Making Faces: Self and Image Creation in a Himalayan Valley

Notes

115 CHAPter 1: introDuCtion 1. In legend and myth, Dashera or Dashami commemorates the victory of Lord Rama over Ravana and of the goddess Durga over the buffalo demon Mahishasura. Royalty has appropriated such allusions to valor and victory for their own purposes for millennia and, since at least the fifteenth century, Mahanavami (lit., the great festival of the Ninth Day) has been one of the primary events on the kingly public ritual calendar. Dashera marks the tenth, or terminal, day of that celebration. In the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh these celebrations commence on the tenth day of the waxing moon, that is, on Dashera or Dashami, and continue for a week. 2. J. Hutchison and J. Ph. Vogel, History of the Punjab Hill States, vol. 2 (Lahore: Superintendent , Government Printing, Punjab, 1933), 415. 3. This is the name that occurs in Sanskrit literature, in the Vishnu Purana and the Ramayana , in the Mahabharata, the Markandeya Purana, and the Brihat Samhita, all from before the sixth century CE. It shows up in other literary works, such as Bana’s Kadambari and in the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang’s (Xuanzang’s) chronicles, both of the seventh century. Hutchison and Vogel, History of the Punjab Hill States, vol. 2, 415–417, and M. Postel, A. Neven, K. Mankodi, Antiquities of Himachal, Project for Indian Cultural Studies, vol. 1 (Bombay: FrancoIndian Pharmaceuticals Pvt. Ltd., 1985), 23–28. 4. The name Kuluta is found on one of the earliest coins available from the region, dated to the first or second century CE. This was first recorded in Sir A. Cunningham, Coins of Ancient India, 67, plate 4, no. 14, quoted in Hutchison and Vogel, History of the Punjab Hill States, vol. 2, 415. 5. Although there is some confusion in the document, especially in its older portion, these errors and discrepancies are neither peculiar to Kullu alone nor fatal to the reliability of the record. Based on corroborative evidence from NOTES 116 Notes to Pages 2–7 Kullu and the neighboring regions of Chamba and Kashmir, it has been argued by several historians that the document that survives is based on an authentic genealogical roll, and should be considered reliable. Hutchison and Vogel, History of the Punjab Hill States, vol. 2, 414–415. 6. Ibid., 424–426. 7. Accounts of Mahanavami celebrations (culminating in Dashera) from the Vijayanagara empire of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries attest to the ritually paradigmatic nature of the festival, showcasing an authoritative pattern linking a center with its disparate allies in relations of reciprocity and subservience. The monarch symbolically received his authority to rule from the presiding deity of the festival and, by sublime extension, apportioned that authority to his vassals in the form of sundry royal emblems. As with kings, so with the tutelary gods who traveled with them in festive processions to the capital: their presence marked their subordination, and they drew from the religious and political charge of the main deity. Nicholas B. Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 42. 8. It is called a ratha-yatra, literally “a journey made by chariot or carriage.” In this region, the words ratha or chariot, and palkhi or palanquin (see glossary) are used interchangeably to refer to the same thing: a conveyance of the gods, carried upon the shoulders of men. 9. Balu Nag has a very special relationship with Raghunathji. His devotees believe him to be an avatara of Shesh Nag, whose coiled body forms the bed of Lord Vishnu. He offers comfort to the lord, a place of rest. Since Raghunathji is an avatara of Lord Vishnu, Balu Nag’s place during the Kullu Dashera is next to him, immediately to his right. Indeed, it is believed that Lord Vishnu and Shesh Nag are often coupled in their earthly avataras, as Rama and Laxmana, for instance, or Krishna and Balarama—brothers in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and in sundry other myths and tales. Shringa Rishi, in contrast, is only the preceptor of Raghunathji’s father, Dasharatha, and therefore lower in the hierarchy of relations. Kinship is the fundamental ontological category that determines both the complexity and the subtlety of such an argument. 10. The importance of these deities stems from their sacral power as much as their economic holdings in the region; sacral power is vested and projected in religious experiences mediated through rituals and totemic objects, specially empowered people, and even the natural world. The...