The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2). William Crooke
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Название: The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India (Vol. 1&2)
Автор: William Crooke
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066400101
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Even minor streams have their sanctity and their legends. The course of the Sarju was opened by a Rishi, from which time dates the efficacy of a pilgrimage to Bâgheswar.82 Râja Rantideva was such a pious king and offered up so many cattle in sacrifice, that his blood formed the river Chambal. Anasûyâ, the wife of Atri, was a daughter of the Rishi Daksha. She did penance for ten thousand years, and so was enabled to create the river Mandâkinî, and thus saved the land from famine. Her worship is localized at Ansuyaji in the Bânda District. The sacred portion of the Phalgu is said occasionally to flow with milk, though Dr. Buchanan was not fortunate enough to meet anyone who professed to have witnessed the occurrence.83 The Narmadâ was wooed by the river Son, who proved faithless to her, and was beguiled by the Johilâ, a rival lady stream, who acted the part of the barber’s wife at the wedding. The Narmadâ, enraged at her lover’s perfidy, tore her way through the marble rocks at Jabalpur, and has worn the willow ever since.84 She is now the great rival of Mother Ganges. While in the case of the latter only the Northern (or as it is called the Kâsi or Benares bank) is efficacious for bathing or for the cremation of the dead, the Narmadâ is free from any restriction of the kind. The same is the case with the Son, at least during its course through the District of Mirzapur. By some the sanctity of the Narmadâ is regarded as superior even to that of the Ganges. While according to some authorities it is necessary to bathe in the Ganges in order to obtain forgiveness of sins, the same result is attained by mere contemplation of the Narmadâ. According to the Bhâvishya Purâna the sanctity of the Ganges will cease on the expiration of five thousand years of the Kali Yuga, or the fourth age of the world, which occurred in 1895, and the Narmadâ will take its place. The Ganges priests, however, repudiate this calumny, and it may safely be assumed that Mother Ganges will not abandon her primacy in the religious world of Hinduism without a determined struggle.85
Ill-omened Streams.
But all rivers are not beneficent. Worst of all is the dread Vaitaranî, the river of death, which is localized in Orissa and pours its stream of ordure and blood on the confines of the realm of Yama. Woe to the wretch who in that dread hour lacks the aid of the Brâhman and the holy cow to help him to the other shore. The name of one stream is accursed in the ears of all Hindus, the hateful Karamnâsa, which flows for part of its course through the Mirzapur District. Even to touch it destroys the merit of works of piety, for such is the popular interpretation of its name. No plausible reason for the evil reputation of this particular stream has been suggested except that it may have been in early times the frontier between the invading Aryans and the aborigines, and possibly the scene of a campaign in which the latter were victorious. The Karamâ tree is, however, the totem of the Drâvidian Kharwârs and Mânjhis, who live along its banks, and it is perhaps possible that this may be the real origin of the name, and that its association with good works (karma) was an afterthought.
The legend of this ill-omened stream is associated with that of the wicked king Trisanku, to whom reference has already been made. When the sage Visvamitra collected water from all the sacred streams of the world, it fell burdened with the monarch’s sins into the Karamnâsa, which has remained defiled ever since. By another account, the sinner was hung up between heaven and earth as a punishment for his offences, and from his body drips a baneful moisture which still pollutes the water. Similar legends of the origin of rivers are not wanting in folk-lore. An Austrian story tells that all rivers take their origin from the tears shed by a giant’s wife as she laments his death.86 The same idea of a river springing from a corpse appears in one of the tales of Somadeva and in the twelfth novel of the Gesta Romanorum.87 Nowadays no Hindu with any pretensions to personal purity will drink from this accursed stream, and at its fords many low caste people make their living by conveying on their shoulders their more scrupulous brethren across its waters.
Origin of River-worship.
It is perhaps worth considering the possible origin of this river-worship. Far from being peculiar to Hinduism, it is common to the whole Aryan world. The prayer of the patient Odysseus88 to the river after his sufferings in the deep is heard in almost the same language at every bathing Ghât in Upper India, from the source of Mother Ganges to where she joins the ocean. The river is always flowing, always being replenished by its tributary streams, and hence comes to be regarded as a thing of life, an emblem of eternal existence, a benevolent spirit which washes away the sins of humanity and supplies in a tropical land the chief needs of men. In a thirsty land the mighty stream of the Ganges would naturally arouse feelings of respect and adoration, not so much perhaps to those living on its banks and ever blessed by its kindly influence, as to the travel-worn pilgrim from the sandy steppes of Râjasthân or the waterless valleys of the Central Indian hills. We can hardly doubt that from this point of view Mother Ganges has been a potent factor in the spread of Hinduism. She became the handmaid of the only real civilization of which Hindustân could boast, and from her shrines bands of eager missionaries were ever starting to sow the seeds of the worship of the gods in the lands of the unbeliever.
The two great rivers of Upper India were, again, associated with that land of fable and mystery, the snowy range which was the home of the gods and the refuge of countless saints and mystics, who in its solitudes worked out the enigma of the world for the modern Hindu. They ended in the great ocean, the final home of the ashes of the sainted dead. Even the partially Hinduised Drâvidian tribes of the Vindhyan Plateau bring the bones of their dead relations to mingle with those of the congregation of the faithful, who have found their final rest in its waters since the world was young. The Ganges and the streams which swell its flood thus come to be associated with the deepest beliefs of the race, and it is hard to exaggerate its influence as a bond of union between the nondescript entities which go to make up modern Hinduism.
Again, much of the worship of rivers is connected with the propitiation of the water-snakes, demons and goblins, with which in popular belief many of them are infested. Such were Kâliyâ, the great black serpent of the Jumnâ, which attacked the infant Krishna; the serpent King of Nepâl, Karkotaka, who dwelt in the lake Nâgarâsa when the divine lotus of Adi Buddha floated on its surface.89 At the temple of Triyugi Nârâyana in Garhwâl is a pool said to be full of snakes of a yellow colour which come out at the feast of the Nâgpanchamî to be worshipped. The Gârdevî, or river sprite of Garhwâl, is very malignant, and is the ghost of a person who has met his death by suicide, violence, or accident.90 These malignant СКАЧАТЬ