. He craves knowledge. His discoveries have helped his allies on many occasions. His specialties lie in metallurgy, electrical engineering, and other sciences closely related to Transformer physiology though his intlligence has made him reliable in many fields.”
Ganesha would have been happy with this description, though I am sure Apte did not mean this kind of technical perceptor.
We will take a preceptor to mean a preceptor.
The above discussions on points 1 to 5 has been aimed to lead up naturally to what we started with. Ganpathi as Moraya.
Among the eight vinayaks the one (top left of the ashtavinayaks in Fig 4, I think) named Moreshwar at Morgaon is considered to be the most important. Moregaon is so named because there used to be peacocks (more, in Marathi, mayur in Hindi) in that place. Moreshwar could mean a god on a peacock. The trishundiya ganapati in Kasbapet sits on a peacock.

Moreshwar could also mean lord of the Mauryas. That would be another link.
People with name More (pronounced in Marathi as Moray) are descendants of a Mourya clan. This Mourya clan has amongst them the proud name of the early 17th century Marathi saint Tukaram, a legend in Mahrashtra.
The region between present-day Karnataka and Mahrashtra and also adjoining Andhra has been historically a centre of epic battles between the Marathas, Hoysala kings, Tipu Sultan, Deccan Sultanates, Shivaji….
It has also been an area where Hindus (it is difficult to say what an Hindu is) Muslims (they know who they are) and Buddhists (who have always been here). The Shaivites and Vaishnavites fought ideological battles here and tried their best to usurp dominating local Buddhist influences (not of Buddha himself perhaps but of the culture of the people that Buddha came from) into their folds.
In this area of Chitradurg there are stone structures where Asoka edicts have been found. These stone structures are known as Morya dinne which means mounds of the Moryas. The Imperial Gazetteer of India of 1908 says “…At the Ankli math, west of Chitaldroog, is a remarkable series of subterranean chambers, containing shrines, lingams, baths, and pedestals, the latter apparently for yogsana. They are unused, and nothing is known of their history. … They may be 300 to 500 years old in their present form, but the caverns must have existed long before."
These caves, known as Pancha Linga caves, are sites for treks among the more "adventurous" Indian midlle class.
see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GLqdmmCN4&feature=related
The Moregaon vinayak of the ashtavinayak could be connected to the “spiritual perceptor" meaning of vinayak.
It is at Morgaon that the most communicative aspect of Gāṇapatyas, who have Ganesa as their central deity, developed in Sivaji’s time among predominantly Brahmin communities in the Marathi-speaking region.
As per netsay, Gāṇapatyas regard Morya Gosavi as their spiritual leader. This is uncontested.
Why they do so is not clear.
I prefer the Wikipedia account of Morya Gosavi which hails him from Bedar district in present-day Karnataka where the Maurya influence was strong. He ran away from home.
Morya Gosavi came to Morgaon and regularly visited the Morgaon temple where the swyambhu vinayak idol of Ganesa is installed.
He came under the influence of a Gosavi teacher, Nayan Bharati, who cured him when he was very ill. His parents changed his name to Morya-Gosavi.
The legend of Morya Gosavi would (perhaps) be continued in another blog, especially in the context of the temple at Chinchwad, the Dev family and a Kasbapet Ganpathi.
Morya Gosavi followed his teacher into sanjeevan Samadhi (living burial), where he attained nirvana.
He must have been a very influential teacher and a “spiritual perceptor".
The cries of “Ganapathi bappa Mourya” could be an acknowledgment by the people of his devotion and efforts to spread Gāṇapatya.

In the final analysis, it is the fact of this acceptance by the people that remains entrenched in the conscious or subconscious minds of his follower when Ganapti bappa Morya is hailed.

Whether it has its historical roots in Buddhist influences from Asoka’s Mauryan kingdom is another matter.

At least now I, if not we, have an insight into why Apte’s dictionary has six different meanings for Vinayak. Ganapati as an obstacle remover is the vinayak of the vinayakas who place obstacles. The spiritual part of the vinayakas are probably of Buddhist origin.

In the meanwhile younger generation girls (here in the video is the Dyan Prabodhini girls school in Sadashivpet) of a future India will continue to dance singing the praises of Ganapati bappa Morya.

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: Part III Kanifnath, Kanoba, and Syncretism

This is the third part of this blog trilogy on the intrinsic Gnosticism of the warkaris in the palkhi procession during the monsoon season. These blogs have little on actual warkari aspects. They instead dwell on a possible evolution of the (Gnostic, a difficult word to define) mindset of these warkaris from the religiosity of their environment.

The more intriguing aspect of this shrine is the presence of seemingly muslim tombs covered with saffron cloth.

This blog has been written mainly to explain (to myself?) some imagined contradictions in giving a muslim identity or not to the shrine. This is a trivial matter for an warkari.

I have no professional (and very little) amateur background on anthropology. These blogs are what they are --- just blogs of a nomad, say, with the independence to identify the deity to worship for the moment. The truth that one seeks is the inclusive peace with one's environment without being intrusive.

The blog will most likely meander through various seemingly disconnected points of view and records more from a personal point of view without requiring a quod erat demonstrandum at the end.

The inputs that I refer to depends mainly on the internet and is mainly based on extracts from published books of the academic kind.

I also do not need to depend on historical records. Historical records are the products of empire building and are most times rendered empirical because of political constraints. Moreover, in a tradition of impermanence (not fickleness) that characterize our early lifestyles based on tropical abundance and fast decay there cannot be a record … only an emerged lifestyle and philosophy that does not really depend on a holy testament or script. The worshipper is truly independent even if socially constrained and contributing all the while to a changing socially viable swarm intelligence.

The numbering of figures continue from the previous blogs in this series. Click on figures to expand.

Kanifnath Shrine


The drive away from the khandoba mandir (see part II) towards Saswad was especially pleasant being through green flatlands with rustic scenes of buffalos grazing (fig 12, left), and distance red-tiled roofs of villages and temples (fig 12 middle). The chaturmukh cone and ridge is visible to the left of the hill slopes of Fig 12 left. On the way to Saswad we decided to take a left turn at a corner where there was a large collection of freshly painted saffron (the present politically correct colour) worship stones on the ground.

The road led to a kanifnath shrine on the top of a hill. I did not know much about Kanifnath before this trip. The only thing we knew about the shrine was that there is a cave containing the Samadhi of a saint. The kanifnath shrine is located on a hill (fig 12 right) which is shaped something like the hill in Fig 12 middle. There are many such hills around. There are also many hill-top shrines and probably many samadhis.

Most of all that I have written below has been obtained from the internet after this trip, although as a Bengali, I should have known much more. What I did learn fits in very well with this Gnostic warkari theme .

The nath movement has a very complex tradition which, I gather, is predominantly generated from the very early bon (see my blog Bon of the Bongs) Buddhist tradition of eastern Bengal. The nath movement is religious by all accounts having elements of Buddhism, Jainism, baul movement (see my blog “Pulling strings for Joy: the ‘baul’ of Madhugiri”) and its vaishnavism, and has some of the external manifestations of Shaivites. The actual nath tradition is thought to have been started around the 12th century by Matsyendranath. They abhor brahminical rituals and they are followers of Adinath, lord of origin (to give it a Tolkienian name).

Adinath is the "big bang theory" of the universe?

The nath jogis probably appeared in written records on Bengal for the first time around the end of the 12th century. It was about this time that sufi-ism of Islamic wonderers also arrived in Bengal. The question is then often asked about who came first the nath or the sufi.

If we consider the life-style of the bauls of Bengal (I will mean the east bengal of the bon buddhists with its shamanistic or tantric traditions when I refer to bengal) to be the precursors of the nath as well as the sufi minstrels there is little doubt (in my intuition) that the bon Buddhists of Tibet came first (the tonsuring of the heads of Bengali Muslims has often been attributed to the inheritance of this custom from Buddhist monasteries of their ancestors). After all, the yoga of the naths, with its emphasis on breathing, follows a Tibetan practice.

A recent (1995) Stockholm thesis entitled The Ocean of Love: Middle Bengali Sufi Literature and the Fakirs of Bengal by David Cashin, comes to the conclusion (with which I must genetically agree, being a bengali) that the main part of the sufi literature with its emphasis on yoga is derived from Nath sources. Attention has been drawn in a review of the book by Carl Solomon ( in The Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1998 ) to the role of the nath yoga manual, Amrtakunda (Pool of Nectar), in providing a historical context to the nath influence of sufi literature. The Sanskrit original of this text has been lost (in keeping with Indian habits of losing important documents that prove a point, be it a scam or a truth). The Persian and Arabic translations of this text survive, we are told. Such translations are thought to be vague about their origin (see The Islamization of Yoga in the "Amrtakunda" Translations by Carl W. Ernst) so that it is difficult to prove a point “scientifically” by depending on some written records.

In der Zwischenzeit, Carl W. Ernst would discuss the sufi-nath origin debate in the context of the third century writing in the Gnostic “Acts of Thomas” which describes Apostle Thomas’ acts during his Evangelical mission before he was killed at the St. Thomas Mount in Madras (Chennai) for converting people to his faith. Ernst would discuss in particular the way an ancient text (Hymn of the Pearls) was treated by Islamic texts and concludes (I think) that there is islamisation of Amrtakunda in sufi texts just as Hymns of Pearls was Islamized.

Indians historically rely on their memory and the spoken word; even the spoken word will be understood only on the way one nods one’s head or the intonation when one speaks, or the bhava of the eyes becomes very crucial in conveying understanding, trust, or emotions. There is no way to "objectivising" the spoken word and so one has no history to write about in any case, This is why we sometimes cannot avoid the temptations to lie and/or not to keep records; this could be especially so when we give everything to the lord’s dependents, forgetting that we also take from the lord’s dependents (sometimes more than we should if we could). For this reason it is difficult for us to claim to be historically first in many things including the patenting of natural products.

The question of who came first the nath or the sufi is irrelevant for the warkari because there are so many more important things to sing and dance aboout.

It is not quite unlikely that the Bengali naths and sufis came to the western region before it reached Persia and Arabia (through the silk route?) . Their Gnosis could have permeated into the local conscious much before the actual sufi or nath texts were written. Remember in matters of Indian history we require only traditionally spoken truths, if we throw away the confining yoke of Christianizing or Islamizing texts.

As the warkaris may say, does it matter for things spiritual?

Be that as it may, the bauls and the sufis and the naths follow the basic practice of love and humanism which is the religion of the common people, the warkaris, without adopting firmly theocratic rituals and symbols. It is this which has contributed to the amicable geographical and cultural milieu throughout the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent. Imperial rulers could not disrupt this environment.

Strangely, the political power of independent democratic republic that India now claims to be is highlighting antagonistic intolerance, instead of highlighting our intrinsic Gnosticism.

The basic gnosis of the warkaris and bauls may perhaps be seen in this video clip of the baul singer krishnendu das http://www.desivideonetwork.com/view/a92g5nmoh/baul-guru-bhakti-yoga-kali-shiva-radha-krishna-baullive-baulmusic/ (with a lovable typically Indian chalta-hai phase-lag between sight and sound). This clip captures some essence (even if it may be staged and hence not spontaneous) because of the architectural style of the place where it is sung which has some resemblance to that of the Kanifnath shrine we visited.

The shrine is seen from far away (Fig 12 right) and the main dome is rather modern looking (Fig 13 left). Kanifnath is thought to have discovered the cave on which the shrine is built. The shrine itself resemble the Vajreshwari devi shrine which is also built on a hill formed from a volcanic eruption (according to Wikipidia).

The location of Vajreshwari shrine on a old volcanic hill would support our conjecture that the chaturmukh of Warwadi is to be associated with a volcanic hill. Since we are free to conjecture in a blog, we also propose that the Kanifnath mandir located on a hill at Pisalwadi, near Saswad (as indicated by Wikimapia) is to be associated with (what seems to be) a volcanic hill on which there are “craters” (Part I, Fig 7, right) that seems to be of the same size as the chaturmukh craters (Part I, Fig 7 left).

Very little is known about the navnaths except that they were thought to be more powerful than the traditional gods. This itself could be good news.

The relationship between the nath movement and the Kanifnath shrine has to be imagined, I suppose. Gorakhnath, under whom the nath movement saw the maximum expansion is thought to have his Samadhi in a Nath mandir near the Vajreshwari mandir. Matsyendranath, who is considered to be a founder of the navnath parampara served Vajereshwari devi.

Inside the Kanifnath mandir there is a hall where ladies are seated watching bare-bodied men crawling in and out of a small hole in a decorated silver-panelled wall (Fig 13 middle). The hole looked, quite contrary to expectations, as if it was 12”x12” which will make it diagonally 18” long. That would not be too small a size for a man to go crawling in (head first) and out (feet first) as they usually do without much problem. It is easier if you go in without your top clothes so that the rule that men should go in bare-bodied is rather sensible. That women are not allowed inside would also be sensible in this case.

The view from the top is rather scenic if you are not looking at recently developed structures (Fig 13 right).

If one goes around the temple there are signs of worship of stones with embedded eyes (Fig 14 left) coloured saffron and further sanctified by a trishul. The flowers used for worship includes the shiuli (paarijaata) flowers; there is a shiuli tree that is also seen at the chaturmukh mandir (PaRT i; Fig 4 right). There is a stone couple (Fig 14 middle) whose identity I now forget but whose features are similar to the one under the “60,000” year olf banyan tree (Part I, Fig 5 left). There is also a tolerance for dogs at the temple (Fig 14 right).

Some of the interior craftsmanship inside the temple is typical of Jain temples (Fig 15 left).

The more interesting aspect of the shrine is not the cave, but the presence of rectangular tombs or tombstones that are characteristic of Christiam or Muslim tombs. The tomb is similar to that of the dargah in Khed Shivapur where the tomb is covered by a green cloth as expected for a Muslim tomb. The tombs here is covered with saffron.

On going back down the steps one sees giant painted frieze/sculpture of a bearded Hanuman with long black hair, to keep up, I guess, with the images of the very primordial sculptures in the complex of the nine learned men, navnath, of which Kanifnath is listed as fourth in the order.

The nath movement introduced yoga in the Indian context having benefited from the Tibetan connection of the bon Buddhist’s association with the early Bengal or vanga (see my blog “Bon of the Bongs” for the way I look at it). These nath yogis are thought to have introduced the concept of Samadhi to the modern world. In Samadhi the spiritual and material bodies are separated. The spiritual body dominates in Samadhi and the material body is left behind so that the sense of karma and duty is not there. The yogi is immersed in Brahma.

So we make another conjecture. The chaturmukhi mandir of Warwadi is claimed to be a Brahma mandir simply because there is a tradition of an ancient Samadhi there of the nath yogi type?

The question of whether it was a sufi dargah or a nath samadhi would not have arisen "60,000" years ago.

In My People Uprooted: A saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal, Tathagata Roy writes “Popular religion in Bengal often displays syncretism, a mixing of both Hindu and Muslim folk beliefs, deities, and practices. Bengal is famous for its wandering religious mendicant folk musicians (e.g., the Bauls, who disdain caste and conventional Hindu/Muslim religious distinctions in their worship and way of life). In addition to formal worship at Hindu temples and Muslim mosques, popular worship involving religious folk music is widespread, especially at Vaishnavite gatherings ( kirtan ) and among Muslim followers of several Sufi orders ( tarika ) present in Bengal. Bengali Muslims are also known for their practice of "pirism," the cultic following of Muslim saints or holy men (called pirs )”.

The so-called pir cult comes from the spoken anecdotal panchali sing-song narratives extolling established deities as well as folk deities without worrying about established religious perspectives of different communities. The panchali texts that are popular include those concerning Muslim Kalu Gazi and Satyapir or the Hindu Satyanarayan thereby indicating the common folks' disregard for religious implications. The symbiotic syncretism of sufi saints and nath yogis has survived within India till now. The Bengali satyapir panchali which spreads harmony and maintains communal feelings among all seems to have now become satyanaryan puja which is observed all over India.

This communal hamony is very fragile now because of the growth of the poer of vote-manipulating democracy and multi-channel TRP-rated television which provides the fodder for tempting junk-ism and screechy animalized jockeys and moderators who appeal to the lowest common denominator.

In Murali Ranganthan’s English translation of Govind Narayanan’s Marathi description “Mumbaiche Varanan” there is an important description of life in Bombay (“Govind Narayan’s Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863”). Part of the description relevant to this blog in the context of khandoba is summarized in what follows in this paragraph, Bombay around 1850 Bombay was full of maths (hermitages) owned by people other than Brahmins. Kanoba’s maths are ordinary rooms or houses in which a bhagat (devotee of Kanoba, who could be Krishna or a “great devotee” of Krishna; we note in passing that Tukaram, a great devotee of Krishna, had a brother named Kanoba) resides.

It has been said in this book that the idol of Kanoba is a combination of the idol of Balakrishna and the panja (impression of hand) of a Mulim pir (much as satyapir). The worship of kanoba is supposed to be strictly unbiased between Muslims and Hindus being based on the principle that Rahim and Ram are the same (this was before BJP). In practice the Muslims did have a tacit superior status according to Govind Narayan.

The Kanifnath shrine at Madhi is also known to Hindus as Shri Kanoba’s shrine

The members of this kanoba cult are said to be followers of a Syed Sadaat, a devotee of Vishnu from paithan, who converted to Islam, some say in the ninth century. This would make the kanoba cult earlier than the moghul or muslim influence in India and could be attributed to non-empire contacts such as baul or their muslim (probably Bengali) sufi mendicants that must have been accompanying the ordinary people, say merchants and sea-farers.

When sites of burial, revered as sacred sites by communities with syncretic/symbiotic sharing of religion, becomes subjects of competition between the communities later with the influence of powerful patronage (usually due to political or commercial aspects of an empire). For instance, There is sacred site shared between Hindus (Kanifnath’s Samadhi, where his body is shed) and Muslims’ (Shah Ramzan Mahi Savar’ dargah where the body is entombed ) in a village called Madhi, in Maharashtra. Around the end of the nineteenth century, the site resembled more a dargah, according to a Bombay Gazeteer report.

Robert Hayden records an instance in (in his book Antagonistic Tolerance: Competitive Sharing of Religious Sites) late twentieth century when the site was raided by members of a political party which named itself after Shivaji and who resisted Muslim influences. All evidence of a Muslim dargah was supposed to have been removed from the site by these raiders of the political kind.

When the bauls and sufis speak of religion and live by the charity of the public as mendicants, they must not offend, like politicians seeking vote. So they transcend religion and their kathas (discourses) may be heard by the ordinary people without fearing the wrath of the god of their structured religion. It is then but natural that the more popular the mendicant the more secular spiritual recognition they get till they become saints in popular parlance. I am sure that our and popular bollywood stars or lyricists or script-writers would have become secular saints by now.

So, when does a Samadhi become a dargah? When the Samadhi fails?

I suppose one may be in Samadhi for a few days instead of forever.

It is probably important to see a real-time Samadhi to believe it. In Romalia Butalia’s book ‘In the presence of Masters’ there is a description of a lady disciple (Yogmatta Shraddha) of a sadhu (Pilot Baba) going into samadhi by descending into a hole using a ladder, being covered by a tarpaulin sheet, then by tin sheets and finally by soil and mud.

She was there for three days and nights during which time “Devotees and disciples came in thousands to pay their homage outside the barricades of the site. Within it, at all times, there were one, two or more of Baba’s close associates who kept vigil. Throughout the day, several people sat just outside, keeping a watch. During the nights, several sadhus kept protective vigil at the Samadhi sthal. “ …”The tarpaulin and tin sheets were removed from overhead so Baba could descend into the pit. A ladder was placed. He descended and stood beside Yogmata Shraddha, who sat in samdhi. He placed his hand over her head. Instantly, she rubbed her eyes exactly as Baba instructs at the end of a meditation. Her hands automatically went to Baba’s feet as she bowed before him. … … The crowds were almost uncontrollable.”

The notion of going into a Samadhi is always intriguing. Long space travel would benefit from such a state. You also wonder what physical process is there that can slow down your biological processes that time stands still for your body and your soul persists to be alive and perceiving and intelligent unless your soul is that part of your being which is a part of swarm intelligence of the entire society.

In The New Accelerator, H. G. Wells , Professor Gibberne who works on the action of drugs on nervous system, discovers a drug that accelerates awareness processes. The effect after taking the drug is described thus '"Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16 feet in a second now. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second. That gives you some idea of the pace of my Accelerator." And he waved his hand round and round, over and under the slowly sinking glass. Finally, he took it by the bottom, pulled it down, and placed it very carefully on the table. "Eh?" he said to me, and laughed. … … An immovable cyclist, head down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched to overtake a galloping char-a-banc that did not stir. I gaped in amazement at this incredible spectacle.'

Instead of an accelerator a man in Samadhi would require taking a decelerator drug when every process would relatively accelerate around him (limited only by the speed of light? Imagine that?!!!) when 60,000 years would be very manageable in the real time of the decelerated state. I suppose if acceleration gives a relativistic increase in mass, heavy deceleration would give a loss of mass and one eventually becomes a spirit?!!!

Being in Samadhi for three days and starting a religious movement for “uncontrollable crowds” is a possibility. We don’t know to what extent Christ’s resurrection after three days of burial was not similar to that of Yogmatta Shraddha. Nor will we know whether the more recent miracle of Shriddhi Sai Baba’s open-air quasi Samadhi was not an yogic spectacle; nor will we know (we do not require knowing in any case) whether the temple priest (mhalsapathi) of the khandoba mandir at shridhi who stayed by Saibaba’s side throughout this three-day Samadhi-like fast is not similar to the role of Pilot Baba. Muslim Saibaba’s final resting place is now treated as a Hindu Samadhi . and not a dargah, reversing the case of Syed Sadaat in the kanoba controversy referred to above.

It could be asked whether there could be a relationship between kanoba and khandoba other than the mere phonetic. The relationship between the Sanskrit word kona (Celtic word cairns) and kanoba is phonetically nearly the same as that between Skanda and khandoba. In this case the all important feature is the corner boundary stone pile, Cairns with which we may be marking a kanoba or khandoba. The rest is merely the structuring of religion.

As we left the warkari country for Pune through the Bopdeo ghat and Kondhwa, we encountered some young revelers who had the carefree attitude of youth who were going out to get into some mischief for the evening. The warkari effect had gone and the young men (Fig 16 left) typical motor-bike riding hep youths who could have become any of the modern skinhead or other gangs if a TV-initiated swarm effect roamed around. They stopped to make fun of me while I photographed a tree (a villager had told me once that tree he had planted in his late father’s plot it grew fast and tall with its three branches shaped like a trisul) which I thought had to be photographed in black and white. The young men had the anticipation of the beer-filled revellers in a train to London, who dared me to sing the song of their football team with them; they were angry that I did not know which team the song was for. It was a little frightening, this football-song-singers who were quite unlike the warkari singers.

Lalitha later informed me that the day (Aug 10 2010) was Gatari Amavasya, a Marathi regional festival that is celebrated on the No-moon-day of the month (Ashad Amavasya) which signals the beginning of the month of Shravan when there are religious restriction on food or drink. Gatari Amavasya is thus the last day of indulgence; one is expected to drink till one drops into a gutter. Some news paper gave numbers of about three million litres of hard liquor being drunk and 2 million chickens and 50, 000 goats being slaughtered on that day. The warkari influence must have been definitely over by that time and a fresh cycle was to start.

There were dreams to be fulfilled including, say, an airport on one’s roof where a plane could land IFig 16, right) or take off (in a modern version of samdhi?).

How long more, do you think, it will take for the gnostic embrace of the warkari to continue to survive in nature's monsoons around Pune?

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: II Khandoba Mandir (Warwadi) and the mystery of a Stone Pillar

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: II Khandoba Mandir (Warwadi) and the mystery of a Stone Pillar

In the first part of this series we were exploring the country side around Pune during the monsoon season when the palkhi procession of warkaris take place. We had wondered off from Khed Shivapur into the hinterlands of Pune going towards Saswad from the NH4 highway. In the first part we discussed stone worship at the Marimmai temple next to the Marimmai ghat and then went off to see a “60,000” year old Brahma Mandir, which the local people thought to be truly that old. We discussed worship of stones and the seeming independence given to a worshipper to identify a deity with the stone. This nature of worship of a stone where the identity of the deity is dependent on the worshipper is, what I think, the very basis of Gnosticism before syncretic growth into establishing the rituals of theocratic religion takes place.

In this blog we will discuss the Khandoba Mandir near the village of Warwadi, where a find a stone pillar. The way a worship stone may evolve into a mandir (temple) caught my attention and I made an interpretation of the way a pile of stones become a stone pillar and the way it may revert to a pile of stone. This is part of a natural process when a seemingly theocratic religious structure may yield, when unattended, to the Gnosticism of the local people.

Khandobai Mandir and the Stone Pillar


The drive back was through a very sparsely populated idyllic grren countryside (Fig 9, the figure numbering continues from Fig 8 in the first part of the blog). There was evidence for considerable work on a road leading to a college being set up on the hills. These colleges would set up the populace for English-wielding information-technology requirement of computer clerks to be followed by billboards and other junk foods that will do away with the warkari life and other benevolent resources. Who are we to say no? We can only be wise after the event, after the horses have bolted the stables, and wait at best for kaliyug to end. Just be patient. It is all ordained on us?

I dare say the basic motivation of the herd or swarm of people has not changed. They still remain warkaris at heart. Its just the pace at which changes are taking place does not give time to assimilate and be at peace like the warkari. Change must occur, even as we record and perceive change; we think it progressive to change and change fast. Yet in some other scientific things where change is a necessity, the benefits of orthodoxy far outweighs the perils of essaying even thought or gedanken experiments … …

“Die Gedanken sind frei” . The laws of increasing entropy demands there be increased incoherence or disorder if change is to be spontaneous … Civilized entropy-consuming warkari behavior can only slow down such changes.

One of the surprises on the road we took to Saswad is the appearance of a stone pillar in front of a stone structure. If you search the wikimapia you will recognize the structure as a khandoba mandir (if you had not already read the writing on top of the structure, that is) of Warwadi, the village nearby.

A pillar associated with a temple is usual in this land and perhaps elsewhere.

The nature and interpretation of the role of the pillar is another matter. This pillar (Fig 10 left) is not very massive and has elegant proportions and looks wonderful by itself in its own background. The pillar is made up of five loosely placed cylindrical rocks. You first wonder how such a loose assembly could be so stable. Then you wonder what the little knob on the top of the pillar could mean. Is the knob symbolizing a head? Is it some kind of a totem?

There are tribals of the Deccan (including Gonds, Kurumbas and Morias) who worship stone or wooden pillars with a rounded projection at the top to represent the human head. The worship of such pillar … the veneration of the wooden and stone pillars --- is evident in the practices of the Marias (or Morias, probably from the same community as the poet Tukaram) who apply turmeric and oil.

In popular tribal folklore these pillars sometimes are thought to pin the spirit of the dead to the place and prevent it from wandering around; instead the pillar helps locally in bringing rain (much like marimmai?) and driving away spirits.

Usually the boundary stone is marked by a heap of stones piled together by passing worshippers (reminiscent of piles of worship stones in Tibet?). The boundary-stone may also represent the totem animal being slain such that its blood is shed and thereby secure the presence of the totem deity at a particular spot, which then becomes tabu. To prevent violation the place is marked by a simple heap of stones, or by a stone pillar. In such cases the stone pillar would sometime be sprinkled with the blood (there is some evidence for dried blood on the pillar at Warwadi, if one looks and/or imagines hard enough).

Or, is the stone pillar a dwaja-stamba (flag staff)? In this case it should be in a line with the deity and it’s vamana (vehicle). The temple is marked by a rectangular wall which show a later attempt to regularize the temple plan to recent standards. The dwaja stamba should be between the vamana and the deity and it should be towards the east (which it is). The dwaja-stamba should also be typically made of metal or covered with a long-lasting metal (gold) foil. This pillar would probably have to do better to be a dwaja stamba.

It could be a victory pillar (kirti stamba).

Or does it serve another purpose such as holding a lamp?.

Does it have anything to do with khandoba?

The most important khandoba mandir is at Jejuri. It is famous for its deepmalas (light towers), there being, it is said, 350 of them along the hill path road to the temple. They are not very elegant looking but they are there. So if the tower was built after the temple was called a Khandoba temple then the pillar could as well be a deepmala although there seems to be only one place where a deep could be kept---on the top. So, the pillar will be a deep sthamba instead of a deep mala.

Maybe, we should start from inside the temple.

Who is khandoba? Khandoba as a god has existed from time immemeorial (depending on the memory), which is quite as it should be for a true god. The deity probably took shape in the mind of the worshipper as a stone was worshipped. In this case there is no point in figuring out the nature of the deity by looking at a stone. The prominent feature that strikes one is the red stone (Fig 10 middle and right) that seemed to have a pair of eyes and was similar in shape to that in the Marimmai temple in Part I, Fig 3, left , except that there was a socket for the eyes. There is, what seems to be, a small bull in front as the vamana which would make the deity Siva.

There does not seem to be a siva lingam.

The only indication of it being a Khandoba temple is the small copper plate (enlarged in Fig 10 middle, inset at right bottom) with the impression of man riding a horse, branding a sword along with his wife. A Ravi Varma press print has a similar scene depicting khandoba, except that khandoba and his wife (Mhalsa?) were slaughtering attackers with caste marks that ran parallel across the forehead, much like shaivites.

Legend has it that Mhalsa was helped by her dog. The temple tower at Jejuri has at least one dog among the Gods. We were allowed to take Bruno right into the heart of the temple at Jejuri and many worshippers would touch Bruno in reverence.

The copper plate does not make the red stone a khandoba figure but it is easier to associated the red stone with Khandoba in the minds of the worshipper. The figure of Khandoba in the Jejuri temple seems to have been elevated from a red stone to a man in red with an exaggerated moustache. In this case it is Siva because siva is red in tamil (so we must believe, since it has been repeated more than three times in the literature?)

There is a small pillar inside the khandoba temple of Warwadi on which a vessel (probably for an oil lamp) is kept and now (Fig 10 right) having some burning incense sticks. The wall had a knotted snake skin (Fig 10 middle, left inset) hanging from a nail. The knot in the snake indicates a deliberate act as it would be difficult for a snake to wiggle out of its skin in a knotted position even if it was a yogi and then hangs its skin on a nail. Some worshipper may have thought that the snake would be necessary for a Siva temple.

There is a rounded stone (fig 10 middle top right inset) of the kind found near the chaturmukh place mentioned above (Part I, Fig 8 left). It was covered with yellow (probably turmeric in oil). The Khandoba temple at Jejuri is always bathed in yellow with turmeric powder. Turmeric is the sole offering for the gods. So the yellow stone in the temple at Warwadi is consistent with a khandoba worshipper,

There are two pairs of feet sculpted on a stone inside our small khandoba temple (Fig 10 right).These feet are obviously not swayambhu. They could be representing the feet of a couple as one pair is larger than the other. The khandoba temple is sometimes the first place where newly married couples go for a blessing. This stone is apparently added later. After the wedding when the wife has entered her husband’s home (gṛiha pravesam), a fire ritual (homam) is performed by the couple seeking the blessings of the fire god, for a long married life. Here the couple is seated to the west side of the agni (sacred fire, in the centre) after which the bride is positioned on the left hand side. The position of the two pairs of feet (Fig 10, right) is consistent with this ceremony that blesses the couple to success in their house-holding life.

There seems to be a mini shivalingam carved by the side of the pair of feet on the stone. Maybe the person who placed the stone also placed the mini nandi (bull) in front.

The most famous khandoba temple is in Jejuri and the structure is thought to have been built around the middle of the eighteenth century, when Shivaji was no more.

The more mogul-friendly Peshawas and Wodeyars (most likely) shared the rule with the deccan sultanates in friendly persuasion. The influence of Islamic architecture is easily seen in the Jejuri temple on the top as well as the main temple. However, there is a strong resemblance to the Bhuleshwar temple (see my two blogs on Bhuleshwar on a hill) on a hill which was built in earlier times (I am told; not to be dimissed as hearsay). This does not mean that khandoba was not previously worshipped at the same spot as red worship stones before the main temple was built and identified by a worshipper as a khandoba temple.

It is also not clear whether the name khandoba evolved from something else. Phonetically it could have emerged from the name, cairns (a celtic word that could have evolved from a Sanskrit word, kona; celtic and Sanskrit have common words, I am told) for a conical pile of stones. From cairns to skanda a name for the tamil precursor to murugan or siva is a small phonetic step. The change from skanda to khandoba is an accepted version.

A possible transformation from a stone to an image is shown in Fig 11. On the left of Fig 11 is a stone I picked up from the river bed at the bhima-bhama sangam where I had immersed my ´late elder brother’s ashes. I picked it up because of its resemblance to ganesha and as an easy example of a swayambhu ganapathi stone. Such a stone with a pair of eyes embedded and covered with vermilion paint could even get to resemble the Kasbapeth ganapathi (Fig 11 middle) which, legend has it, that Sivaji's mother got as swyambhu from boys playing the river near her house.

The further evolution to skanda is shown in Fig 11 rght, from a small temple at the centre of virach talim chowk near present day Ramanbag school. It is easy to imagine that this temple once marked a boundary of Pune gaon near the river. On the right (click to enlarge) the gradual transformation to ganapathi, hanuman or skanda (in black, as non-dravidian images) takes place, with the fixed staring eyes being the common feature. Such staring eyes have been seen in the early pre-Egyptian carvings, for example (see inset on left of Part I, Fig 3).

It is difficult to obtain a coherent or consistent interpretation of stone worship and why they should be in red. Perhaps red colour is seen from farthest, like red traffic signals? Or because red is the colour of blood besides other things. One of my searches in the internet led me to a book A general collection of the best and most interesting voyages and travels in all parts of the world many of which are now first translated into English:….volume 10 by one.James Pinkerton. In Chapter CXLIX Antiquities of the Isle of Elephanta (the author apparently went from Arabia to Bombay and Surat) we find the following (an old print where what looks like 'f' is actually 's'):-

The comments of the author about modern Indians having “almost lost all knowledge of the fine arts” is interesting and revealing. The people who carved the Elephanta caves were different from the later people who piled the stones who were probably least influenced by the striking (to an outsider) nature of the caves and the sculptures. Maybe the local indigenous people (adivasi) felt that a fixed image removed their freedom of worship. May be the place was an original stone worship mound which was interfered with by the “’fine-arts’-refined” visitors. It is like witnessing the transformation to the natural state, much as a highly bred plant or animal reverts to its wild state when left free in nature and has to fend for itself.

So it seems has happened to the stone pillar at our khandoba mandir at village Warwadi. It must have been difficult for the worshippers to commit a particular stone to a particular deity for worship. It is possible that the refinements introduced by making a stone pillar is slowly being done away and the stone pillar is slowly being reverting back to the pile of stones which is accumulating at the bottom much as the well bred flowers reverts to its natural wild state.

One can find more complications. Is there a reason for five stones being used to make the pillar.

There is a pile of five stones at the base of the pillar (Fig 10 left, near Lalitha’s feet). There is evidence for other piles of five stones which have been dismantled or fallen down, all around the pillar. In James Hastings’ “Enclyclopedia of Reigion and Ethics” we find “Among the Bhils, after a birth, the mother smears a spot outside her hut with cowdung marked with lines of turmeric. In the midst of the figure thus made she places five stones, corresponding to the number of days which have elapsed since the birth, and, laying round them pieces of coco-kernel, she sprinkles them with turmeric, millet, red powder, and spirits --- possibly a magical charm to bring good luck to the child…”.

The number five, panch, comes in several ways: The five hooded snake guarding over Buddha, the festivals associated with panchami the fifth lunar day (nag panchami for snake, vasanth panchami for spring), there are five stones in a zen balance, not to mention five fingers on our hands for example. A five-fold point group also sustains growth without repetition (as in Penrose tiles) since repetition in space and time without change, as in a crystal, will be death (I guess).

So the interpretation of five stones piled in the pillar and elsewhere can vary and would depend on the worshipper and the way five is interpreted. (?)

Since finding the five-stone pillar, I have looked around in my memory/experience. in the internet as well around the Pune-Saswad-Jejuri region. I have not found anything like that as yet. But then my experience in this field is limited. I may be totally wrong. But then I will chalk it up to the way the teaching of history of India avoids what has not already been trodden upon.