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Ujjain-Where the Ganga
Would Wash Her Sins
Ujjain has always been an important pilgrimage for
the devotees of Shiva and the river Kshipra is held as sacred as the
Ganga. While eulogizing this river the priests say – if the holy
Ganga, who washes away the sins of everyone were to commit a sin,
where would she go? The Kshipra and Ujjain of course!
“The
town fallen form heaven to bring heaven on earth” wrote Kalidas,
the greatest Indian litterateur, about Ujjain. If heaven be a
magnification of Ujjain, then it must be a very interesting place
indeed. This is the home of Shiva as Mahakal, he who allocates the
existential time of all cosmic manifestation. According to an ancient
hindu calendar; the first meridian of the planet earth passes through
Ujjain, making Ujjain time the universal time, coordinate. The river
Kshipra which passes through Ujjain is held as sacred as the Ganga.
Ujjain is also one of the sites of the Kumbh Mela, the greatest
religious congregation in the world because it received a few drops
of the nectar of immortality which only the gods are privileged to
have. In terms of religious and historical significance, Ujjain is
second to none. It has always been a great pilgrimage. Especially for
devotees of Shiva because Ujjain is one of 12 major power places of
Shiva.
Dawn
in Ujjain doesn’t come with birdsong, but with the drums and
bells of Mahakal. The first prayer at the temple of Mahakal begins at
4 a.m. Known as Bhasma Aarti, this is the most important ritual of
the day where the master of cosmic time is propitiated with ashes
from a cremation ground, ashes being symbolic of the end of a
particular manifestation of existential time. To attend this ritual,
one must first bathe in the river Kshipra and enter the inner sanctum
in only an unstitched garment. The high priest leads the
congregation, consisting mostly of other priests, chanting mantras
from the Shiva Purana amidst frenzied drumming and ringing of bells.
The resultant energy cannot be described easily: the hair stand up,
tears come to your eyes and there is a distinct feeling of levitation
– something like wanting to dance in ecstatic bliss.
Apart
from the temple of Mahakal, the other main focal point of Ujjain is
the river Kshipra. If the holy Ganga who washes away the sins of
every one else, were to commit a sin, where would she go? The river
Kshipra, say the priests in their eulogy to this sacred river. The
river does in fact have a very unusual vibration that one can only
feel but not describe. By an uncanny coincidence, it flows south to
north while all the other rivers of India flow the other way. The
bathing ghats are always abuzz with hundreds of awestruck pilgrims
and animated priests performing many kinds of rituals. Many of the
pilgrims come to perform a necessary last rite for the departed soul
of a near and dear one. They cleanse themselves by shaving off their
hair and bathing in the Kshipra and are then guided by a priest in
the exact rite. Most of the pilgrims however are just collecting the
merits of pilgrimage and washing their sins away. Some perform quaint
personal rituals without any priests. A great many of the local
people use the ghats on a regular basis; to wash clothes, bathe,
promenade or just pass the time of the day. One could easily sit at
the ghats all day, every day and still never get bored. The ghats are
indeed totally self-sufficient; there are plenty of chai shops and
food stalls, plenty of thandai laced with bhang, good places to sit
or rest and so many stores to hear.
A
different sort of a traveller than the average pilgrim immediately
invites attention, many of the local people stop by to talk to you
and the priests shed their pilgrim mannerism to reveal some very
interesting personalities. Everybody delights in engaging the visitor
in semi-philosophical debate and in swapping stories.
In
all the stores that the priests are so fond of narrating to an
indulgent listener, the names of Raja Bharti Hari and Vikramaditya
crop up the most often. Both of them are as highly revered as the
gods. According to an oft repeated story, Raja Bhrati Hari was
indeed, piety personified. No holy man passed by his kingdom without
being duly honored and richly gifted. One day a sadhu gave him an
amarphal, a fruit that makes its eater immortal! The king did not
desire immortality and gave the fruit to his wife, the queen,
thinking that she who was so faithful to him and so beautiful, was
more worthy of immortality. The queen thought that her brother, the
commander in chief of the army deserved the fruit more than any one
else because it was he who was most responsible for the security of
the kingdom. The queen’s brother was in love with a prostitute
and gave the amarphal to her in a fit of drunken generosity. The
prostitute couldn’t bring herself to eat it, unwilling to carry
on her miserable existence as a social outcaste for eternity. She
reckoned that the man who really deserved the amarphal was none other
than the pious Bharti Hari himself. So, she presented herself at the
court and gave it to him. The king was astounded by this queer turn
and thought about the incident a great deal. The incident of the
amarphal set off a chain reaction of thought which eventually led him
to renounce his kingdom and live the life of a mendicant in a cave.
The cave is today on every tourist’s itinerary. There are
several passages in the cave that nobody has dared to explore. Bhrati
Hari is said to have disappeared in one of them, never to be seen
again.
After
Bhrati Hari, Vikramaditya came to the throne and went on to become an
even greater legend Vikramaditya occupies the same place in Hindu
folklore as does Moses in Christian folklore. The glories, and
judicial insight of Vikramaditya form a major part of the repertoire
of every fold singer in the Hindi heartland. In one story, the gods
sent him a case that they wouldn’t dare touch – the case of
the planets for fear of the mayhem that may ensue a disagreeable
judgment. In this case, the planets couldn’t agree on their
exact position in the constellation. So they came to Vikramaditya to
have their place designated. Vikramaditya who was also a great
mathematician, agreed to work out their exact orbital paths so that
they would operate in harmony in accordance to a mathematical law. On
the day of judgement, he drew a scale diagram of the constellation
and placed seats of different metals at different points of the
diagram according to his calculations. He chose different metals for
the different places only to make the difference sharply clear, and
no other reason because the places were to be allotted on a first
come, first serve basis. All the planets accepted their positions in
good grace except Shani (Saturn), who wanted to come last for
dramatic effect, and was therefore allotted the seat made of iron
which is considered to be the least valuable of all metals. He looked
questioningly at Vikramaditya, but Vikramaditya merely threw up his
arms and said “My lord, the judgement has already been delivered
and all the other planets have already accepted their positions and
so must you.” But Shani felt insulted to be allotted a seat made
of so lowly a metal as iron. To avenge the insult, he lopped off the
arms and legsof Vikramaditya and flung him away before finally
accepting the place that was designated to him. The priest who told
me this story reckons that the dismembered body of Vikramaditya fell
in the Kutch region of Gujarat, where they still worship a deity
which has no arms and legs.
In
its long history, Ujjain has changed hands many times and has been
introduced to many other religions and cultures. In recent times, the
Marathas, Muslims and Christians too have tried to make their
presence left but it has steadfastly retained its Hindu essence and
refused to be influenced by them. The Indomitable spirit of Ujjain is
best exemplified by another story, this time of a tree. On the
outskirts of Ujjain is an ancient Banyan tree named Siddhwat. The
tree has always been known to possess an extraordinary spiritual
vibration. Holy men sit in its vicinity to meditate and lay devotees
revere it in the same way as they do the other gods. A ruler once
sought to destroy the tree as a symbol of his authority, inspite of
his subject begging him to spare it. The ruler mocked their
sentiments and said tat if the tree was actually spiritually evolved,
it would grow back inspite of his assault. So he had the tree cut
down and covered the mutilated stump with seven iron plates. The next
morning the tree was seen to have burst through the iron plates and
come back to its original size. The tree is still alive and the
object of redoubled veneration.
There
are many other places in and around Ujjain which are worth the little
trouble they take to visit them. Most notable are the temple of
Bhaironath, the liquor drinking deity; Mangalnath, the place where
the first meridian of the planet passes through; Chintaman Ganesh,
the temple established by Sri Rama of Ramayana fame; Har Siddhi Mata,
the family goddess of king Vikramaditya; and deep in the bazaar,
Gopal Mandir, a Krishna temple. While Mahakal is undoubtedly the
presiding deity of Ujjain, the other gods of the hindu pantheon are
also extremely well represented in the hundreds of other temples all
over town. A popular local saying has it that even if one arrived
with two cart loads of grain and offered only one handful at each
temple, one would still run short. Temples apart, the other
constituents of the township of Ujjain merit far more than a casual
look. “Its houses are like palaces and its palaces and its
palaces like mountains” wrote kalidas, (that observation is
still not very far off the mark). Ujjain is quite simply a
traveller’s dream; a destination, not an excursion. One doesn’t
come here for a day’s trip, but to stay, land savour, slowly.
Ujjain is, in the words of a modern unnamed poet – “The
very home of the golden age; paved with jewels, full of romance, with
dancing girls in the temples and love in everyone’s heart.”
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