The Strange Sisters of Mannarkad by William Dalrymple
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On the edge of the jungle lay a small wooden temple. It was late evening, and the sun had already disappeared behind the palms. The light was fading fast now, and the flickering camphor flames and the ranks of hundreds of small clay lamps lined up on the wooden slats of the temple all seemed to be burning brighter and brighter, minute by minute.
The oiled torsos of the temple Brahmins were gleaming too. They were nearly finished the evening arti, circling burning splints around the idol of the Goddess Bhagavati, as they rang bells, chanted slokas and blew on conch shells. The ceremony prepared the Goddess to sleep, in the prescribed way, and with all the proper ceremonies that she expected, and her attendants busied themselves on what would be their final task of the day.
Goddess in Kerala
Only when it was over, and the doors of the inner shrine were sealed for the night, were they able to tell me properly about the Goddess they served. Bhagavati, they explained, was the pre-eminent Goddess in Kerala, the most powerful and beloved deity in the region. In some incarnations, it was true, she could be ferocious: a figure of horror and terror, a stalker of cremation grounds, who slaughtered demons and evil yakshis without hesitation or compassion, becoming as terrible as them in order to defeat them.
But in other moods, Bhagavati could be supremely benign and generous to her devotees, the caring, loving, fecund mother; and this was how her followers usually liked to think of her. For many she was the deity of the land itself: the spirit of the mountains, and the life force in the soil; the green of the rice paddy and the nuts ripening slowly on the cashew trees; the pepper berries tumbling on the vines and the swelling gourds of the coconuts fruiting atop the palms. In this form, Bhagavati is regarded as a chaste virgin and a caring mother, qualities she shares with her sister, whose enclosure lies a short distance down the road:
“Yes, yes, the Virgin Mary is Bhagavati’s younger sister,” explained Vasudeva, the head priest, matter-of-factly, as if stating the obvious.
“But for sisters don’t they look rather different from each other?” I asked. A calendar image of the Goddess was pinned up behind Vasudeva showing Bhagvati as a wizened hag wreathed in skulls and crowned with an umbrella of cobra hoods. In her hand she wielded a giant sickle.
“Sisters are often a little different from each other,” he replied. “Mary is another form of the Devi. They have equal power.”
He paused: “At our annual festival the priests take the Goddess around the village on top an elephant to receive sacrifices from all the different people. The Goddess visits all the places, and one stop is the church. There she sees her sister.”
“Mary gets on an elephant too?”
“No,” he replied. “But when the Goddesses visit each other, the sacrifice in the church is just like the one we have here: we light lamps and make an offering of neelam at a particular place in the compound. The priests stay in their church, but the trustees and congregation of the church receive us, and make a donation to the temple. Each year they give some money, and a tin of oil for our lamps.”
“So relations are good?”
“The people here always cooperate,” he said. “Our Hindus go to the church and the Christians come here and ask the Goddess for what they want. Almost all days they are coming, for everyone believes the two are sisters.”
Hindu Church
This was something I had seen for myself ever since I had arrived in Mannarkad, a small village 80 km to the south of Cochin. In the large courtyard of the church- newly rebuilt and enlarged around a mediaeval core- many of the worshippers had turned out to be Hindu rather than Christian.
“I have come here from 70 km away,” said K.N Prakashan, a middle-aged school teacher wearing a lavender safari suit of the sort once favoured by Roger Moore in 1970’s James Bond movies. “Yes I am a Hindu, but Mary is our holy mother. She is your mother and my mother too. I believe she is a powerful Goddess. Every time I come, I ask her to let the sufferings go from my life.”
“And does she answer your prayers?”
“Of course,”repled Prakashan. “It works. Otherwise I wouldn’t be coming back here.”
No less surprising were all the Hindu customs that were being practiced by the Church’s devout Syrian Christian devotees. Donations were exchanged for prasad, in this case tins full of sweet deep fried rice, peppercorns and small white sugar sweets. A large stone-lined water tank lay to one side of the compound, just as it does in the temples of the south. The devotees coming in and out of the church proudly told me that during the annual festival of Our Lady, the pilgrims would all take a ritual bath, shave their heads and eat only strictly vegetarian food to purify themselves.
They would also join processions under torches, banners and coloured silk umbrellas of exactly the sort used by Hindus in their temple processions. During the festival, the sacred space of the church also had a reputation for its powers of exorcism, the Christians sharing the Hindu belief that certain rituals can rid a possessed person of bhadam, or unwanted spirit possession. In the case of the church, exorcisms took place in the shadow of the great stone cross that lies to the west of the basilica.
Christians Alongside Hindus
Yet all this was mixed up with forms of devotion usually specific to the Eastern Orthodox churches. The same booths along the side of the courtyard that took donations and gave prasad, also sold small bronze plaques of arms, legs, eyes, hearts and other body parts. These could be placed in front of a Holy Icon to remind the saint to cure one or other particular ailment- something practiced in Greek and Syrian Orthodox churches across the Levant. There were also small bronze cobras on sale which seemed to be charms against snake bites, and silver plaques of babies for women who wished to conceive.
The Christians I talked to seemed wholly at ease with the idea of praying alongside so many Hindus: “I believe Mary is more generous to the Hindus than she is to us,” said Thomas Daniel as he prayed at the stone cross at the back of the enclosure. “Yes we also believe Bhagavati and Mary twin sisters. Just as our Gods have power for us, so their Gods have power for them.”
“So you believe in the Hindu Gods too?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Those Gods are there. I go to the temple with my Hindu friends, though I don’t tell the priests. And I participate in their festivals, though I don’t give offerings.”
Thomas smiled: “This has been passed from generation to generation,” he said. “That is why we believe. All the people of Kerala believe in all of the Gods.”
The Greenest State in India
Kerala is the greenest state in India: hot and humid, still and brooding. The soil is so fertile that as you drift up the lotus-choked backwaters around Mannarkad, the trees close in around you as twisting tropical fan vaults of palm and bamboo arch together in the forest canopy. Mango trees hang heavy over the fishermen's skiffs; pepper vines creep through the fronds of the waterside papaya orchards.
All around this central part of Kerala live the St Thomas Christians- so called because they believe that St. Thomas, the apostle of Jesus who famously refused to believe in the resurrection "until I have placed my hands in the holes left by the nails and the wound left by the spear," came to India after the Resurrection, and that he baptised their ancestors. This is not a modern tradition: it has been the firm conviction of the Christians here since at least the sixth century A.D, and in all likelihood for hundreds of years before that.
Over the centuries of unusually close co-existence, the Hindus and the Christians of the region have found their myths and their rituals fusing slowly together. There may be violence between Christians and Hindus in some parts of North India- especially Gujerat and Orissa- but there has never been any serious tension between the two faiths here in Kerala. Instead, to an extraordinary degree, the two have shared their sacred places and sacred stories.
Ritual Purity
As it was specifically the Kerala Brahmins that St Thomas is said to have converted, the Christians here have always maintained a high social status in the complex caste hierarchy of southern India. Their birth, puberty and especially marriage rituals are still more or less indistinguishable from those of any other high caste Malayalis, with their use of areca-nut, rice, lemons, sandalwood paste, flowers and milk.
Until recently the St. Thomas Christians maintained full ritual purity and so were eligible for access to Hindu temples and holy precincts. Here they were traditional patrons and sponsors, and so were awarded places of honour in the great temple processions. They would march alongside the brahmins and the Nayar caste, with their images of St Thomas carried in palanquins while their Hindu neighbours pushed chariots carrying fine bronze images of their Gods.
When the Portuguese arrived in India in the 16th century they criticised the St Thomas Christians clergy for the many ‘pagan’ practices they had adopted: the use of ritual ablutions and the codes of touch and distance pollution; the casting of horoscopes in the Hindu manner, the idea of following your own dharma and the belief in the transmigration of souls; as well as specifically Hindu techniques of exorcism, divination and dream interpretation- all of which traditions survived well into the early 20th century, and several of which are still common among the Christians of Kerala today.
The same fusion of Hinduism and Christianity is seen in the Christian art of Kerala. Every church in the region has a large stone cross in its churchyard; but these unambiguously Christian symbols rise out of lotus-shaped Hindu bases, which are invariably covered with exactly the sort of decoration that enlivens South Indian temples: lion-headed and fish-bodied makaras tangle between confronted cows, elephants, tigers and dancing girls. Paired peacocks are especially popular, doubling as they do as Eucharistic symbols and vehicles of Murugan.
Shared Myths and Fesitvals
Today, even if St Thomas is no longer carried in temple processions, in village after village much of the old syncretism still survives in the form of shared myths and festivals. In Thrissur, in North Kerala, it is still largely the Christians of the town who perform the prestigious job of feeding the temple elephants with the white-stemmed buds of the coconut tree at the annual Puram festival. Closer to Mannarkad, St Thomas is the focus of a cult in the village of Putenangadi, a short distance away, where the majority of the worshippers are Hindu. They call him Kurusaoopen- the Old Man of the Cross.
"I come here so that I can be relieved of all my troubles," I was told by one Hindu lady named Jaya who was sitting kneeling at the back. "I believe that Kurusaoopen can do that- he has the power, the shakti. If there's anything I need, I ask Kurusaoopen for it. When I have difficulties, Kurusaoopen solves them for me. Of course, I go to the temple too. But any big problem I have, I come here and I pray, and my prayers are always answered.”
In Puthupally, near Kottyam, the villagers associate St. George with the Goddess Kali whose temple lies to the side of the church. In the church, St George is shown killing a dragon; in the temple his sister Kali is sculpted slaughtering a demon in the form of a water buffalo. Both brother and sister are believed locally to be ferocious carnivores, and during festivals both are fed the blood of decapitated chickens.
Not far away at Piravam, Shiva is locally celebrated as the travelling companion of the Three Wise Men. According to local myth, the four went on a long pilgrimage together, and became close friends during the course of their journey. On arrival in Piravam their sanctity was recognised, and they were installed in their sacred spaces. Not that relations between Christian saints and Hindu deities are always completely unproblematic. In Piravam, Shiva is said to have thrown sacred tulsi flowers in the Church of the Three Magi; the Magi retaliated by throwing frankincense into the temple. On another occasion the Magi caught Shiva stealing oil from the lamps in the church and are said to have hit him with their sceptres.
There is also a story of St Thomas and the Goddess Bhagavati having a spat, with St Thomas chasing the Goddess to her temple at Kodangallur, and sticking his foot in the door to prevent her locking him out. Even in Mannarkad, it is said that the crack in the church’s bell is due to Bhagavati damaging it as its tolling was waking her up during her sleep. In retaliation, the Virgin Mary, is believed to have cracked one of the sacred conches at her sister’s temple.
Syncretic Ceremonies
Such myths may hint at periods of tensions between the different faiths, and certainly there are those today who frown on the extreme porousness of religious practice in the region. The Vishnu temple in Mannarkad is today the chosen place of worship for the village’s RSS members who frequent the temple at least partly because the Brahmins there do not have anything to do with Mannarkad’s Christians, of whose prosperity and prominence they disapprove.
Likewise the Christian clergy at the church of Mannarkad, while wishing to preserve good relations with their Hindu neighbours, and welcoming Hindus into the church, at the same time do all they can to stop their own Christian flock from visiting the temple, and they strongly disapprove of their congregation indulging in syncretic ceremonies.
When I asked the local priest, Fr Kuriakos, about the festival of the Goddess Bhagavati and the forthcoming visit of the Goddess Bhagavati to the church to see her sister, he made it clear that he would on no account be present to welcome the Goddess: “The Virgin Mary comes from Jewish tradition,” he said, clearly exasperated from repeating this regularly to his congregation. “She is the daughter of Joachim and Anna, and was from Palestine, not India. This Devi temple is a thing from Indian tradition.”
He paused looking me in the eye before resuming, speaking very clearly to make sure I understood: “There is no relation between the Virgin Mary and Bhagvati,” he said. “We cannot encourage this belief. It is a myth. Worse, it is nonsense.”
The Procession
With the noise of firecrackers exploding, six cymbal clashers clashing, twelve temple drummers drumming, and the women of the village loudly ululating, the procession set off up the dirt track behind the temple, and off into the jungle. It was 8.30 in the morning of the 6th January 2008, and the Goddess Bhagavati was setting off to visit her devotees and relations across the village of Mannarkad.
The Goddess, who had earlier that morning entered one of the priests of the temple- the veliccappatu, or oracle- and so proclaimed her excitement at the forthcoming trip, had shortly afterwards re-entered her silver image, and been hoisted onto the back of a wonderfully carparisoned temple elephant. The elephant had been washed and dressed up with belled anklets and an elaborate gilt headdress; the gilt of the headdress merged with the gilt of the brocade cloth surrounding the goddess on her howdah, and topped with a thick mantle of jasmine and marigold garlands. From the top of her mount, the Goddess looked down in silver splendour at her devotees, with her rounded skull-like face, her round eyes bulging, and her teeth and fangs grinning with pleasure.
The way had been prepared carefully in advance; the track had been swept and the way lined with scarlet silk umbrellas. Between the umbrellas bunting had been draped from a series of bamboo posts, and shredded palm fronds streamers and red hibiscus flowers hung from the bunting.
Visit of the Deity
As we walked along the village boundary, from clearing to clearing, through pepper and rubber plantations, groups of devotees were waiting for the annual visit of their deity. Outside each cluster of huts, irrespective of the faith of the people of that part of the village, trestle tables had been loaded with burning lamps and piles of offerings- coconuts and bananas, baskets of puffed rice and jaggery. Each time, the elephant would stop, offerings would be given and blessings received. Then more firecrackers would be let off- scaring the children and grazing goats- and the women would ululate, and on the procession would trundle, the drummer and cymbal clashers leading the way.
“She is the mother of the village,” explained Saraswati Amma, an old lady who was waiting on the verandah of her house for the Goddess, with all her grandchildren around her. “She comes to give blessings. Bad spirits flee when she approaches.
“In ancient times this was forest,” explained her son Anish, who was holding his youngest boy in his arms. “We needed the Goddess to guard against bad spirits. They are still here, hiding in the forest, and we need her to keep them at bay.”
“She comes only once a year to see our homes,” added Sarswati, “so we must give her a good welcome,”
“That is why we are gathered here- for the welfare of the entire village. That is why we are doing it.”
“Everyone in the village gives her something,” said Saraswati. “Even if the Christians sometimes do it in secret.”
The Yakshi
At several places along the route more elaborate sacrifices were performed. The story the villagers told me was that long ago, when their ancestors first arrived in Mannarkad and cleared a place for themselves in the forest, they angered an evil yakshi, or tree spirit, who had lived there. Furious at being disturbed, the yakshi struck down the settlers with smallpox.
Only when the villagers brought an idol of the Goddess Bhagavati from her temple in Kodungallur, and the Goddess fought seven pitched battles with the yakshi, was the epidemic brought to an end. Today, as the Goddess patrolled the boundaries of the village she had promised to protect, her people showed their gratitude by offering special sacrifices to their Goddess at the site of each of these battles.
“Bhagavati protects the whole village,” explained Raji, who was waiting with his gifts for the Goddess to come. “She keeps away diseases and gives grace and blessings to the families who respect her.”
“Do you fear her or love her?” I asked.
“It is both devotion and respect,” he replied. “And a fear of displeasing her. This way everyone is safe.”
The site of the final sacrifice was located at the back of the church, in the Christian area of the village that the priests told me had originally been part of the church compound. A small platform was prepared on a swept piece of ground, criss-crossed with a grid of bamboo. Incense sticks were placed at the corners, and flowers, betel and tumeric scattered over the grid. Squares of camphor were prepared, ready to be lit.
A large mixed crowd of local Christians and Hindus looked on, waiting for the drums to announce the coming of the Goddess and her elephant. When she drew near, the priests blew their conch shells, and the drummers gradually increased their tempo. The camphor was lit, Sanskrit slokas were recited, and the whole grid doused with the blood-coloured guruthi.
“Before we used to sacrifice a rooster,” said one of the onlookers, a Hindu shopkeeper called Raji. “But that is stopped now.”
“From time immemorial the sacrifice has taken place here next to the church,” said his wife, Susheela, “where the Devi fought and defended the village.”
I asked if they ever went inside the church compound.
“I have always heard that the two Devis of the village are sisters,” said Raji. “If you go to the temple you must also go to the church, otherwise one of the sisters will be jealous. Whatever you do to one you must do to the other. They are both powerful Goddesses.”
“Its true,” said Susheela. “They say that if you want your prayers answered you must pray at both the temple and the church. So many people make prayers in both. They say that if you light a lamp at the temple, that light also can be seen flickering in the church, and vice versa. The two are really one.“
“My grandfather told this story to me,” said Raji, “and we believe it to be true.”
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