Sourav Roy

Registration No: 34399

M A, Semester III School of Arts & Aesthetics

End Term Assignment

Contextualising Nabakalebara vis-à-vis Temple idol consecration rituals

SAA451 Indian Temple Sculpture and Architecture: 350-1350 AD

Dr. Naman Ahuja

word count: 3500

What is ritual action? What is ritual inaction? Even inspired sages are confused about that!

Bhagavad Gītā 4: 161

This lament from Gītā, over time, has become surprisingly more relevant, even though scores of ritual scholars from

diverse academic disciplines have long replaced the inspired sages. When it comes to the ritual actions associated

with temple idol consecration, we are faced with the old forest-or-tree dilemma of pre-modern Indian scholarship:

rarefying it to schematics and metaphysics or getting bogged down by taxonomy and prolixity. The only alternative I

can dare to propose here is considering the concept of threshold and expand it over different sets of binaries as far as

the limited scope here allows us. When we are talking about threshold it is primarily about that between mundane

and supramundane, which the ritual actions purportedly bridge. The binaries crossed over here are both from

material to deity2 and from human to supra-human. And as we will see, this bridge has two-way traffic. That is, the

material is humanised first before it is deified and even after deification is complete, the relationship between the

idol of the deity and the devotees work on intensely human registers of affect. It is a unique meeting of

anthropomorphization and reverse, whatever that might be. Let me give an example from Mādalā Pāñji, the chronicle

of Jagannātha temple in Puri. This is a short excerpt from the personal report of a certain Bābā Brahmacārī, guru of

the then deputy of the Maratha ruler of the region (the source copy of the report dates late 18th century). He was,

apparently, the first chronicler after the temple is officially ‘rediscovered’ in the colonial times. He, along with his

retinue of a hundred menial workers, arrives to find the architecture in great disarray, idols dismembered and the

jungle having claimed its authority over the structure, all of which caused him great pain.

“…I gave orders to my men to take out the pūjā-image, whose hands and nose were broken…. After five days’ work…I had had a mind to

reconstruct the temple with the help of the … Rājā, but I understood that it was quite impossible. Seeing its condition I lost hope that the

temple could be rebuilt in the same way it was standing…Therefore I thought it was better to carry away some of the images…After sending

all these to …(Purī) I left the place with great pain in my heart. Why, I thought, had not the ocean swallowed all these stones?...I could not do

anything further and that gave me great sorrow.” 3

In order to understand this pain and sorrow seeing the state of dismembered and desacralized idols, the only useful

metaphor that can be employed here is the anguish of parents seeing their children suffer due to unavoidable

circumstances, to which they partially bear the guilt by bringing them to life in the first place.

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1. Quoted by Michael Willis in his introduction of ‘The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods’, Cambridge University Press, 2009

2. Introduction by Shingo Einoo, from ‘Material to Deity: Indian Rituals of Consecration’, edited by Shingo Einoo, Jun Takashima, Manohar, 2005 3. Translated by Alice Boner in her Introduction to ‘New Light on the Sun Temple of Konārka’, The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1972

I have begun in this affective register in order to highlight the deeply human aspect of the temple idol consecration

process, which will be brought to a different context in the last part concerning the Nabakalebara ritual of Jagannātha

temple in Puri. This human aspect is often what gets lost in the current biases and structures of scholarship we have

naturalized ourselves into. Michael Willis offers his own contrary approach, which inspires much more possibilities.

“my own effort to inject a measure of dynamism into the static, desk-bound forms of analysis that have so far governed the study of Indian

inscriptions, sculpture, built environment, and landscape. Sanskrit texts have not been spared in this exercise. Detached from Indological

praxis, in which texts are studied in relation to each other and set in textually defined hierarchies and typological sequences, I have tried to

place literary sources “on the ground” in actual places and specific religious, political, and ritual contexts.” 4

It goes without saying that, this ‘human’ bond between the deity object and the devotee has given rise to the most

heinous kind of anti-humanist object fetishisms throughout the history of this religion, against which the Bhakti

phenomenon is often vociferously vocal. But in order to understand this process we must learn to appreciate this

bond that is built over a course of ritual actions which is often extremely long, elaborate and not to forget, expensive.

Returning to our theme of threshold between human and supra-human, the temple itself, as we know, is based on the

human form and both the building and consecration rituals of the temple itself are mirrored in the consecration of the

idol. The theme of threshold in case of the temple space is even more relevant as the temple’s sacredness is not just

the radiating sacredness of the consecrated idol in the sanctum sanctorum, the temple consecration ritual has already

carved out a sacred three dimensional space out of the mundane, as summarised below:

“The plot of land on which a temple will be built is chosen very carefully and examined for inauspicious signs, such as the presence of bones

or certain plants. Next, the spirits that may have inhabited the area are asked to leave, and a diagram is drawn on the ground, consisting of

several compartments (padā), usually 64 or 81. Each compartment is assigned to one protective deity who is “invited” to dwell there. The

diagram is also the place where the spirit of the building (vāstupuruşa) is supposed to dwell, hence the name vāstupuruşamandala….Other

important rituals described in the Sanskrit texts are “laying of the first bricks” (prathameştakanyāsa),” placing the embryo” (the ritual deposit,

garbhanyāsa) and “placing the crowning bricks” (murdheştakanyāsa). During the garbhanyāsa, a specially constructed box filled with symbolic

items is placed in the base of the building. All these rituals focus on “taking possession of the site” and transferring it from being an ordinary

plot of land to being sacred ground. The garbhanyāsa, moreover, ensures the insertion of “life breath” (praņā) into the building. The rituals

also aim to protect the sacred space from all kinds of calamities, such as destruction, fire, or an attack of evil spirits. The consecration deposit,

for example, is placed in the vicinity of the door to the main sanctum, and there are important rituals to be performed during the installation

of the door: the entrance is a” vulnerable” spot that connects and at the same time separates the inner space from the outer world and

should always be well guarded….To cross the border between profane, urban space, and the sacred space of the temple, one has to be in a

condition of ritual purity. 5

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4. Introduction of ‘The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods’, Michael Willis, Cambridge University Press, 2009 5. ‘Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism’, Edited by Jacobsen, Basu, Malinar, Narayanan. Volume II, 2012, Ritual Space Entry, pg. 337

To expand on the threshold concept, here the binary being sacred and profane, it is instructive to consider the

boundaries elastic and editable, where the extremities and key points of it are defined, rather than every element of

it. The boundary is more of a wavering force field, rather than an immovable brick wall. Just like the entire temple is

materially enclosed in the physical acts of placing of the first bricks and the placing of the crowning bricks, the

corresponding ritual actions enclose it into an animated ritual space (by adding life-breath to the two sets of bricks)

which is analogous to “charging” the material idols with “divine powers and animating them”. 6

We would also do well to notice that the anthropomorphization of the temple idol starts from the very stage of

selecting material for it, as per the various Śilpa Śāstra-s. According to Bŗhatsamhitā, the various materials used in the

idolmaking gives rise to various guna-s or efficacies: gold to health, silver to fame, copper to fertility, stone to victory

and prosperity, wood to longevity and clay to might. Various worldly powers are here being invested in the materials

even before they are shaped into idols. Viśnudharmottarpurāna does a varna division of the stones themselves. The

whitish stones being Brahmin, the reddish stones being Kshatriya, the yellowish stones being Vaishya and of course,

the darkest of stones being Shudra. The wood classification is likewise. The Haribhaktivilāsa, in contrast, genders the

material stones while categorizing them, where the male stone would be used for the main idol of the deity, the

female stone for the base of the idol and the neuter stone (napunsakapaşāna) to be used for the structure holding

that base. 7

While the above can be read in the light of the extreme hierarchy-proneness of Brahminical world-view that imposes

itself on even the non-human, I would like to argue that is not necessarily the only light these can be read in, as one

doesn’t have to nullify the other.

The idol consecration ritual action, despite its overwhelming transregional and trans-textual varieties, is decidedly

post-Vedic and is intrinsically connected with the rise of Puranic age pujā rituals, the first epigraphic evidence of which

is ascribed to Kho copper- charter dated Gupta year 177 (CE 496-97) by Michael Willis. 8 Even though they are in many

way at odds with the Vedic rituals, I would like to argue, as per Brian Smith, that it shares the spirit of perpetual

incompleteness with the former, just like the temples and temple idols, as so insightfully expounded by Samuel

Parker in his seminal essay. 9 I will borrow from Brian Smith’s book to elaborate. 10

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6. Pg. 5, 217 of ‘Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India: Text and Archaeology’. Anna A. Ślączka, Brill, 2007 7. ‘Textual Sources of Sacred Images’, class lecture given by Dr. Y S Alone, 2014 8. ‘The Formation of Temple Ritual in the Gupta Period: pujå and pañcamahåyajña’. Michael Willis, in Prajnadhara: Essays on Asian Art History,

Epigraphy and Culture in Honour of Gouriswar Bhattacharya, Volume 1 of 2, ed. Mevissen, Banerjee, Kaveri Books, 2009 9. 'Unfinished Work at Mamallapuram or, What Is an Indian Art Object?', Samuel K. Parker, Artibus Asiae, Vol. 61, No. 1 (2001), pg. 53-75 10. 'Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion', Brian K Smith, Oxford University Press, 1989

According to him, rituals are about reining in the chaos of reality and creating an alternative one. ('ritual was the

workshop in which all reality was forged' –p. 50) as the creation by Prajāpati Himself is imperfect and should

constantly be ritually perfected, yet never succeeding entirely. Since the creation itself is not perfect, the human

beings, as they pass through the phases of their lives need rituals as an "ontological salve" (p. 91) that heal the

fractures in their selves caused by transitions, and it is through the rituals the ascendency of social being is

constructed. But since the rituals have their own existing hierarchy, that during sacrifice, the sacrificer “begins by

rising progressively into the religious sphere, and attains a culminating point, whence he descends again into the

profane” (p. 105). It is a process, that could never be, and never to be completed. This perpetual state of incompletion

is as applicable to the human and the mundane, as it is, to the supra-human and supra-mundane, even when the

threshold is crossed, for the simple reason that all these idol consecration rituals could historically and textually be

traced back to rituals meant for mortal humans (also God-kings) and in some cases, beasts (horses especially) as

amply demonstrated by Yasuhiro Tsuchiyama, while he tries to trace the lineage of one of the key rituals in idol

consecration, abhişeka (sprinkling water and other kinds of unctions on the idol) to its Vedic counterparts. 11

Describing the actual steps of the consecration ritual again finds itself on the horns of a dilemma of either being too

schematic or too elaborately specific according to a text. The four-step process of pranapratişthā (animating the

material to deity) as formulated by Jane Gonda: Samkalpa (solemn declaration of purpose or intention), Homa

(oblations offered into the fire), Utsarga (declaration that the object has been dedicated) and Dakşina (feeding the

Brahmins) are too schematic according to Hiromichi Hikita, 12 so a more comprehensive scheme is assembled by him

from various textual sources. First part is finding the appropriate time and the personnel for the ceremony, including

but not limited to chief priest, astrologer, Brahmins and an architect (sthapati). The second part is adhivaşana or

preliminary rites, which consist of: (a) creating the proper structure which will house the rites, (b) ascertaining the

materials for bath according to the deity and the material of its idol, (c) laying the image on a bed and putting it to

sleep with accompanying sounds of musical instruments and chanting of hymns and (d) fire offering. The third and

final part, which is called the bimba-pratişthā (litearally image establishment) have the following stages: (e) carrying

the image to the sanctum sanctorum, (f) offering consecrated food to the gathering of Brahmins and the previously

assembled religious personnel, (g) depositing a piece of gold in the cavity of the pedestal, (h) giving honorariums to

the chief priest etc. Whether the process extends over a few hours or a few months depend mostly on the largesse of

the patron. Opening the eye of the image (mostly painting the eye ball) is often an important part of the ceremony,

allowing the divine energy to be finally channelled, concentrated and directed, laser like, so that the devotee can

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11. ' Abhişeka in the Vedic and Post-Vedic Rituals’, Yasuhiro Tsuchiyama, from ‘Material to Deity: Indian Rituals of Consecration’, edited by Shingo Einoo, Jun Takashima, Manohar, 2005

12. ' Consecration of Divine Images in a Temple , Hiromichi Hikita, from ‘Material to Deity: Indian Rituals of Consecration’, edited by Shingo

Einoo, Jun Takashima, Manohar, 2005

see and be seen by the deity (darśan), and despite the recent body of vigorous scholarship is not necessarily the key

stage in the entire process. If the above schematic sounds disappointingly and suspiciously similar to those of

household rituals (wedding or daily pujā), it is no coincidence. The constituent parts of rituals can be shortened or

elaborated according to the needs of the situation. For example, to reiterate our human-supra-human threshold

theme, let us take the crucial step of nyasā (placement) which is a deification of the human body of the worshipper in

order to make it communicable to the divine, and then deification of the idol in order to make it habitable for the

temporary residence of the deity (it goes back to the twilight zone between material and deity in its ‘sleep’ phase and

has to be awakened during the next pujā) which could be a part of bimba-pratişthā as it is a part of daily routine

worship or puja. (This would also demonstrate the appropriation of the pre-Vedic aniconic worship rituals for post-

Vedic iconic ones).

“The actual “deification” of the body starts through the placement (nyasā) of various forms and aspects of the deity accompanied by the

syllables of the mūlamantra as well as one letter each of Sanskrit alphabet (known as matŗkās, “mothers”, representing Vāc (“Speech”) as the

mother of all creations)…They are placed internally at the six cakras (nodules, energy centres) of the body…He worships the deity with

abstract, mental offerings and at the end of this “internal worship” (antaryāga) arranges a fire sacrifice (homa) in his heart…With the help of

the sacrificial ladles and other instruments in the form of the mind (manas) he offers up and thereby burns his pride, untruth, lust, desires and

so forth. He now purifies and deifies the image as well, which is going to serve as the seat of the deity shortly. This is also done through the

placement of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet (matŗkās) along with the letters and the words of the basic mantra by touching different

parts of the image with a flower. ” 13

Choosing the Nabakalebara or the renewal of the material for the divine triad (along with Sudarśana, the personified

discuss weapon) in the Jagannātha temple in Puri as an illustration of temple idol consecration ritual is very fruitful

because it contains within it many levels of syncretism as well as potent socio-psycholological devices that deserve

closer scrutiny than the scope of the current work allows.

As is widely known, founded in c. 1135-6 by the Orissan ruler, Anantavarman Codaganga, the Jagannātha temple,

besides being one of the most famous religious monuments in India, is also one of the most studied. Jagannātha has

been familiar to the Europeans since as early as the seventeenth century, thanks to the notorious stories of pilgrims

throwing themselves to death beneath the wheels of festival chariots which gave rise to the word ‘juggernaut’ in the

English dictionary as well as the temple’s easy visibility (Konark Sun Temple’s more so) by seafaring vessels. 14

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13. ‘Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism’, Edited by Jacobsen, Basu, Malinar, Narayanan. Volume II, 2012, Rituals Entry, pg. 331-332 14. Review of O M Starza's 'The Jagannatha Temple in Puri: Its Architecture, Art and Cult'George Michell in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,

Third Series, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jul., 1995), pp. 319-320

The syncretism of the cult (Narasimhite, Shaivite, Tantric, Pre-Aryan wooden post worship among others) have been

persuasively argued. 15

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15. For details of the different aspects of syncretism see the edited volume ‘The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa’ in memoriam Anncharlott Eschmann, Manohar Publications, 1978

Images sourced from: Dressing Lord Jagannātha in Silk: Cloth, Clothes, and Status, Katherine F. Hacker, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 32 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 106-124

The dominant arc of the origin narrative of the triad of icon involves king Indradyumna, an ardent devotee of Viśnu

having a recurrent and cryptic dream of a hidden physical object somewhere in his kingdom, radiating the presence of

the Lord. Therefore he sends emissaries all across, the brahmin Vidyapati being one of them, who on his quest,

receives the hospitality of Savara chieftain Visvavasu, with whose daughter Lalita he falls in love and marries. Noticing

his father-in-law’s daily ritual journey with a handful of flowers before sunrise, notwithstanding fog, storm or cold and

his return after an hour, he gets curious and starts questioning his new bride, who after initial resistance finally tells

him of a secret sacred object in a nearby cave, worshipped ancestrally by the eldest sons of their family. He eventually

convinces Lalita to take him to the cave blindfolded (but he manages to mark the way by surreptitiously strewing a

handful of mustard seeds along the way). On reaching the cave and seeing that object devoid of any palpable form,

made of bluish golden light alone, he realises the mission he started with is now accomplished. Making a ruse of

visiting his parents, he steals the luminous object along with the casket for his king Indradyumna. In order to give the

concentrated light a palpable form, the king gets a divine log borne by the wave which is eventually fashioned into

idols by the divine craftsman Visvakarama himself in disguise and in the process the King has to make peace with the

betrayed Visvavasu. This divine object, (arguably, Śri Kriśnā’s last bodily remains) kept in the navel region of the

wooden icon of Jagannātha, called Brahmapadārtha is what is transferred to the new wooden icons (wood being a

perishable material, especially with daily rituals involving unctions), every twelve or nineteen years (depending on the

mutual adjustment of solar and lunar calendars) investing it with renewed divinity. 16 One important detail which is

generally left out of the narrative arc is the first ‘mistake’ of King Indradyumna of installing a stone image of Viśnu. 17

Even though various sociological and historical reasons have been offered for the choice of wooden images, the

psycho-social aspect18 of it, that is of cyclic renewal (leading to expectation and emotional build-up) and ritual

incompleteness as discussed before, can’t be denied. Moreover the legend of the luminous Brahmapadārtha fetishizes

one aspect of the consecration ceremony at the cost of others. The stubborn secretiveness (no textual documentation

as well as human documentation as it is supposed to happen in complete darkness, while the assigned priest, with his

eyes covered and hands wrapped up in clothes till elbows is supposed to transfer it without gaining any visual or

tactile knowledge of the same.) The rest of the steps in the Nabakalebara ritual are extremely elaborate and has been

summarised by G. C. Tripathi thus18:

“1. To find out the darū (divine wood) with the prescribed characteristics and to bring it to the Temple;

2. The carving of the wooden structure of the images

3. The consecration of the images and the insertion of the ‘life-substance’ (Brahmapadārtha) into them

4. The burial of the old figures, the funeral and the purificatory rites of the Daitas (one sect of priests)

5. Giving the images final shape by means of several coverings of cloth etc. and by applying paints on them”

Page 7 16. ‘Legends of Jagannath’, Manoj Das, Indian Literature, May June 2015 17. Pg. 191 of Chapter X, ‘The Formation of the Jagannātha Triad’ by A. Eschmann, H. Kulke, G. C. Tripathi, pg 169-196 in ‘The Cult of Jagannath and

the Regional Tradition of Orissa’ in memoriam Anncharlott Eschmann, Manohar Publications, 1978 18. Pg. 229, 230 of Chapter XIII, ‘Navakalevara: The Unique Ceremony of the ‘birth’ and the death of the ‘Lord of the World’’, G. C. Tripathi, pg 223-

264 in ‘The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa’ in memoriam Anncharlott Eschmann, Manohar Publications, 1978

To reiterate our previous theme of the threshold between mundane and supra-mundane, the stage five above is a

humanization of the divine or making the supra-mundane, mundane (the idols has already been consecrated):

“the body of a human being consists of seven dhātus…and that all these dhātus should be represented in the statues of Jagannātha…skin is

represented by the cloth stripes, the blood by cloth pieces of red colour…the flesh by the resin of the trees…the marrow by perfumed oil, the

fat by sandal paste and the semen by the starch of rice or wheat flour.” 19

Compare this with the textual as well as ritual proscriptions against anyone seeing or even hearing (the working

sounds of the tools) of making the idols, (tumultuous noise is produced with musical instruments to mask the noise)

transgressing which could lead to loss of the respective senses (blindness or deafness), hell and even death of the

progeny, thus making a perfectly mundane event, supra-mundane. 20

When the personal ardour of priest Kashinath Dasmahapatra21 to handle the Brahmapadārtha (even though he was

not ordained to) during this year’s (2015) Nabakalebara threw a spanner into the works of entire cultural-political-

societal-religious-tourism machinery including the social media scandal of fake Brahmapadārtha images (short-lived

but deeply humiliating to the Odisha Government) (see below) 22 we are back again to the affective human register we

began with. Only this time, it is blind to its responsibility to fellow humans.

Page 8 19. Pg. 262 of Chapter XIII, ‘Navakalevara: The Unique Ceremony of the ‘birth’ and the death of the ‘Lord of the World’’, G. C. Tripathi, pg 223-264

in ‘The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa’ in memoriam Anncharlott Eschmann, Manohar Publications, 1978 20. Pg. 252 of Chapter XIII, ‘Navakalevara: The Unique Ceremony of the ‘birth’ and the death of the ‘Lord of the World’’, G. C. Tripathi, pg 223-264

in ‘The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa’ in memoriam Anncharlott Eschmann, Manohar Publications, 1978 21. http://www.anandabazar.com/national/what-is-my-fault-says-kashinath-das-1.167399, accessed 28/10/15 22. http://odishasuntimes.com/2015-06-30/brahma-pictures-on-social-media-four-years-old.html, accessed 28/10/15

To end with I would like to mention another self-contradictory aspect of this affective register which is equally

emancipatory and tradition-bound. Albertina Nugteren23 mentions a newly built Jagannatha temple in Bhadrak district

of Odisha whose claim to fame are its authentic adherence to the Nabakalebara as practised in Puri as well as letting

all castes and creeds to enter the sanctum sanctorum as not practised in Puri. Even though the temple initiator’s

(Jahnava Nitai Das, born Julian Parker in Los Angeles, formerly a devotee of Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada) imperatives

are partly located in ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness) ideology, his deep love for the deity since

childhood is not so different from Bābā Brahmacārī.

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23. ‘Weaving Nature into Myth: Continuing narratives of Wood, Trees and Forest in the Ritual Fabric around the God Jagannath in Puri’, Albertina Nugteren, JSRNC 4.2 (2010) 159-172