Hinduism abounds in places of pilgrimage, or tīrthas, as they are called. This Sanskrit word refers to a ford, a crossing or farthest point, in the sense of the easiest crossing from the mortal to the immortal realms of the gods. Thus, all works of religious merit are said to be magnified at these places. It becomes easier to attain salvation here, and each tīrtha promises salvation in the most confident of terms. It is even believed that such places do not fully belong to the earthly realms and are, in a way, magical (like the ancient Greek concept of the temenos); the scholiast Paṇḍit Kamalākāra Bhaṭṭa observes in his celebrated Nirṇayasindhu that all the usual rules of Hindu rituals dissolve in places like these— in Vārānasi, for instance, the sun is always on its northern ecliptic and the moon is always waxing. Thus, all rites may be performed on any day of the year without restrictions. The fabric of time and space, as it were, breaks at such places— tīrthas are ‘time-less’.
All tīrthas have an origin myth, like the founding myth of ancient Rome. But unlike other parts of the world, tīrthas in India have always been easily forged, as it does not take much. Historical sites associated with ancient gods or famous kings and heroes as recounted in the epics or the purāṇas, miraculous events, birth-places of gods and heroes, their places of deaths, old rivers and temples, et cetera— any of these may ‘create’ a tirtha. But the fascinating part about them is the secondary myths that grow like creepers around the main narrative. These are almost always propagated by local brāhmaṇs, usually called ‘pāṇḍās’ (a corruption of the word ‘paṇḍit’), which is a term of both reverence and disdain depending on the context, whose livelihoods depend on the charitable donations made and other revenue generated by the pilgrims. These secondary myths are subject to continuous revisions over the centuries by these pāṇḍās who keep it spiced up for newer generations of pilgrims to ensure their livelihoods. For instance, at any tirtha in India, one finds hundreds of shrines, temples, sacred groves, lakes and ghats, each having their mini-myths that are somehow woven into the main myth, with some being deliberately misleading for either practical or monetary purposes. But rather than to discard these as superstitions and deceptions, it is often of more benefit to suspend disbelief and explore the rich narrative world of Hinduism, where the remote antiquity, the medieval, and the modern are united indistinguishably by human imagination. In the end, visits to such places are always, in one way or the other, an illuminating experience.
Among the countless tirthas in Hinduism, Gayā stands as an unique and even peculiar tirtha for a number of reasons. Even to the irreligious Hindu in India, the name of Gayā is synonymous with the śrāddha or piṇḍadāna ritual, the votive offerings made to the dead ancestors. It is a place where one goes after a family member (usually a direct ancestor) has died, and especially so, if in violent, unexpected, or ritually forbidden circumstances (like murders, accidents, or suicides). The Gayāwal pāṇḍās, as they are called, are a close-knit brāhmaṇ community which has traditionally served pilgrims as funerary priests; the Chinese travelers Fa-Hien and Hsuan-Tsang both recorded their presence in the fifth and seventh centuries A.D. respectively. These families maintain centuries of family genealogies of all pilgrims and can retrieve this information from their hand-written records within a matter of minutes, such are their indexing and organizing methods, which I will discuss later.
But Gayā’s importance is also puzzling. It is not a center of major sectarian worship (like of Siva in Prabhāsa or Brahmā in Pushkara), and more importantly, it is not situated on a major river like the Gangā or the Yamunā, but on a seasonal river (the Phalgu) which remains completely dry for most of the year. As for their genealogies, it is something that both Vārānasi and Haridvār pāṇḍās also maintain, which is notable and makes more sense because both of these places also have cremation grounds which burn continuously. Gayā, in stark contrast, has none of these, yet it enjoys a prime position on the religious hierarchy. This is the mystery that intrigued me and instigated my close investigation of Gayā.
The prime attraction, apart from the ancestral rituals, is the Viṣṇupadī temple, which contains a rock upon which is the inaccurate outline of a foot. It is said that the god Viṣṇu vanquished the giant demon Gayāsura by placing his foot on him, and upon his immense body, numerous shrines and holy places cropped up. A closer look at the myth exposes that it doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t quite recount why the demon Gayāsura needed to be killed. Despite the rich tapestry of stories of divine conflicts, the Hindu gods have fought the asuras (not quite ‘demons’, but anti-gods, as it were) for one or the other reason. Gayāsura also does not appear in any of the significant early Puranas, nor is Viṣṇu ever associated with Gayā. Gayā’s only significance is said to lie in its being a place where ancestral offerings free one’s ancestors and deliver them to heaven. For all pretas (or ghosts) who fail to reach heaven and haunt their descendants, the offering at Gayā is the only thing said to release them. This idea forms Gayā’s main myth, while the Gayasura myth turns out to be a secondary myth.
Gayā’s history is lost in antiquity; it has always been a sacred place, conjectured to be of non-Vedic origins, and lacking any major association with Hindu mythology in its early history. But its sanctity and recognition is indicated in at least four ancient sources. If we start chronologically from the latest to the earliest, (1) the Mahabharata (earliest sections from 800 B.C.E to latest sections from 100 A.D.) recounts that in Gayā lies the famed Gayasiras hill upon which is the Brahmasaras lake, by whose banks the great rsi Gaya dwelt and performed austerities. It recounts furthermore than that there is a shrine to the god of dharma (presumably, Yama) on that hill as well as an eternal banyan tree (aksayavat) where all ancestral offerings made becomes eternal or imperishable (aksaya). Buddhist sources recount that (2) Gautama Buddha (c. 400 B.C.E) started his religious meditations on the Gayasiras hill under this eternal banyan tree, only later moving away to a more secluded spot, which is now known as Bodhgaya, and returning to deliver the Fire Sermon from the Gayasiras hill. Just as famous universities attract the best scholars, sacred places have always attracted the sages and philosophers in India who flock to places such as Vārānasi, Prayāg, and Haridvār. The Atharva-veda, which is dated to the Late Vedic age (c. 1000 to 500 B.C.E), curiously refers (3) to a trio of rsis, Kaśyapa, Asita, and Gaya, performing religious works in unison. The rsi Kaśyapa is usually associated with his descendants Ṣaṇḍila, Asita, Devala, and Nidhruvi, which makes this reference stand out. Finally, the Rgveda (c. 1700 to 1200 B.C.E.) records (4) Sanskrit personal names of rsis such as Gaya Atreya (of the family of Atri) and Gaya Plāta.
The last two Vedic sources cannot be traced directly to the Gayasiras hill in particular, as they might easily refer to a different rsi also called Gaya (not Gayā). The Mahabharata takes a tone that indicates that this Gaya rsi dwelt on the Gayasiras a long time ago, he was not a recent figure. If we add that to Gautama Buddha’s choice of the eternal banyan tree atop the Gayasiras hill, we are led to the concrete possibility that this place was recognized as a sacred grove since at least 600 B.C.E or so, conservatively.
But this also raises another problem. Three things stand out about the Gayasiras hill from these ancient sources: one, that it has the Brahmasaras lake and the eternal banyan tree or grove, two, that it has the shrine to the god of dharma, and three, that it delivers all pretas as well as ancestors to heaven. But in the topography of modern Gayā, the Gayasiras hill with the lake (now known as the Brahmayoni hill), the preta-sila (‘the hill of ghosts’) where all pretas are delivered and has a shrine to Yama, and the Visnupadi temple which is also called the dharma-sila, are all separately located about a few kilometers apart. This begs the question: which is the real one, if this is the right place at all?
The myth of a lake where a rsi meditated is not enough to draw pilgrims in large numbers, or a shrine to Yama, or even an eternal banyan tree; you need more. It is here that the secondary myth of Visnu vanquishing the demon Gayāsura becomes an important clue, despite being a clear fabrication. The name Gayāsura is a clear corruption of the word ‘Gayasiras’, the original name of the place, and if we take Fa-Hien’s account that the rocky terrain of the place was prone to earthquakes and sparsely populated to be true, it leads us to a strange possibility. Was the historical Gayasiras hill a larger one in the past, and is the modern terrain of Gayā a result of earthquakes that re-arranged the topography? In a weird way, that is the way of the Hindu mythical imagination, it would actually make sense. Viṣṇu, representing the earth, would have stepped upon ‘Gayāsura’, and upon his giant body, numerous holy places sprung up, which is a mythopoeic way of describing and remembering a historical event. Plus, it generates an origin myth for a Viṣṇupadī temple that can command a more unique attraction for pilgrims.
In a strange combination of myths, from the ancient-most, to the medieval, down to more recent imaginations, Gayā is, as most tirthas are, indifferent to the natural flow of time. The minimum we may ascertain is that Gayasiras was a sacred hill, with a lake, where rsis meditated in an eternal banyan grove, from such a remote antiquity that even the Mahabharata finds it an old saying. The rest is less certain, but certainly more wealthy in myths and narratives sprung from the finest of human imaginations.
(The second article in the series discusses the significance of the eternal banyan tree and the ancestral rituals and family genealogies that Gayā is famous for.)