HERITAGE WEEK: 18th to 24th November, 2021
Day-2: Kashi and Sarnath
Part-1: ‘Kashi Karvat Temple’
Living in India and not taking a pilgrimage
to Kashi is often considered an incomplete life. We take birth live our several
dreams and then we go back to universe as one part of it. Kashi symbolises that
spirit of human innate life and its subliminal connections with the universal
cosmos. From the ‘Assi Ghat’ of beginning where saint poets like Kabir, Tulsi, and
many more gave spiritual sermons of life and its many facets. Thereafter, in
the same passage of 86 ghats we come across Harishchandra Ghat and Manikarnika
Ghat where we see the temporality of life, when human life forms take the
transition of karmic cycles of death… the corpses are burnt in pyres with
sacred funerary rituals and solemnly sought blessings from Mother River Ganges so
that the karmic balance may give the passing soul blessings to give solely the righteous
karma henceforth.
In the passage of these life and death and
transition of soul of this sacred city… we have the ‘Kashi-Karvat Temple’,
there are many legends associated to the history of this temple. For its hard
to ascertain the absolute truth. Nor the documents nor the orality can tell us
fully what was there in past, which brought us to the present state of events
and truths. Therefore, to my understanding I will go with the legend of ‘Matru-Rin
Temple’ (Mother’s debt temple). According to folkloric tradition, one of the contingent
‘cavalry soldier’ of Raja Mansingh, was asked by his mother that its her wish
that a temple of ‘lord shiva’ ‘also known as Ratneshwar Mahadev’ to be
constructed besides river Ganges in Kashi. The ‘cavalry soldier’ son took his
mother’s words with serious note and constructed the temple, however, in elated
pride he started saying around, that he gave back his mother’s debt by
constructing the temple. As we know, mothers are the ultimate giver, and no one
can ever pay back their debt to mother’s. This made the temple start to lean,
eventually, soldier repented, and temple came to be known as ‘Kashi Karvat
Temple’; ‘Which means Kashi turning temple’. The temple has a leaning of 9
degrees which is more than the leaning tower of Pisa. During monsoon the temple
remains almost half submerged in the river Ganga.
Definitely, as we visit the heritage city
of Kashi, we experience the solemn essence in this city through this temple.
Part-2: ‘Dhamekh Stupa’
The essential spirit of India is
co-existence of different philosophies together. Therefore, in the oldest city
of Indic philosophy neighbours the Buddhist philosophy and its genesis. As we
intensely delve into grounding spirit of life and death in Kashi, hardly ten kilometres
from there we come across the ‘Dhamma-Chakra Parivartan’ foundation grounds. Almost
2800 years ago, in the land of Sarnath Lord Buddha went and gave his first sermon
of Buddhism. Thereafter, five of his first disciples followed him with his
teachings. In the same land of first sermon, later in 250 B.C. onwards emperor
Ashoka the greatest follower of Buddhism constructed the Dhamma chakra
Parivartan Stupa, which eventually known as ‘Dhameka Stupa’. What is calming
about this place is…its serenity. The peace reverberates in this place, with
message of Buddhism.
Text copyright: Bina Sengar
Images: By Bina Sengar and Wikicommons
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Source
https://kevinstandagephotography.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/ratneshwar-mahadev-kashi-karvat-banaras-varanasi/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhamek_Stupa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratneshwar_Mahadev_temple
