To Kolhapur

Assuming the sun is masculine, and not feminine, which seems to be how most cultures understand it, there is really only one appropriate way to depict him, when you think about it, and Indians have figured it out.  When they draw the sun they give the him a big, fat mustache.  You may remember that I saw this when I went to Parvati Mandir, but I've now learned that this was not a quirk of that particular temple.  I've seen it many times since then.  It's just the way Indians depict the sun.  As Americans give him a round smiley face, so Indians give him a thick mustache.  The Indian sun looks much more vigorous and more likely to do nasty things like spoil your mayonnaise if you don't respect him.  The American sun just looks kind of putzy in comparison.  To be frank, I think the Indian sun makes our sun look like a puffy eunuch with alopecia, and I consider myself a convert to this method of depicting him.  I don't think anyone would disagree that the sun kicks serious ass and is not to be trifled with.  So why would you personify him as a goofball man-child who looks easy to push around?  It makes no sense.  Indians understand this and have far surpassed us in this respect.  Admit your defeat, America.

               Which one do you feel the need to protect yourself from?

Another area in which Indians have us beat is livestock decoration and adornment.  I discovered this over the weekend on our field trip to Kolhapur.  Kolhapur is a small city about five hours south of Pune.  To get there you have to drive into the mountains and through the Maharashtrian countryside, which is extraordinarily beautiful, especially during the rainy season.  The hills are lush and bright green and look like you could use them as pillows, fog and clouds are blowing in and out of all the passes and hanging over the fields, and the rivers are swollen.  It's all farmland, and there are miles of sugar-cane, corn, banana, vegetables, and even some grapes (India has a small but growing wine industry).  It's much cleaner than the cities, and the air is fresh.  Farmers in this area still use oxen to plough their fields, and so there are oxen everywhere, out in the fields and walking on the sides of the roads.  But the farmers are not nearly uncouth enough to leave their oxen languishing in plain, natural simplicity.  The oxen are painted.  Sometimes they are entirely painted.  In one area we drove through, the oxen were all dyed neon yellow right down to their big ox-toes.  Some had aqua blue horns, some had hot pink or aqua blue stripes or dots on them, and some had flowers or bells on their horns.  Not all of the oxen were painted this elaborately, but I didn't see one working ox the whole weekend that didn't at least have its horns painted.  I'm told that the reason for this is that farmers perform rituals to honor the oxen and thank them for their help in the fields, and I heard from one source that they even give the oxen marriage ceremonies (presumably so that they make more babies), for which the oxen obviously have to get decked out.  Whatever the reason is, I can tell you that I never want to see another ox in its birthday suit again.  It's just uncivilized to leave them in their raw state.  Nor, for that matter, do I ever want to see another plain looking delivery truck, which Indians also decorate and paint elaborately.  Why not hang some bells and CDs on that sucker and paint it with birds like they do here?  I know that Americans probably will never follow India in this respect and I'll just have to get used to it.  But I'm not happy about it.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a picture of any of the oxen, which is really too bad.  It was too hard to snap the shot as we drove by in a car.  The only shot I got was of a mopey little donkey who looked like he had gotten a half-assed hot pink spray-paint job and seemed embarrassed about it.

Livestock aside, the trip was fantastic.  First we stopped at a tiny farming village in the middle of nowhere called Khidrapur, which is home to an 1,100 year old Shiva temple that is still in use.  The temple was solid stone, and full of elaborate carvings and decorations, and it was dark and silent inside.  We were the only tourists there, and we got to explore the temple pretty much by ourselves, except for groups of school children who were running around playing, and some curious villagers who stopped by to see what was going on.  There is a stone inscription in Sanskrit on the side of temple from about 1200 AD recording a proclamation of the king of the Yadava dynasty that the revenue from such and such villages is to be donated to the temple for maintenance and expenses.  We spent the previous week translating a transcript of the inscription, so we knew what it said, but it was still hard to read, since it was in an archaic alphabet and was partially worn away.  The proclamation consists of a small portion towards the end that actually gets to the point, prefaced by 26 lines of effusive, hyperbolic epithets for the king: the great king of the earth, the abode of shelter who performs the protection of all beings, the sun for the blossoming of the lotus that is the Yadava clan, whose enemies are bowed down before him simply from the glory of his mighty valor in battle, etc. etc. for 26 lines . . . this king donates abc and for xyz purpose.  There's an interesting question of what the purpose of this inscription actually was, since it spends so much space describing things other than the actual donation, and especially since most of the villagers probably couldn't understand Sanskrit.  But that's a whole different subject and I don't have a good answer for it.

Before we left Khidrapur we saw another temple in the village from a similar time period.  This one was a Jain temple, also still in use, and there was a class going on there when we showed up.  It was all women, I guess because the men were out in the fields.  We squeezed by into the inner sanctum and looked at the statue, and then left.  Then we drove to Kolhapur, checked into the hotel, and early the next morning went to another temple, this one dedicated to the goddess Mahalakshmee.  This temple was also incredibly old, also still in use, and also completely mind blowing.  It was much bigger than the others and much busier.  It was originally a Jain temple, but was dedicated to the worship of Mahalakshmee by a king about a thousand years ago, in a royal order which is also recorded in a stone inscription that is still there, and which you can just run your fingers over if you want to.  None of the devotees were interested in the inscription.  It's all alone in the corner, ignored.  There is a private section of the temple, directly above where the head of the statue of Mahalakshmee is, that houses a small shrine to Shiva.  The priest unlocked a door for us and took us up there and I saw it for myself.  Because of this small, semi-secret shrine, there is a question about whether the temple is Vaishnava, that is, dedicated to the worship of Vishnu, since Mahalakshmee is a Vaishnava goddess, or actually Shaiva, dedicated to the worship of Shiva, who is placed on top of Mahalakshmee's head and thus superior to her.  It might not seem like much of a difference to us, since most Americans think of "Hinduism" as a monolithic religion, but Shaivism and Vaishnavism are traditionally separate religions, and have even gone to war with each other during periods of Indian history, although relations between Shaivites and Vaishnavites have almost always been congenial in this part of the country.  Now, of course, with the development of Indian nationalism in the colonial and post-colonial era, the concomitant rise of Hindu reformist movements and Hindu right-wing movements, and the conflicts with Muslims pre- and post-partition, the issue of the differences among religions that are all nominally "Hindu" is much more complicated and difficult to untangle, sometimes deliberately so.  But again, that's a whole different subject and I don't know very much about it.  I couldn't get any pictures of the statues inside the temple, since photos aren't allowed.  It was very hot inside, which is oddly disturbing when you are surrounded by stone.

After that we came back to the hotel and I got sick.  Really sick.  Like laid out for the entire rest of the day and night sick.  I'm sure the details would entertain some of you and horrify others, but I won't go into them.  I don't know exactly how I got it, but it was some kind of water borne bacteria, and I just took antibiotics and felt better within 24 hours.  It's the second time I've gotten sick here, and it sucked both times, but India is so incredibly cool, and the adventure of being here is so fun, that there's not even a question of whether it's worth it.  I would gladly get sick again if it was necessary to spend more time here.  Anyway the water borne diseases you get here are uncomfortable for a short time but won't do any real damage.  Other than typhoid, which I'm immunized against, and malaria, which I'm immunized against, there's nothing terribly dangerous that you can get here.  If you eat meat, that's another story, but I don't eat meat, and wouldn't eat it here even if I ate it in the States.

I know it sounds like I have been doing nothing but visiting temples.  Partly it's because technically I study religion, and partly it's sort of just a coincidence.  Temples are definitely not the only part of India that is interesting to me, and they're not even the part that is most interesting to me.  They are just easy to find and easy to visit, and always pretty cool.  But on Sunday, on the way home, we stopped at an ancient fort way up on top of a mountain that is associated with King Chatrapati Shivaji and explored it in the rain, and it was great to see something not explicitly religious.  Like the temples, it was completely awesome.  We stumbled upon a group of musicians entertaining a crowd with Marathi folk-songs celebrating Shivaji's exploits.  The fort has been out of use for hundreds of years, it seemed, and was actually just ruins, but it was impressive.  And there were great views, as all good forts require.  Also, since it's India, there were no restrictions on where you could go or what you could touch, which was great in a way, but also made me ambivalent, since it's helping to rub the monument out for future generations.  But what could I do?  Not my chair not my problem, that's what I say.

Now I'm back and I'm leaving again soon for our "midterm" break.  I'll spend 5 days in Matheran, which is a hill station nearby that is supposedly quiet and clean.  Click here for as many pictures as you could ever want of my weekend.  

Also, the food in Kolhapur was not that spicy.  Don't buy the hype.