Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
Today
is Ganesh Chaturthi, and with everyone writing about Ganesha in some way or the other, I thought
I should do a post too, but related to something I saw on my recent visit to
Jaisalmer. Are you now confused? And wondering what connection Ganesha has to
Govardhan and that too, Jaisalmer? Well, then, first, let me show you what I am
talking about….
And
now that you have seen it, let me draw your attention to the ‘a’ in the title. I am not talking
about ‘The Govardhan Mountain’ but ‘a Govardhan’, and therein lies the
difference! This Govardhan is a stone, a sort of marker, identifying a spot –
usually water, in the desert. These markers were extensively used by the
Paliwal community in Jaisalmer, to identify special sites. It could be the
presence of water, or mark a tunnel, or a site for a temple. These stones were
usually aligned with the directions of the compass, and had the figures of
deities inscribed on them, usually, Ganesha, Vishnu, Hanuman, and another
figure, which could be Rama or Krishna.
Here are some other views of the same Govardhan I showed you before…
Its certainly Vishnu on the left. Am not sure of the one on the right |
This pair looks like Rama and Hanuman. What do you think? |
An
interesting tidbit, wouldn’t you agree? Thanks to the folks at Suryagarh for pointing them
out and telling me about them!
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