Pilgrimage Towns
When the dora (the author of this book) and his wife began residence directly on the left bank of the undivided Godavari in 1980, the state of Andhra Pradesh, an area slightly less than the Italian peninsula, had a population of about 53 million. By 2011 the population had ballooned to nearly 85 mil
lion, an increase of 32 million, well over the combined populations of all five Scandinavian countries, and Andhra was adding more than a million per year. Substantial transformations of landscape and culture were quite apparent all the while.
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The search for ahitagni began in the village of Munganda close to the left bank of the Vasistha Godavari.38 No Vedic ritualists were to be found, and teaching of the Vedas had long since expired. Authentic Vedic sacrificers, how ever, were reported to be living in agrahara not far away, although at the time, winding, deteriorating roads and footpaths made the distance seem daunting. Directions northeast to a cluster of villages hugging the Billakurru Canal (west of Nedunuru on Map 2) led to a wide neighborhood that included six ahitagni and several other pandits vigorously teaching Veda.
An agrahara, an entirely Brahman community, is usually an appendage of a village or hamlet, separated, private, yet close enough to obtain necessary supplies and household or field labor from the larger adjoining settlement. Those discussed here are donations of land by wealthy admirers of Vedic tradi
tion who provided plots for house construction and small amounts of rice and coconut acreage for Veda pandits and a few other Brahmans.39 Such gifts of land have a long history. Cynthia Talbot notes a special tradition in medieval Andhra, sapta-santana, “seven offerings,” by which donors could perpetuate their names.40 In addition to having a son, other legacies include provision of a deity image to a temple, constructing a tank for water supply, and donating an agrahara. Agrahara have secluded lanes, what might be called gated com
munities in America. Although invisible, the gateway is clearly understood by the far larger non-Brahman population as a threshold into a zone of privilege. Crop fields are sometimes intruded upon, not residential lanes.
Sriramapuram agrahara, established in 1940 in land grants to respected Veda pandits by a wealthy merchant, Dokka Rama, originally contained a sin gle straight dirt lane of fourteen houses and a panca-ayatana (five-deity) tem ple housing Isvara, Radha-krsna, Surya, Ambika, and Vighnesvara (Ganesa) (see Figure 0.6). Added to the lane over the years were a small school, play ground, post office, and two separate shrines for Subrahmanya and Dattatreya, respectively. Although all Brahman, an agrahara such as Sriramapuram is by no means uniform. Vaidika Brahmans live distinct lives and do not marry or dine with laukika non-Vaidika Brahmans living next door. Within Vaidikas, the families of ahitagni cannot eat food cooked by non-ahitagni wives.
Kamesvari agrahara, more remote from any main road, has only a few houses on a trio of adjoining short lanes. At the height of Vedic activity in Konasima, four ahitagni, sacrificers who maintain three sacred fires in their homes, and several other Veda pandits who taught Vedas to their own sons and often to the sons of others, lived in these two agrahara less than three miles apart on opposite sides of the Amalapuram canal. A mile and a half west of Sriramapuram is the village of Vyaghresvaram, at one time agrahara-like
The Godavari Delta 25
in size, and the locus of three other ahitagni, creating a circle of seven within walking distance of one another.
Another Vedic community that blurs the distinction between agrahara and village is Iragavaram, West Godavari District, where a strong presence of Veda pandits in a Brahman hamlet maintains a multigenerational heritage. Iragavaram is across the Godavari River from Konasima in what became West Godavari District after the division of Godavari District into two parts.
Kakinada town, some twenty-five miles northeast of the Sriramapuram Vyaghresvaram-Nedunuru cluster but only fifteen miles north of the Gautami Godavari, is a seaport on the Bay of Bengal. The next locus for this narra tive, it is home to a single ahitagni, Bhamidipati Mitranarayana. Formerly known as Cocanada, the town is the seat of government for East Godavari District. On the shore of the Bay of Bengal it is the largest seaport between Vishakhapatnam and Machilipatnam. Strong canals from all directions have provided fresh water for a century and a half. Despite small industries and ship traffic there are still beautiful stretches of sand beaches close to town.
Nomenclature for the region is sometimes confusing although not as dras tic as the change in name from Madras to Chennai. As Cocanada became Kakinada and Machilipatnam became the modern name for Masulipatam, so did Daksarama evolve into Draksarama. Vijayawada is still frequently referred to as Bezwada, its medieval name.
Many other towns come into the conversations of the pandits, their wives, and children, particularly the many pilgrimage goals (tirtha) in the sacred geography of coastal Andhra. The medieval period produced a num ber of Hindu temples that achieved fame through their mahatmya, Sanskrit or Telugu depictions of their foundation mythologies and subsequent histo ries. Undoubtedly the primary target today is the Tirupati Vaisnava temple complex of the Lord of the Seven Hills, Venkatesvara, patron deity of Andhra. Until recently the temple took pride for many decades in its reputation as the wealthiest in India. In the town in the valley lives Venkatesvara’s sister, the feared goddess Gangamma.41
While in this southernmost tip of Andhra many pilgrims broaden sectar ian devotion by having darsana of the linga in the Saiva temple at Kalahasti, only twenty-two miles from Tirupati. The temple dates from the Pallava dynasty, rebuilt in the eleventh century by a Cola king. Kalahasti owns one of the five elemental linga of Saivism, the panca-bhuta linga, this one of wind, Vayu, the name of a Vedic god with Indo-Iranian roots. It is also the site where Kanappa, a devotee famous in Tamil Saiva hagiography, offered his eyes to restore those of a bleeding linga. Kalahasti boasts of being the southern Kasi (Varanasi, Benares).26 vedic voices
In addition to Draksarama, described earlier, three more of the sacred arama are in the delta. One is Bhimavaram (with another Bhima temple) and a second is Kurma arama, Turtle Grove, in a village better known as Kotipalli frequented by the Vedic rsi Kasyapa. Siva as Lord of soma, the sacred Vedic plant, resides in his temple there. The third is Palakol (Palakollu), also known as Ksiraratna, the Milk Grove, with a linga temple now known via sectarian blending as Ksira Rama-lingesvara.
All of these towns with medieval temples attract great crowds of pilgrims, particularly at Maha-Sivaratri, the “great night of Siva” when everyone remains awake in devotion. Fierce gods—Virabhadra, Rudra, Bhima, Bhairava, Narasimha—as well as Bhadrakali and other ferocious goddesses of every stripe seem to dominate the landscape from their thousand-year-old palaces of stone.
Other coastal Andhra pilgrimage goals within reach of bus, train, or boat include two temple towns that employ a pair of prominent Veda pandit broth ers featured in this book. One will most likely become an ahtagni in 2016. One town is Simhacalam west of Visakhapatnam with its eleventh-century hill temple enclosing a Siva linga for an entire year but for the one day in May when sandal paste somehow melts away to reveal an image of the Vaisnava god Narasimha, the true lord of Simhacalam who destroyed the demon king Hiranyakasipu precisely there. The other town is Annavaram in the north of East Godavari District with an equally popular temple, also on a hilltop, Ratnagiri, residence of the god Satyanarayana and goddess Satyavati. Annavaram also demonstrates sectarian rapprochement since the Vaisnava god is flanked by a Siva linga as well as the goddess.
Until recent improvement of roads approaching their towns, two renowned temples exacted intimidating journeys from pilgrims. One is Bhadracalam, accessible by boat some one hundred miles up the Godavari from Rajahmundry. Boat people still today are reluctant to go ashore in mid journey. Invariably they “cut” white chickens and break coconuts for the Breech Mother goddess Gandi Posamma at the wide bend of the river south of Devipatnam in hopes of avoiding tigers, crocodiles, and bandits. Only the last have actually been sighted for a generation. She stands guard exactly where treacherous territory begins, with a gleaming five-foot sword in her right hand. Beyond the break in the Northern Circars, Bhadracalam is the site of a temple of Rama built at the place where Sita was kidnapped by Ravana. Temple attendants reveal bedrock that bled when construction began, declaring that the great goddess is there, and was there, before the Ramayana heroes.
The other remote temple is Srisaila, the only south Indian temple men tioned in the Mahabharata. Millions of pilgrims have worn the road’s
The Godavari Delta 27
cobblestones into rounded knobs as smooth as eggs. Located on a wilderness hilltop high above the Krishna River, the temple is the sacred space of Siva as Mallikarjuna and goddess Bhramaramba, a manifestation of Kali. As the linga in Kalahasti is one of five elements, this Srisaila linga is one of a famous set of twelve jyotir linga, forms of divine light.
Pilgrims count other towns on their itineraries as well. They visit Kanaka Durga in her hilltop temple in Vijayawada, Narasimha in yet another of his temples atop the elephant-shaped hill in nearby Mangalagiri, and Markandeya in his temple on the Godavari River in Rajahmundry (Rajahmahendravaram), an eleventh-century fortress town now favored as cultural center for coastal Andhra. Considered the birthplace of the Telugu language, Rajahmundry was the home of the poet Nannaya, author of three books of the Telugu Mahabharata. His benefactor was Rajaraja Narendra, the Calukyan king of Vengi during the first half of the eleventh century. Every twelve years Rajahmundry hosts “Pushkaram” when the Godavari takes its turn among India’s greatest rivers for pilgrim bathers. In 2003 some 34 million were claimed by locals to have taken the sacred dip at half a dozen revu, the Telugu word for bathing ghats.
Throughout coastal Andhra, in softer focus and without literary recogni tion but for an occasional paper pamphlet, are numerous diminutive temples and shrines of neighborhood goddesses, many of them renowned for resident possession ritualists who embody them and become their voices in service of supplicants.42 They are to be located mostly on word-of-mouth maps still in use by the roughly one-third of the population who do not read.
Further remarks on agrahara will precede the capsule biographies of Veda pandits at the outset of Chapter 3 and the lives of householders living in these Brahman communities will be the subject of Chapter 5.43