|
For
a people who rewrote history with a flick of their wrist,
the Rajputs proved to be extremely religious as a
race. But then, not surprisingly, they claimed the gods as
their ancestors too. State chroniclers traced the history of
each of the Rajput clans back to the gods and the elements.
The Suryavanshi Rajputs were descended from Ram, the
hero whose exploits fill the epic Ramayana, while the
Chanclravanshi Rajputs trace their lineage to
Krishna, the prank-loving god who is a central figure in the
other great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Both, needless to
say, were also kings. For those who could claim neither, a
third category was the Agnikul, or fire-born.
But the people worshipped, besides Ram and Krishna, also
Shiva and his manifestations, especially in the female form
of the Devi whose incarnations as saints led to the creation
of family deities who were ensconsed in temples where the
families came to worship. Maharaja Ganga Singh of
Bikaner would walk barefeet from his capital to Deshnoke
where at the shrine of Kami Mata, he would pray for
the success of his ventures. No war was fought, no major
task or journey undertaken, without the ritual worship of
the family deity. Such faith was abiding: Kami Mata, after
all, had predicted to the founder of the Bikaner dynasty of
Rathores that he would be successful in laying the
foundations of a new kingdom.
Maharaja Man Singh of
Amber, on the other hand, carried an image of Shila Devi
all the way from Jessore in Bengal, and had it
consecrated at the Amber temple. And the Maharanas of
Udaipur, who offered protection to the Vallabhachari
sect fleeing from Muslim oppression, pay homage to the idol
of Krishna as Shrinathji at Nathdwara. According to
the tale, apocryphal or otherwise, the chariot carrying the
particular idol of Krishna got stuck at Nathdwara and no one
was able to get the wheel unstuck. Taking it as divine
intervention, it was decided that it was here the idol would
be consecrated, and so Nathdwara came to be a pilgrimage
centre. It is in these and multitudes of other temples that
the people continue to come when they are wed, and when they
are blessed with an heir, when there are festivities, or
during the ritual nine days of fasting during Navratri;
they come here when they wish to ask for something, and to
pray when their wishes are fulfilled. They come on
pilgrimage, or merely to complain to their gods who are also
their ancestors. It links them intimately with their gods,
and reverence is also shared with a feeling of kinship. In
the hard wastelands of the desert, such faith is healing. |
