Kedar Nath & Badri Narayan - Swami Vivekananda

Kedar Nath & Badri Narayan(A Pilgrim's Diary.)SISTER NIVEDITAAuthor of—The Master as I saw Him, The Web ofIndian Life, CMc and National Ideals, etc.r^^^^^^ftyl^2Sg^SECOND EDITIONCALCUTTA :UDBODHAN OFFICE./, Mukherjee Lane, Baghbazar.1928.Re. I/-

PLACES ON TH£ SHEIF®^ W^-^. ... *i»«^««.«>«»i>«»«i«A*'«>*»«^««Published byBRAHMACHARI GANENDRANATH,], M-a^ierjee Lane, BaghbazaffCalcutta. '? U ^S ^^^0\ S»»* j^. teprmter: s' c* MAJ0^ft^ GOURANGA-P-RESS,1^^71/1, Mirzapw Street, CakutiS

NOTES.The previous title of the book, "The ^''^^hgiELaaa,Tirtha: A Pilgrims Diary* * was of too general animport to indicate to the reading public the particularnature of its contents which is a description ofa pilgrimage to the famous shrines of Kedar Nathand Badri Narayan in the North of India ; andtherefore it has been changed into the more particularand appropriate name of "Kedar Nath andBadri Narayan: A Pilgrim's Diary/* A map ofthe pilgrim-route and two pictures of the famousshrines have been incorporated in the. present reprint.which we hope, will be appreciated by thepublic.PUBLISHERS.

5. SanjeevsrayarMsm,,f^T^MAPUOiKEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANA PILGRIM'S DIARYplace Distance. Remarks onHardwarAccommodation.Satya Narain 7 miles o _HrishikeshLakshman Jhula 3 miles 12 miles Dharmsalas; an ins-Phool Chatty 5 miles pection bungalow.Mohun Chatty 14 miles Dharmsalas and chap-Dakbungalow Bijni 3 miles pars.Bandar Chatty 6 milesMahadeo ChattyKandi 6 milesVyasagungaused; chappars.DevaprayagDak Bungalow Kolta12 miles Dharmsala and chappars.10 miles Dharmsala long dis-9 miles Dharmsala. A smallcity and bazar.key Ranibagh5 miles Temporary accommo-Rampurdation.Bilwakedardation.Srinagarand Dak bungalow.10 miles Temporary accommo-3 miles A City. Dharmsalas"Imagine!*' said one of our party suddenly, aswe sat at a meal somewhere on the road between

Kedar Nath and Badri Narayan, **Imagine ! we areonly ten or twelve days from Manasa Sarovara, andthe people call all this country Kailas 1 We are in

2 KEDAR NA1H AND BADRI NARAYANKailas\" We were indeed. And to add to thatfact we had entered the land of promise by the oldhistoric road. Beginning with Hardwar,—that miniatureand unspeakably beautiful Benares—andpassing through Hrishikesh, we had ascended stepby step, march by march, from one holy place toanother, side by side with pilgrims from every provincein India, till we had reached the crown ofthem all at Kedar Nath ; and were now on the wayto Badri Narayan, thence to return to ordinary lifeand work, in our homes in the plains. It was awonderful word, this that we were in Kailas, andwe all sat for a moment, pondering on its meaning.Amongst the pines and deodars, with mountain-Howers underfoot, and hoary places of pilgrimagebehind and before, it was not incredible. But weneeded to drink deep for awhile of the thought.that we might realise the Invisible Presence inhabitingand consecrating the holy home.It is very characteristic, that while Hinduismlays great emphasis on the sacredness of the northernpilgrimage, it is yet difficult to obtain any authenticinformation about its details, before one starts. Forthis reason it seems almost obligatory upon thosewho perform it, that they should, if possible, publishtheir experiences, for the guidance of others, whoare eager to undertake it. At present, there is verylittle that the intending traveller can make sure of,either as regards time, distances, or the accommodationavailable. And few things are more necessary

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 3than the frank publication of the actual diary ofsome pilgrim, to which all the would-be adventurousmay obtain easy access. The setting-forth need notafterwards be that plunge in the dark which it is atpresent. A man may then calculate freely the timeand means at his disposal, and make such provisionas is possible to him, for the difficulties and perhapsthe dangers of his undertaking.The one piece of advice that one would like togive all intending travellers is the importance ofsecuring a good panda—as the semi-ecclesiasticalcourier is called—at the beginning of the Journey-We were lucky enough to fall in with Gopal Pandaof Kedar Nath, when we were at Hardwar, and totake him with us, and no words can tell of his value.He was full of energy and resource. He saw "ULSthrough every difficulty, and his social influencesmoothed over many delicate matters, probably. Apanda should not be too scholarly, as in that case heis sure to be defective in energy ; yet his fund oflocal information is a great sweetener of the road.The first impression gleaned from the pilgrimageas a whole is a deepened sense of Indian unity.And this is created in us, not only by the crowds ofwayfarers—from the Punjab, Maharashtra, Madras,Malabar, the North-West Provinces, and Bengal——whom we meet or pass, hour after hour. It is alsodue to the fact that here on this northern pilgrimag-e,the great puJan4>rahmms and mohunts are ailDeccanis. Even the pandas, on the Badri Narayan

4 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANroad, are south-country men. In the case of Kedar,however, the pandas, whatever their historical origin,are now firmly established in the locality, and ourown guide, philosopher and friend was a man whobelonged to the village of Ben Asur. The mohunts,or as they are called, Raouls, of Kedar Nath, BadriNarayan, and other sacred places, are bound tonominate their disciples from the south only. Andthus is kept alive the tradition of those spiritual impulseswhich within the last thousand years havecome always from the farthest end of India. FirstMagadha and then Dravida-desha has originated thewaves that have transformed the Himalayas ; butin either case the fact is equally conspicuous, thatthe Motherland is indeed one, that north and southare inextricably knit together, and that no story ofits analysed fragments, racial, lingual, or political,could ever be the story of India. There must berecognition of a synthesis, to do justice to that tale.For the Indian peoples have in the past known howto shape themselves as a unity, definite and coherent,and behind them stands ever the Motherland,one from end to end.To Indians themselves, if they have never beforebeen on pilgrimage, the life of the pilgrim-roads islikely to be a revelation. Who uttered a doubt thatIndia had a place and a life for women? Certainlynone who had ever seen a pilgrimage. Marchingalong we meet them, singly or in couples, or may bein long strings of tens and twenties, old and young

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 5mingled together. There is neither fear. nor exaggeratedshyness in their demeanour. Sometimes onewill be separated by a few yards from the party,telling her beads, or lost in solitary thought. Sometimesagain we meet an old woman who seems tobelong to none. But almost everyone is cheerful,and almost all, from the custom of wearing theirjewels all the time, have an air of festivity andbrightness. All pilgrims know one another. Here,none of the stiff ness of a meaner world prevails. Weall speak to one another as we pass. *Jai I KedarNath Swami ki Jai!' or *Jai! Badri Bissal lal ki Jai 1'we say to each whom we meet, whether man orwoman. And no words can describe the flash ofsweetness and brightness that lights up the reply.We are all out on a holiday together, and an air ofgentle innocence and hilarity prevails, in face ofdifficulties, and creates a sort of freemasonryamongst all who seek the common goal. One hasthe chance here of studying the reEnement of easternsalutations. Sometimes a way-farer passes, who istelling her beads, or who, for some reasons oranother does not care to break her silence, but oh,the dignity and charm of the bow that answers thepilgrim's salutation in such a case ! Even here, inan environment which is in some ways one of intensifiedpracticality, we meet now and again withthe inveterate dreamer, living in that world uponwhose shores no wave can break. It was turninginto the wedge-shaped ravine of Garurganga that

6 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANwe came upon one such. She was a little oldwoman, and we caught her Just as she had steppedout of her prim little shoes, placed neatly behindher, and with rapt look prostrated herself. Twopeople who were coming forward, drew back atthis, that she might not know herself interrupted,and then as again we stepped forward and cameface to face with her, we saw that for the momentshe was lost in the world of her own reverence. Inher eyes was the look of one who saw not the earth.It was a sudden glimpse of the snow mountains towhich she had paid involuntary homage.Climbing over some peculiarly difficult bouldersin the dry bed of a torrent, we met two old women,both almost blind, and bent half-double with ageand inBrmity. They were coming back from BadriNarayan. The place was terrible, and as we cameup to them one of them stumbled. But to anejaculation of concern, they replied, between themselves,with an air of triumph in their gaiety, **What!Is not Narayan leading? And since He has givendarsana, what does this matter}"Happy they whose pilgrimage can begin atHardwar! Never surely was there a place sobeautiful. It is like Benares on a very small scale.But as one of our party remarked, people go toBenares to die, and to Hardwar as the beginning ofa high undertaking. This of itself confers on thetown an air of brightness. In the moonlight nightsthe joins set out with their pandas^ singing, as they

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 7go, along the roads. And oh, the evening worshipof the Ganges? In the very middle of the loweststep of the semicircular ^hats of the Brahma Kunda priest stands waving what looks like a small brasstree of flame. Behind him crowd the worshippers,chiefly women, and on the bridge and island thatstretch across the little bay in front of his, formingthe chord of the semi-circle, stand and sit otherworshippers, obviously, to judge by differences ofdress and type, travellers from many and variousprovinces. All is rapt silence, which the publicworship is proceeding, but as it ends, the wholemultitude breaks out into chanting. Choir uponchoir, they sing the glories of the Ganges, answeringeach other in the manner of an antiphon. Andaway beyond them stretch green islands and woodedheights, about which the blue veil of the eveningmists has just begun to fall. The very scene, in itselfin the perfection of praise. ^Oh ye mountains andhills, bless ye the Lord I Praise Him and magnifyHim for ever! Oh ye rivers and streams, bless yethe Lord! Praise Him and magnify Him for ever I' *It is the railway, we are told, that has popularisedHardwar. Until a few years ago, Kankhalhad been long the recognised centre and peoplemade pilgrimage only to Hardwar, for bathing andpraying being exceedingly careful to be back beforenightfall, so probable was the appearance of a tigeron the road between the two places. But the factthat the habit of pilgrimage could persist at all under

8 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANsuch circumstances, is eloquent testimony to the ageof the place. Kankhal itself, a couple of miles away,is the seat of Siva as Daksheswar, and therefore, wecannot doubt, one of the most ancient sites ofHinduism. Here we are shown the very place whereSati fell, and that where Daksha offered sacrifice.Suddenly a whole chapter of pre-Hindu Hinduism—•perhaps ages long—becomes visible to us. We seethat there was a time when people were familiarwith the image of the Goat-headed Lord of Creation.We remember the Great God Pan of the Greeks,with his one goat-foot. And we do not wonder thatthere should have been a struggle between this oldnature-god Daksha, who may have been a personificationof the Polar Star, and the new Siva, Lord ofthe consciences of men.HRISHIKESH, twelve miles away from Hardwar,is a university of an ancient type. Here, amongstsome of the most beautiful scenery of the Himalayas,just at the rapids of the Ganges, are hundreds ofstraw huts in which live sadhus. Amongst these, itis doubtless possible to realise the ideal of the VedicAshramaSy in a life of simplicity, order, and learning.The first duty of the new arrival is, as I have heard,to build his own hut. Within these, men live aloneor in couples, according to the merciful custom thatusually carries the begging friars forth, not alone, butby twos. But when evening conies, at any rate inthe winter, the great meditation-fires are lighted hereand there, in the open air, and seated round them

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 9the monks discourse *of settled things/ Then theyrelapse by degrees into the depths of thought, andwhen darkness has fallen and all is quiet, one afteranother each man slips quietly away to his own hut-It is an extraordinary combination of freedom andsociety, of the ideals of the hermitage and of themonastery. It may be that it gives us a glimpse ofthe monastic conditions of the Thebaid, but in.modem times it could certainly be paralleled nowhereoutside India. The sadabraias in the littletown close by are another institution that correspondto nothing in foreign countries. Here the sadhusdaily receive their rations of food, some cooked andsome uncooked. For it is a mistake to think thatthose who have taken up the life of the sannyasincan study and think, without a certain amount ofbodily nourishment. Our selfishness may make useager to preach such an ideal, but it will always befor others to realise ? At the same rime the sada"bratas relieve the monks of the dishonour ofbecoming beggars, and the community of thescandal of a disorderly burden. These, in theirpresent high organisation and development, owe a.great deal to the life and work of Kamliwala Bab&,one of the national heroes whose name is knowntoo little, outside monastic ranks. By his labours,the Northern Pilgrimage has been rendered available,for the thousands of pilgrims who now passalong it, and it is to be hoped that in the movementnow going on for the recovery of biographies, his

10 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANwill not be forgotten. The present road fromHardwar to Hrishikesh, with its new temple andbazaar of Satya Narayan, is of KamliwaIS Baba'smaking, as are all the good dharmasalas along theroad. The old way to Hrishikesh by along theGanges-bank. In the desert-like country aboutHrishikesh, one of the characteristic charities is thelittle water-and-mat stations, where a g'erM-turbannedservant lives in a little hut, serving out water toeach passer-by who asks for it, and keeping a cleanspace swept and cowdunged where anyone can liedown a mat in the shade of a tree.How old is Hrishikesh? In its very nature it isimpermanent. The materials of which it is built thiswinter will not remain after next summer's rains.And how long the site has been used in this waywho shall say? May be the history of Hardwarwould give us some clue to this. May be theKumbha Mela would help us to calculate its age.The very fleetingness of its buildings must havelengthened its days, for political convulsions thatwould sweep clean the Caves of Ajanta or EIlora,would leave this winter-resort of the learned andpious entirely unaffected. As the waters of a lakeclose over a stone, so would Hrishikesh recoverfrom catastrophe and grow out of its very mem3ry.And the tradition goes, we must remember, that oneof the earliest literary undertakings of our people—the division of the Vedas by Vyasa, into four—wascarried out in this place.

A PILGRIM'S DIARY1 tAbout a mile or less below the Bridge ofLakshman Jhula, four miles further on, is the officialweighing station where loads and prices are authori"tatively apportioned. Rates have been raised lately»but it is a great satisfaction to have a definite sca-Ioof charges and a reasonable contract on both sides-The once concluded, the coolies let us see that theyare overjoyed to start on the journey, and considerthemselves as much pilgrims as we! LakshmctrtJhula has a temple beside it, and a ghat known asDhruva's. A sudden depth in the water here isknown as the Pandavas* Pool. We are now in theGorge of the Ganges, and continues so for some fonrmiles longer. At the end of this, with its beautifulscenery, is Phoolbari, or Phool Chatty. Five milesafetr, along a narrower stream, we come to MohuinChatty, in a wide valley. Here only accommodationconsists of a dharmsala and mat-covered chhapparsor huts. The dharmsala with its metal roof isexceedingly hot. It contains a few small mud-walledand mud-floored rooms with a large common.verandah ouside. Such provisions as are obtainable,along with vessels for cooking, are to be had fromthe local shop-keeper. Here then we settle downfor the day and night. What a pity for the extremearitficiality that makes it impossible for us to rest inpublic, like the simple folk who go and come aroundus ! Yet so it is. Were we at home, we should evenrequire doubtless to have seclusion from each other.Here, however, we are thankful enough for the white

12 KEDAJl NATO AND BADRI NARAYANsheet and baggage that enable us to be a family,apart from other families. Within our screened roomwe sit and try to keep as cool as may be. But, toone at least, comes again and again the thoughtthat she is in just such an inn as that to which atBethlehem in Judaea once came two wayfarers andfound **no room/* All about us outside are theopen-air cooking fires and the reed-roofed shelters ofsuch as have found no place in this granderdharmsala. Suppose anyone to-night should cometoo late, and finding *no room.* be turned away?We were awakened by the pandas at MohunChatty at about two in the morning. All round usin the darkness we could hear women urging theircompanions to be up and off. And as each littleparty made ready to start, we could see it standand beat time till the panda gave the word **JaiKedar Nath Swami ki Jay!'* or something of thesort, and then on the instant, cheerily footing it off,gentlefolk, coolies, and all. As we swung alongthe roadb in the darkness, we had to take some carewhere we set out foot. For up here on the hillsidenumbers of pilgrims had lain down to rest, apparently,wherever they had found themselves whenthey grew tired. Here they lay sleeping, stretchedacross the pathway, their heads lifted on their littlebundles, asking no better roof than the starry skyabove. Oh, to reach the simplicity of such anoutlook upon life!Three miles beyond Mohun Chatty, after con-

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 13tinuous climbing, we come upon the little dakbungalow of Bijni, of which the key is kept in thebazaar* half a mile further. Another five milesbrings us, with a sharp descent, to Bandar Chatty,where the logs are piled up. Four miles further still,making altogether thirty-eight from Hardwar, isMahadeo Chatty.This in nothing but a pilgrim's centre. Againwe are in a dharmsala. Only it must be said thathere there are two, one across the river of stones onour right hand side. We stand a little apart fromthe village, too, with its multitude of chatties. Butthis advantage is less real than imaginary, for lateron, when the rest or the pilgrims arrive, they campabout us here, and the resources of the place aretaxed to their utmost. The river on our left, as wecame along the road to-day, was beautiful with darkcrags and snow-white sands. Here in the midst ofits rushing coolness with the burning sun overhead,one understands for the first time, the physicalrapture of the religious bathing of Hinduism. Wefind the same to be true again at the little village ofVyasaganga. Here the different mountain rangesseem all to recede from one another simultaneously,and leave a great open circle, through which themain current of the Ganges sweeps immense curves,with vast sandy beaches on either hand ; and thenbefore leaving this natural theatre, it turns to receive,on its left hand side, the swift clear torrent of theVyasaganga, with its black transparent water

14 KEDAR NATO AND BADRI NARAYANmingling in the milky-brown of the larger stream.At the junction of the Vyasaganga the road fromLansdowne enters the place. Here the little matcoveredhuts, so like old Italian pictures, werepeculiarly beautiful, and the grander accommodationof a pucca building peculiarly bad. So, after breakfast,we all adjourned from our dirty iron-roofedupper storey,—which had not been cow-dunged sincethe day of its birth apparently!—to one of the neatempty chappars. Here there was a slight breeze,and by means of wet sheets and towels, it was notimpossible to keep off the sun.An imaginary line separates the floor of onefamily or party in such structures from that of thenext. And we could feel ourselves real pilgrims, aswe rested, with our books, and listened to the gentleconversation, or the reading of the Kedar Khanda,all about us. At half past three, no one could havetold by the senses alone that there was any changein the light. The fierce blaze continued Just asbefore. Yet at that moment exactly an old woman,not far off, rose, girded herself for the road, tookup her staff, and, followed by two daughters-in-law,in red saris and bodices, with bundles on their heads,set forth into sun and heat. What determination,what austerity spoke in her grim old face!Thousands of years of character were in that simpleact. Then the afternoon march began, for others,also ; and an hour or two later the pilgrims whowould camp here for the night came up, and all the

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 15distant places of the shore became bright withcooking-fires. On the mountains, too, the nightmade visible the forest-fires, and over all poureddown the moonlight, throwing the wooded hillsinto strong shadow against the silver blueness of theriver, and the snow-whiteness of the sands.Our men were very anxious to reach DEVA-PRAYAG. It was the home of some of them, and itwas in any case in their beloved Tehri territory. Forthe river at this part of the route had been agreedupon as the boundary between Tehri and BritishIndia. A ten miles' march was nothing to them,when their enthusiasm was awakened, and wereached our destination next day quite early. It wasinteresting, as we set out on the road from Vyasaganga,to note, ere it left the open valley and turnedin between the hills, the small temple of Vyasastanding on the river-bank. Here in the days whenthe characteristic culture of the epoch lay in a knowledgeof the Mahabharata, and when the effort ofall this region was to appropriate the scenes andincidents of the great work. here it was possible forthe pious pilgrim to make salutation at the feet ofmaster-poet before entering on the sacred way. Upto this time the only mention of the Pandavas thatwe had come upon had been the name of a bathingpool at Lakshman Jhula. But this was easilyaccounted for. There would be an ever-presenttendency to create such associations, acting throughoutmodern times." From the moment of passing

16 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANVyasaganga, however, we were in Mahabharatacountry, and this little chapel of the prince of poets,proved that it was the Mahabharata as a poem, thatWe were following, not a tissue of pre-Hterary andpre-historic Pandava traditions.The ten miles to Devaprayag lay through beautifulscenery, but along narrow thread-like pathsrunning above high precipices. The men burstinto shouts of Joy at the sight of the place, but wehad been so spoilt by the open expanded beauty ofthe other places we had seen, that we were muchdisappointed to find it dark, crowded on the steeppoints of sharply sloping hills brought together bythe junction of two rapid and powerful streams, andhuddled and grim in style. The houses seemed allto stand on tip-toe behind each other, to see theriver. In the evening, however, when we walkedin the bazaar, seeing the homes of the people fromthe other side, we caught many a glimpse of aninterior, ending in a verandah that seemed to besuspended in mid-air over the waters, and then weunderstood the idea of Devaprayag, that it was notbuilt, like Benares, for splendour of approach, butrather for actual enjoyment of its wonderful river.Hence the beauty of the place is all within. Andcertainly no race with sense open to the awful,could have refrained from building a city at Devaprayag.I have missed many chances of seeingNiagara, but I cannot imagine that it is any granderthan the sight of the gorge as one stands on the

A PILGRIM'S DIARY^bridge at Devaprayag. Nor can I conceive of anythingmore terrible than the swirl and roar of therivers here, where the steps lead down over theliving rock to the meeting of the Alakananda andBhagirathi. Wind and whirlpool and torrent overwhelmus with their fierceness or voice and movement.The waters roar, and a perpetual tempestwails and rages. And as long as a thing is too muchfor one's mind to grasp, does it matter whether itis once or fifty times too much? Infinite is the terrorof the waters at Devaprayaga. Victory to theInfinite ! Glory to the Terrible !The point of land at the confluence, is a rockabout two hundred and fifty feet high. On the topis a temple with a very large enclosure containingmany shrines and sacred objects. How ancient isthe site one trembles to think, for the prayag isdedicated to Siva, by a hundred unmistakable signs,and the temple is of Ramachandra! This identityof Rama with Mahadeva was a matter that held thethoughts of Hindu folk a very very long time ago.To judge by it, the dedication might be sixteen, orseventeen, or more, hundreds of years old. Thatthe continuity of the site as a holy place has beenmaintained, is seen, moreover, when one finds alittle Siva-chapel under this main mound, containingimages of Ganesh and of Devi, and one emblem ofSiva of the sixth to seventh century type. There isa tradition that Sankaracharya visited Devaprayaga.Well may he have done so. But he did not make

!8 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANit Saivite. Its worship of Siva is of a pre-Sankaracharyantype.The dharmsala which we occupied here was adelightful piece of architecture. It consisted of twostoreys, of which we occupied the upper. It wasbuilt of mud and timber, and had immense bo-treesoutside. The upper floor consisted of a lar^everandah with a row of pillars running down themiddle from end to end, and one little room tuckedinto the corner. It was like the realisation of a caveat Ajanta or Ellora as a welling-house. But alas, itwas set with its face to the pratfaga^ which we couldnot see, even then, and its back to the wind-filledgorge, and in all the heat of the turbid night that -wespent there, there was not a breath of air !We were off early next day, to do ten miles andreach a halting-place called RAMPUR. On the way,we passed a dak bungalow called Kolta, for which,had we desired to use it, we ought to have taken thekey at the Ranibagh Bazar, half a mile earlier. Onreaching Rampur, we could not dream of consentingto stay. There was no dharmsala and even thechappars were only woven of boughs. There wasno water either, except what was horribly dirty, andthe dried-up stream, with its bed and banks full ofnameless horrors, looked like the haunt of alldisease. We decided, though it was already late,* It ought to be explained, for non-Hindu readers, thatprayag means simply confluences, or Junction, and that thesegeographical points are held peculiarly holy, in Hinduism.

19A PILGRIM'S DIARYto push on to BILWAKEDERA, five miles further. Oharriving there, we found that there was no accommodationfor a night's stay. We could only cookand eat a meal, rest, and then proceed some threemiles further to Srinagar. Even the rest was notwithout its perils, in our leaf and bough-wovenshelters. If it had not been for a tiny pucca hutthat stood by the river-side a propose of nothing atall, we might all have ended our halt by an attackof sunstroke. As it was, we took possession unimpeded,and so were able to mitigate the fiercenessof the exposure, by taking turns at resting there.The scenery from Devaprayaga to Bilwakederahad been bare and austere,—narrow winding gorges,steep precipices, and little hanging paths. Once ortwice we had parsed a few pine-trees, only to comeagain immediately on bo-trees and cactus. It isreally in the Himalayas, by the way, that the bo-treeis worshipped. More or less of an exotic, in thosehot valleys, it is treasured where it occurs, andterraces are built about it, till it becomes quite aland-mark. The bazaar at Kotdwara is built on twosides of a long parallelogram, down the middle ofwhich run three terraced bo-trees. There is no needto speak of its uniqueness, amongst trees of a lessergrowth. Where the small hill-mangoes rarely ripen,the density and coolness of the bo is unexampled.For centuries, in fact, its shade has been the villageschool. And the saying that when thunder is heard,

20 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANschools should break up, is said to be a tradition ofthis fact.At Bilwakedara a small stream joins the Ganges,and on a high rock which rises just at this point,stands a charming little temple. Opposite is said tobe the place where Markandeya went through histapasya, and there, when amabasya falls on aMonday there is always a specially marked celfebration.I was overjoyed at this fact, for I had expectedto trace out something of the history of Motherworship,on our way up the mountains, and herewas a most Important link, perhaps the last andgreatest of all. The temple of Bilwakedara itself isto Siva, and contains many fragments of old andextremely refined carvings. The priests say thatit was formerly immensely wealthy in these remainsof a great age, but that the Gohonna Flood, fifteenor twenty years ago, swept all into the Ganges,what remains being only the little that could berecovered. There is an old Siva of the sixth toseventh century type, and one little figure whichmight be the teaching Buddha. Again there is acarved footprint, and a beautiful lotus in the pavement.Besides all which, there are many earlyNarayanas and Devis. Evidently a very ancient site,marked by great energy of the higher religiousactivities. Was there an early monastery here?In the evening we reached Srinagar.

IIRemarkson accommodation.from Devaprayaga—A Citywith dharmsala and dakbungalow.Place.Srinagar,Battisera,Chhantikhal.Rudraprayagor Pundar.Agastyamuni,Gupta Kashi,Distance.18 miles8 milesP/2 milesDak bungalow. Two villageswith chappars.City. Dak bungalow and11 milesdharamsalas.Dharmsalas. Kund Chatty,12 miles

9 miles.Dharmsalas.10 miles[Pilgrimage to Triyugi Narayan begins here]Fatta Chatty, 7 miles Dharmsalas.Bhim Chatty. 3 milesRampur Chattya, 2 milesGouri Kund, 10 milesRambarrah, 4 milesKedar Nath, 8 milesDharmsalas.Panda* s guest house.We reached SRINAGAR on the evening of thetwenty-third, or five days after leaving Hardwar.The present town stands near the centre of a wideflat vale, in which the cactus and the bo-tree proclaima sub-tropical climate. It is obviously newhaving been re-built on a slightly different site, solately as the time of the Gohonna Flood aboutfifteen years ago. This event was a great epoch -

22 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANmaker, throughout the valleys leading up to BadriNarayana. It has swept away ancient temples andimages, and necessitated the re-building of many atown and village. One cannot but mourn the loss ofhistoric remains of priceless interest, but at the sametime one suspects that, from a sanitary and cleansingpoint of view, this flood may have done more goodthan harm. Like the Great Fire of London in 1667,it seems to have wiped out the past, and banisheddisease-germs as well as carvings. Perhaps theliving men and women on the pilgrim-roads havemore cause to bless than to lament its memory.Srinagar has been re-built, as already said, sincethe flood, but the site of the older city is still evidentenough, as one enters from the south, by clusteringof temples and shrines, amongst the cactus hedgesand peepul-trees of the wide open plain. There aremany still older temples to be seen from the road,of a ponderous and severe beauty in a type immediatelypreceeding that of mediseval Orissa. Theyare comparatively small but marvellously perfect.The style must have persisted long in the Himalayas,hence there are examples of it, in more developedand slender form, even here at Srinagar, as modernas two hundred years old. but the earliest examplesmust be very old indeed dating from the days of theHindu Revival under the Guptas, that is to say fromabout 400 A. D. or even earlier. Even the town ofSrinagar, as it was the time of the flood was onlyfounded, it is said, by Rajah Ajaipala in the year

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 231446, so that it could not be regarded as old froman Indian point of view. But the fact is that theremust always have been a city here, ever since theHimalayas began to be inhabited, and certainly eversince the coming of the Asokan missions.The geographical situation, in the midst of avalley that is almost a plain, forces the formation ofan organic centre. The height is only about sixteenhundred feet above the sea, so it supports a subtropicalvegitation and at the same time is accessibleto all the cooler airs of the higher mountains. Wecan well imagine how the first colony of Buddhisticmonks would gradually settle down, and live theirmonastic life, with its regular worship, preaching,and study, contented in the main to become anorganic part of the life about them. Actual tracesof their occupation have all been obliterated longlong ago, but wherever we find a very old religiousdedication, which has been a sheet-anchor of worshipfor century after century, we may infer withsome certainty that it was established by them.Such centres exist at Srinagar in the Temples ofKamaleswara and of the Five Pandavas. Of the two,Kamaleswara is probably the older. The story toldin the Puranas of the Mother, is here appropriatedto Siva, and He appears as the god to whom Ramamade the offering of blue lotuses! There is a Sivahere of Pre-Sankaracharyan type, and the templestands in a large and ancient enclosure, round whichare houses and other buildings. Vaishnavism also

24 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANhas flowed over Kamaleswara in its time, for thereare scores of votive tablets carved with the feet ofthe Lord. But the place has never forgotten itsSaivite origin, and claims to have been visited bySankaracharya, which we should certainly expect tohave been the case. The old temple of the FivePandavas, stands on the roadway into Srinagar.Was there once an intention of laying out thewhole country with temples dedicated in order tothe heroes and munis of the national epic? Oneshrinks from the thought of a task so gigantic, butthere seems some reason to think it may have beencontemplated, and the fact that most of these mustsince have dissappeared, is no real argument againstit. The Himalayan kingdom has always been insuch vital contact with the Hinduism of the plains,through sadhus and pilgrims and merchants, that ithas shared to the full in each period as it rose, andeach wave has been followed by another striving toefface the traces of that which preceded it. In thisparticular temple of the Five Pandavas, the Vaishnavismof Ramanuja has left its mark. There is agrotesque image of Narada worshipped here whichis said to commemorate the primeval stOayambara,where Narayana chose Lakshmi to be his spouse.The bride shrank from the appearance of Narada,who sat immediately in front of his master, andlooked at Narayana himself instead. This was indeedthe end to be attained, for she was the destinedbride of God. But the method involved a wound to

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 25Narada's self-love and for this he cursed Vishn^—'the devotee cursed God!—saying that in a futilebirth as Rama he would have trouble with this wife.This is evidently a late and corrupt tale, intendedto appropriate an image said to be Narada's, andto synthetise all the developments through -whichVaishnavism had already passed, claiming them ashistoric phases of the mediaeval form preached byRamanuja.Vaishnavism made a strong impression at Srinagar.It seems to have been held meritorious tomake a pilgrimage there, and give offerings at theshrine of Lakshmi-Narayana, in lieu of going all theway to Badri Narayana. There is one grand oldtemple, erected, for this purpose, four hundred yearsago. Unfortunately it is now surrounded by a cacttishedge,and is therefore inaccessible. It was supersededtwo hundred years later by a building of irrmchpoorer architecture. But the traditions are interesting.The Garura in front of the later temple is saidto be inferior to that which originally stood there.This, it is said, was so beautiful that it flew away !'Even this,' the guide will add, with pardona.'blepride in local gods *is such as you will not often see\Alas, I could not share his high opinion of the presentGarura as a work of art!There have been many Srinagars, and one ofthem at least would seem to have been connectedwith the consecration of a great; rock alter to Devi.If the tradition is to be trusted, human sacrifice was2

26 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANpractised here, and there is a story of the splendidindignation of Sankaracharya, who hurled the stoneof sacrifice upside down into the river, and left tothe sight of future generations only its bottom. Ifthis was so, Sankaracharya would appear not onlyas the enemy of Tantrikism, but also as the reformerof Mother-worship, in this matter. The rock is somemiles out of the present town, and stands near agreat deodar cedar on the opposite bank.From Srinagar, we went eight miles, and stayedat a dak bungalow called CHHANTIKHAL. The dharmsalahere is only six and a half miles from Srinagar,and is called BATTISERA, It is very unsheltered, in aravine, and there is little water. There is no otherdharmsala for about four miles, but this march isthrough beautiful forest, and two and a half milesare descent. At Chhantikhal we were for the firsttime amongst the pines. How wonderful it is to lieawake at night and listen, and darkness, to the soundin their branches, like the song of the sea, ^Parabrahman! Parabrahman!' * There is no undergrowthin a pine-forest, and every evil or unclean thing isspontaneously banished. Insects flee from theirstrong hot fragrance, and even flies cease to betroublesome. How grand is India, possessing withinher boundaries every kind of beauty ? She could notbut be the home of a vast and complex civilisation.RUDRAPRAYAGA, eleven miles beyond Chhantikhal,is the last halting-place on the common road toKedara and Badri. It is magnificent. Immense crags

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 27and boulders lie piled beside the stream, and thewater boils and foams in its rocky bed. Here theAlakananda and Mandakini meet, and lower down,at Devaprayaga, we had seen the junction of thisunited stream with the Bhagirathi or Ganges proper.But it must be understood that to the people wholive along their banks each one of these rivers is theGanges itself. Each one is holy. Each man's localriver is to him the head-water of the sacred flood.This is a spirit one cannot refuse to admire. Rudraprayagis a little place built on the point between thestreams. There is a long temple-stair, as at Devaprayag,leading down to the Prayag, and a couple ofsmall temples set at the top. It is said to havesuffered terribly in the floods. The old temple wasliterally carried away. On the near side, the mountainshave receded slightly and left room for a groveof mangoes and bo, while on the slopes behind,and far above, are the pines with their perpetualchant.At AGASTYAMUNI, after twelve miles of journey,we entered a more obscure and ancient world. Theroad from Rudraprayag onwards had been terrible,but the scenery wild and beautiful. Everythinghenceforth was on a smaller scale. Agastyamuniitself was the most primitive of places. Here theRishi Agastya had done his tapasya, they said. Thesame is told of Kashmir, a valley formed in the sameway as this. Comparing the two and rememberingthat the rishi is said to have drunk up the ocean, we

28 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANwere all inclined to regard the tale as a geographicalmyth, referring to a time when the valley was a lake.The soil is so evenly placed here, as also in the valeof Srinagar, that there is no room to doubt that itreally was once a lake, and that geologically speaking,at no distant epoch. Are myths like this ofAgastyamuni, dim memories of something seen byprimitive man, or are they a kind of Physical Geography,deliberately invented for educationalpurpose? The last suggestion does not sound soabsurd at the place itself, as it certainly does onpaper. At Agastyamuni, for the first time, we foundthe temple enclosing a square which once containedthe village, and even now held several dharmsalas.We had seen this square already in the temple ofKamaleswara, but there it was within a building in alarge town ; it did not itself stand as the principalfeature, and constitute what was evidently the oldmarket-place. The fields about Agastyamuni werevery beautiful. Great trees offered shadow here andthere, and pebble banks ran by the side of the road,as we left the place next day. Under a great bo, wefound a number of exquisitely beautiful images,gathered together as a Kshetra-Pal. These attestedthe old importance of the place. But the heart ofthe whole was the temple. The great court, theytold us, was the scene of Agastyamuni *s tapasya, andhe was commemorated by an image in the principalchapel. But there was a strong guddee in the middlewith a smaller seat beside it, which the people re-

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 29garded as the throne of Ramachandra. This is onlyone of many signs of the ancient and deep-seatedimpression made on this region by the Ramayana.All through our visits to sacred spots, we foundthat *the age of Rama' was used as an indication ofprofound antiquity. There is an idea that the herohimself once visited these parts. And every villageotherwise nameless is called Rampur, or somethingequivalent. ^This place has been here since thedays of Ramachandra," they say, as the utmost thatthey can conceive in age. Hence the two seats inthe old court of Agastyamuni have a significance oftheir own, whatever their actual function may havebeen.But besides this, there are a thousand interestingscraps. In the porch there is an image of Narasinha.In some of the chapels there are plaques and masksof the Nine Planets, of Narada, of Ganesh, and ofold Buddhist carvings. Some one brought here thehead of a stone Bodhisatfcva. There is also a chapelto Sringi Rishi, the father of Shamika, in the AdiParva of the Mahabharata. And there is an ordinarySiva in an old square watercourse, while outside thereis an emblem that ought to be famous for its peculiarityof form, a dharmachakra that is really a Sivaof pre-Sankaracharyan type. The people call it aBrahmamurti, which fact is again almost as importantas the form itself. Four wheels or chakras areplaced one on each side of the top of a short pillar.The top of the pillar is a cube as is also its foot ; but

30 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANits shaft is octagonal. The cube surmounted by theoctagonal shaft, surmounted by a thimble-shapedtop, is the form of Siva which was common beforeSankaracharya. The temple-enclosure which mayonce have been the court of a monastery, and thenand afterwards the village square and market-place,still contains dharmsalas. It is half inn, and halfcathedral close. In inn-yards of this type wereplayed the miracle-plays and moralities of mediaevalEngland. And here, if a party of strolling playerscame along, or a group of students went out withtheir magic lantern, it would be in the temple courtthat the country folk would foregather for their entertainment.Outside, all is of the most primitive. Thesanitation is also, sad to say, not very advanced inkind. But the beauty of these mediaeval settings iswonderful, and all about the place are the wide fieldsand those cool winds that go with the rushing stream.The cloister-like court is still more noticeable atGupta Kashi, twelve miles further on. Here thetemple-court actually adjoins the village-square inwhich we are housed, and the whole is like somethingseen in a play. Merchants come, and sadhusclad on ashes, with matted locks, perform strangeworships round fires of cow-dung, and the simple lifeof the pilgrims is lived before one's eyes. Wereached Gupta Kashi through some of the most wildlybeautiful scenery that the world can contain. Thereis one long glen which is surely the very crown of theearth's loveliness „ At the end, we came out on a

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 31group of shelters called Kund Chatty, and when wehad reached our destination we much regretted thatwe had not insisted on waiting at Kund Chatty tillthe cool of the day, so hard and arid is the climb, inthe fierce noon-sun, between it and Gupta Kashi.If we had done this, however, though we shouldhave had greater physical comfort, we should nothave drunk so deep of the middle ages as we did onreaching Gupta Kashi. This village regards its ownclaims to recognition as resting on the shrine ofVishwanatha, in the temple hard by the dharmsala.This they only profess to have owned since the eraof the troubles under Aurangazeb. But the site is, infact, immensely older. There are two temples inthe one court, as so often happens and one is thatof Vishwanatha, with images of Narayana outsidethe door, while the other is to Ardhanari, a veryvery old and quite pre-Shankaracharyan dedication.The place has underground drainage, covered byflags like Benares and Mauryan Pataliputra.A very interesting feature of the pilgrim-life, asone sees it in a spot like this, is its leisure andfreedom for refined pursuits. Half an hour afterarrival, when those whose duty it is to cook havetaken up their work, all the others may be seenseated each little party round its own mat or carpet,deep in conversation, or listening to some one whosewords are heard with evident respects. It remindsone of the stories told of travellers in the ArabianNights. These people are, some of them merchants,

32 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANsome of them pilgrims ; their packages are allbestowed under cover ; their animals are being fedand watered by their appointed servants, and theythemselves are ready for their meal, when it shallbe announced. Meanwhile they are at no loss.Some one is telling a story, or reading from a book,or they are all absorbed in conversation. Thus forthe men. The women are still threading their laboriousway, doubtless, from shrine to shrine andsalutation to salutation, and have 'not yet begun tothink of comfort. But, this civilisation of the menreminds one, I do not know why, of merchant-civilisationseverywhere. It seems to belong to thatstratum of evolution, and one's thoughts are drivenback on those scholars who say that long before theappearance of royal and military nationalities, thewhole of the East was covered, more or less, witha great merchant organisation emanating from theBharatas, and ramifying over the then known world,a mercantile civilisation, which moreover, laid thefoundation of all, that Europe has since gained ofculture either moral or intellectual. Can it be thathere, in this life, of which, as one sits on the stonewindow-seat overlooking the square at Gupta Kashi,one catches a glimpse, we have a surviving fragmentof the Age of the Caravans? Yonder, in thedharmsala opposite, sit the caravan-chiefs, and thetalk they hold amongst themselves is of distant landsand the opportunities or trade, and is yet to buildup results, in migrations of faiths and learning and

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 33customs, of which they, talking, little dream. Weare back in a distant aeon, and the nations of Europeand Asia that are to be born of the tendencies hereat work, are still in the future.The road to Fatta Chatty, the village of theRuins, which is our next stopping-place, is of surpassinginterest. A very short distance out of GuptaKashi the way divides, for Akhi Math on the oneside, and Kedar Nath on the other. Soon after this,we are in the midst of an old religious centre ofgreat importance. On the hill opposite in AkhiMath, the present winter-seat of the Kedar Nathorder of Sankaracharya. Here on this side is NallaChatty, with a temple which contains ancient Saiviteremains, together with relics of the great age insculpture, Bodhisattvas and the rest. But the greatthing is a memorial of some kind, perhaps aJayastambha or Kirtistambha, as the people themselvessuggest, which is evidently a curiouslymodified Buddhistic stupa. There is also a host oflittle temples which mark the transition from stupa totemple, and give us the link sought so long in theevolution of the Bengali temple. Most of the site isdisused. The little temples have become meaninglessto the villagers. There is a great dais orplatform on which sacred memorials seem at somefar past time to have been crowded, and this remindsus of Kamaleswara at Srinagar. where we have anexample of the same kind. But the great featureof the place is an immense unenclosed terrace,

34 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANrepresenting the monastery-court or vilage-square.which stands on the face of the hillside looking outover the valley, and having access to an old roadfrom the riverside which the villagers call theGangarastra. Interesting things, amongst them astone guddee. are scattered about and around thisterrace. It has a swing, too, and doubtless is stillused for village-festivities. Ancient life was vastlymore coherent and organic than modern, andmonastery or temple was the scene, not merely ofprayer and meditation, but also of school and play,of bazaar and parliament, of drama and art andhospitality. It is because they are the heirs of allthese multifarious functions and activities that theancient sites have to this day so complex an aspect.Thus the front of Nalla Temple overhangs theriver, while its opposite entrance is on the pilgrimroad.The whole sacred enclosure lies between.The road now winds down into the valley, and itbecomes evident from the character of the villagebuildingsand farm-houses, as we pass, that therehas been wealth and splendour, once upon a time,in this unknown place. Another feature of pastglory that we notice throughout this particular districtis the care of the water. The valleys are rich insprings and streams, and these are very carefully andskilfully engineered for irrigation and then made todebouch at convenient places for bathing and drinking,through old carved spring-heads. When thissign of advanced civilisation ceases, we may believe

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 35that we have passed beyond the influence of an oldcivic and monastic centre. On our return Journey,in a very different part of the Himalayan kingdom,I was able to see the same thing again, at a placecalled Musaki Nau, between Pauri and Kotdwara,the care and worship of water is always in this countrythe mark of a deep and splendid civilisation. Theworship of rivers has a new meaning for me sinceI have made the Northern Pilgrimage. I can seenow that it has had much to do with the preservationof drinking-water from defilement, and has expressedroyal responsibility for checking of infection. Nalla,then may have been an early Buddhistic site. It isnot unnatural that monasteries should give place totemples, although the true arrangements is undoubtedlythat which we now see at Bodh-Gaya,where the temple stands outside, and the monastery,in a place apart, guards it and cares for it. Thereis a tendency, when learning grows dim, for monksto build a shrine in their own enclosure and conductregular services there. This shrine, when the orderhas disappeared, falls to the care of the Brahmins orsecular clergy, who thus acquire a vested interest Inits maintenance. Hence we may find a templewhere there was once a monastery. In this way wemay account for the origin of Kamaleswara inSrinagar, and of Nalla Temple here. But it is notso clear that Gupta Kashi and Agastyamuni werealso monastic, though it is not impossible. Inthese, the temple square has more of the Place, or

36 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANcivic element, and less of the sacerdotal and purelytheological.When we have gone a few miles further and havepassed through what seems to have been an oldtimecity of importance, we come to Bhethu Chatty.Here there are two temples, standing together onthe road-side, and an immense cluster on theopposite side. The two on the road itself are theolder. One, the older of these again, is to Satya-Narayana. The other is to Birbhadra, or Siva. Onthe other side of the road, the main temple is toLakshmi-Narayana, and this adjoins a tank whichhas no less than seven small temple-like shrines on.its sides. Altogether the small shrines dotted aboutthe main temple of Lakshmi-Narayana here aretwenty. There is also a curious monument with aninscription, which the people call a Kirtistambha.All the temples and shrines are surmounted byama.la.kis. Going back to the temples of Satya-Narayana and Birbhadra, on the other side of theroad, we find that there is in this case also a tankwith many little shrines about it, down in the valleybelow, not far from the river. The Lakshmi-Narayana centre evidently imitated all this, at alater age. In three small shrines which are in arow behind Satya-Narayana and Birbhadra, with alarge bo tree beside them, I found one old Siva,and in all cases square water-courses. Amongstthe small shrines clustered about Lakshmi-Narayanaon the opposite side of the road, I found one small

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 37chaitya-like building covering a spring. The architecturalform, and the fact that on the lintel of thedoor is a medallion containing Ganesh, would go toshow that this is more ancient than the shrines nearit, and perhaps belonged to the Birbhadra centre,before the Vaishnava movement of Ramanuja causedthe building of a Lakshmi-Narayana temple here.The chaitya form cannot fail to suggest the Buddhistperiod. Bhethu Chatty is part and parcel of somechapter in history, which if it could be unravelled,would tell us much about a series of religious transitionsthrough which the Himalayan peoples havepassed, beginning with Buddhism, and ending withVaishnavism. The centre of which it forms a partmay be said to extend from Gupta Kashi on thesouth, to Bhethu Chatty on the north and even toinclude Akhi Math on the opposite side of theValley. This whole region has been the theatre ofmuch religious and monastic history.FATTA CHATTY, where we next passed the night,was only seven miles in all from Gupta Kashi. Itwas a very lovely place, with large mud and timberbuilthouses, a stream with a mill-wheel, and oneimmense deodar. This is perhaps the place to speakof the architectural beauty of the chatties. Theroom we occupied at Fatta Chatty that night wasthe most perfectly proportioned chamber I haveever inhabited. It was large and low, with greatbeams of wood, open verandah-like windows withwide seats, and mud-floor. The social dignity, and

38 KEDAR NATH XND BADRI NARAYANsomething very like splendour, that are expressedin such a building cannot be described. But Indianpeople are so accustomed to architectural beauty indomestic buildings that it does not strike them, asit does one of long European associations. Thepalaces of kings in Europe would be proud to containrooms as lovely as the rustic halls in these Himalayanvillages. At Fatta we had special opportunitiesalso for admiring the care spent on the springsand the fountain-heads.Our next stopping-place was Gouri Kund, tenmiles away. On the way, we passed Bhim andRampur Chatties. We also passed Sone Prayag, arude and dangerous-looking bridge over a river-confluence.Here last year there was a good modernbridge, but it broke suddenly, under the weight oftwo hundred pilgrims who were all on it at the samemoment. For it is said that never was there seena year like the last, for the multitude of the pilgrims.On the occassion in question, some forty or fiftywere, it seems killed, and another forty or fiftymaimed or injured. Many of course escaped hurtaltogether. Incredible as it sounds, the bridge hasnot yet been mended, and pilgrims have still to crossby some sort of makeshift contrivance.The scenery of this day's stage was very fine.We went through long defiles of mountains, pine.fir and cedar clad. Gouri Kund itself is ancient andsqualid. At least one pre-Sankaracharyan Siva maystill be traced, and there is a tank in a sacred square.

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 39It is here that we find the hot springs that belongto Kedar Nath. The pavements speak of the ageof the village, and though one looks upon themtenderly for this, one is not altogether reconciledthereby to their dirt and slush.Eight miles further is KEDAR NATH itself. Theroad, on this final day, is terrible, especially the lastfour miles of steep ascent. Soon after leaving GouriKund a road branches off for Triyugi Narayana,evidently the rival shrine of the Vaishnava period.At the foot of the hills the last chatty we pass isRambarra, a damp exposed place where it wouldnot be wise to pass the night, and this fact makesthe final stage of the journey doubly hard for old orinfirm persons. About the beauty of the scenery onecould not say enough, but the difficulties of the climbought not either to be forgotten. It is a dolorousstairway, as hard as life itself, in very truth, as thepanda ruefully said to me, **the way to Heaven!**All this is forgotten however when at last we reachthe uplands and begin to feel ourselves withinmeasurable distance of Kedar Nath. We are nowamongst the wide turf-covered tablelands, and theflowers begin to abound, as in some paradise ofMogul painters. At every step, we pass or arepassed by other pilgrims. The eagerness round andabout us is indescribable. At last comes the momentwhen the temple is visible for the first time. Ashout goes up from our carriers and others, and manyprostrate themselves. We press forward, more

40 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANrapidly than before. It is even now a mile or soto the village. But at last we arrive, and enteringfind that the shrine itself stands at the end of thelong avenue-like street, with the mountain andglacier rising sheet behind it, as if all India convergedupon Kedar Nath as its northern point, andall roads met at the sacred feet of the Lord ofMountains. Probably, when first the temple wasbuilt in this spot, it was actually on the edge of theglacier, which in all these centuries has retreatedonly to a distance of less than a mile. We hadmade great efforts to reach our goal on a Monday,for this is held a great benison in visiting a shrineof Siva. But when we arrived, it was the middleof the day, and the temple was closed till theevening arati. As the afternoon ended, the coldblue mists came down from the mountains,enwrapping everything ; and one sat out in thevillage street, watching cowled forms, in their brownkombols, pacing back and forth through the mistbefore the tight-shut doors. Suddenly we werecalled to see the arati. Darkness had fallen butthe mists had gone, and the stars and the snowswere clear and bright. Lights were blazing andbells clanging within the temple and we stoodwithout, amongst the watching people. As thelights ceased to swing and the arati ended, a shoutof rapture went up from the waiting crowd. Thenthe cry went out to clear the road, and the rushof the pilgrims up the steep steps began. What a

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 41sight was this ! On and on, up and up, they came,crowding, breathless, almost struggling, in their madanxiety to enter the shrine, reach the image, and atthe last, by way of worship, to bend forward andtouch with the heart, the sacred point of the mountain! For this half-embrace is what the worshipconsists of at Kedar Nath. They poured in at thegreat south door, out by the east. On and on, upand up, one had not dreamt the place contained somany people as now planted forward to obtainentrance. Suddenly, from one of the door-keepersI heard an exclamation of pity, and then he stoopedand tenderly lifted a little bent old woman, boweddown under the weight of years, who had lost herfooting in the crowd and might have fallen and beentrodden under foot. It was one of the sights of alife time, or to stand there, in the black darkness atthe top of the steps, and watch the pilgrims streamingin. It seemed as if all India lay stretched beforeOne, and Kedar Nath were its apex, while from allparts everywhere, by every road, one could see thepeople streaming onward, battling forward climbingtheir way up all for what?—for nothing else thanto touch God IWe had a wonderful walk next day, to theglaciers and the heights, for a while and some ofus rested on a hillside, listening to the perpetualmuffled boom of the avalanches, as they ceaselesslybroke and fell from some part or other of the greatice-mass to the north. "Yes,** said the peasant who

42 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANguided us, thoughtfully, as he stood gazing with usat the glacier. "It looks as if it stood perfectly still.But really it is moving, like any other river F* Thegreat temple looked small and distant now, like avillage-church, and only the towering heights seemedgrand enough for the worship of God. We felt thisstill more when we stood and looked up at the vastsnowy expanse that they call the Mahaprasthana, theGreat Release. For the Pandava story culminates atKedar Nath, and we are shown the very road bywhich Yudhisthira and his brothers and the LadyDraupadi went, on that last great journey by whichthey reached the end. Others since then havefollowed them, it is said, and have signed theirnames, at the last, on a great rock-face that standson the way. We made our way there, and sureenough we found numbers of trisuls drawn in whiteand black and red, in wavering lines, some of them,as if by hands that shook with age, and some ofthem strong and firm, but all, if the country-folk areto be believed, the autographs of those who felt thatdesire was ended, and the supreme renunciationtheirs to make. "For the shastras,** say those whoknow, "make man free of society at two places,Kedar Nath and Allahabad/' Surely Allahabadmust once have been very beautiful!The site of Kedar Nath is very old. There isa temple of Satya-Narayana built over a spring, inthe village-street. There is also a tiny chapel, containingthe nine forms of Devi. There are pre-

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 43Sankaracharyan Sivas, also, and square watercourses,dotted about the central shrine. On the whole itwould seem as if, at the period commonly referredto as the visit of Sankaracharya. Satya-Narayanahad been superseded by Siva as the principal deity.And the Devi-worship which was probably stillolder than Satya-Narayana remained henceforth sideby side with it, in a similar subordination. Thisquestion, of the order in which its pre-Sanakaracharyanphases succeeded one another, is the greatcrux of the story of Hinduism !The carving round the doorway of the templeis evidently ancient, and the ornament consists ofHinduistic figures of gods and kings contained inniches, not unlike those which contain Buddhas, inthe last of the art-periods at Ajanta. This wouldpre-dispose us to assign a date between the expulsionfrom Gandhara 751, and the year 1000 A.D., leaningsomewhat to the latter, because of the very manifestdecadence in style. We must remember that theimportance of Kedar Nath as a place of pilgrimagehas always kept it in touch with the Plains, and thatat the same time there seems never to have been anyMahammedan invasion of these Himalayan valleys.These facts explain why it is possible to find in thisremote spot an important link between olderBuddhistic and later Hindu sculpture.Above all, Kedar Nath is the shrine of thesadhus. As in the days of Buddhism, so in those ofSankaracharya, and as then so also now, the yellow

44 KEDAR NATO AND BADRI NARAYANrobe gleams and blistens in all directions. There isno begging, for the sadcibratas supply all the wants ofmonastic visitors. But there is a world of enthusiasm,and still the tradition goes amongst them that KedarNath is a place of good omen for sannyasis, for herecame Sankaracharya and falling into samadhi died!It was the second day of our stay when an oldman who had been seriously ill for many months,reached the place and made his darsana. He hadended his journey, and hastened to fulfil his vowwithin the hour. But scarcely had he done so, barelyhad he ceased from prayer, not yet was the raptureof achievement abated, when the battle was declaredfor him to be finished, and in the bright morningair, with long sighing breaths, his soul went forth.Such is the benediction with which the Lord ofMountains lays His hand upon His own !

Badri Narayan

III.Remarkson accommodation,Place. Distance.Gouri Kund 8 milesFatta Chatty 10 milesUkhi Math 7 miles Dharmsalas. /Potibassa 8 milesBunea Kund 2 milesChota Chobda 10!^ miles Dharmsalas.[Pilgrimage to Tunganath here]Jungal Chatty 4 miles Chappars.Mandal Chatty 4 miles Chappars.Gopeswara 5 miles Dharmsalas.Lall Sanghaoor Chamoli 15 miles Dharmsalas aPipalkoti 9 milesGarura Ganga 4 milesGulabkoti 9 milesKumar Chatty 3 milesKhanoti Chatty 4 milesJoshi Math 9 milesVishnu Prayaga 2 milesPandukeswara 12 milesHanumana Chatty 4 milesBadri Narayana 8 milesDharmsalas and dak bungalow.Dharmsalas and dak bungalow.

Dharmsalas and dak bungalow.Dak bungalows, Dharmsalas.Dharmsalas, dak bungalow ofShashadhara.Panda's guest houses and dakbungalow.

46 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANWe stopped again, on our return journey, atGouri Kund and Fatta Chatty. Then we took theroad of deep descent into the valley below,and climbing, as cheerfully as we might up theopposite slope, found ourselves at UKHI MATH.From Fatta Chatty to Ukhi Math was about sevenmiles. It was very impressive to see from distancea small square terrace below the monastery, andon it some ten or twelve small shrine-like monumentsgrouped together, near a great bo-tree. Thesetemple-like erections reminded the eye of the shrinesat Nalla, and seemed a striking confirmation of theidea that Ukhi Math had only been the last of a seriesof sites chosen for the winter-monastery of the monksin charge of Kedar Nath. These, however, thoughso like them, were not shrines, but samadhis of longdead and gone mahunts, or, as they are called in theHimalayas, Raouls. They were obviously later instyle than the shrines on the other side of the valley,though they differed much among themselves inform.. On the same terrace was the old and verybeautiful bathing-tank of the monastery. About itand in its little niches were lovely fragments of oldcarvings. And the view from under the shade of thebo-tree was a superb vision of a semicircle of snows,with a receding vista of interlacing green and purplevales leading up to them;. Tr^is long ascendingavenue makes the snows look as vast here in theforenoon, as at Kedar Nath in the evening. Such aview would be impossible on the other side of the

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 47valley, and would almost explain why Sankaracharyashould have placed his math here. A little higheron the hill, in the midst of a village huddled togetherin terraces, stands the monastery itself. We cannothelp thinking that the whole place must be like afragment of Lhassa.The math is a large square building, with animmense and most imposing door, over which is apainted modern cornice, in black and red, ofelephants. Within, there is a bazaar and what isalmost a whole village, with a large temple in thecentre. This temple, however, is still not sosacrosanct as the small ancient chapel, contained inthe verandah-like 'pujar-dalan' at the side. Here isthe reason asserted for the site of the math, in an oldaltar, to the Mother, said to have been establishedby Ukha the daughter of Ban Asur. The Ban Asuris a person of whom we constantly hear in thisneighbourhood. Who was he? There is a villagecalled by his name, and Gopal Panda assures us thathe has left there some remains of fortification. Onethinks of the proud Assurs of Assyria—Asur Bani-Pal,and Asur Nuzir-Pal,—as one has seen them in theBritish Museum, and "wonders if traces of some remoteinvasion by men of the same race are here remembered.Mandhata Rajah is also quoted but somewhatvaguely, in connection with the age of the holy site.The carvings in the varandah are mainly Ganeshes,griffins (almost like our unicorns) and dwarapalas.There are a couple of pieces of carving belonging to

48 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANVaishnavism, build into the wall on right and left ofa door on the far side of the courtyard. These arevery fine indeed. They are much later than theothers, but then there is an idea—that Krishna andthe Gopis—behind them, which is enough to accountfor their artistic superiority.Ukhi Math was originally granted to the order,subject to military service to the old kings of Garhwal,of the same line as the present family, and very finereading are the copies of deed which have been madefrom time to time. The present Raoul is said to bethe one hundred and tyenty-fifth in the succession.Allowing ten years to each reign, which could hardlybe too much, this gives us twelve hundred and fiftyyears of existence, taking us back to something likethe middle of the seventh century, for the beginningof the dynasty. It cannot be held impossible thatUkhi Math has been the seat of the order throughoutthis period. The site is evidently prehistoric. Thetemple in the middle of the courtyard is built onancient foundations, and its lowest tiers are stillold, though the upper parts are much restored.Again, the cornice of elephants over the door, thoughnot very old, since it is made of wood, would seemto be old in pattern, and even to form a link withBuddhism. Buddha, the spiritual hero, was alwayssymbolised by the elephant, and the fact that thisparticular cornice reappears above the doors of otherancient Himalayan monasteries also, seems significantin the highest degree of a continuous link in

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 49tradition with the remote past. The one thing thatis half-modern—being only late mediaeval—at UkhiMath, is the little group of samadhis. These are insome cases rode in structure, but even when elaborate,they are surmounted only by half an amaloki, orby a spiral bud or other purely arbitrary finial ornament.It is only fair to add that the neighbouringtank is fine, and probably older in style than they.This being so, we may perhaps accept Ukhi Mathas really an ancient establishment, and regard thegroup of samadhis as due to some outbreak of anerratic fashion, many centuries later.The little terrace is occupied now by a modernhospital, and the doctor and his patients enjoy therepose and shade that were first designed to beginand end the day of pious meditation. The mind canstill see the old time monks pacing up and down themtelling their beads or seated, lost in thought at dawn.This part of our journey will always be memorableto us, for the fact that our gentle panda herefell in with a sadhu, in whom was the very bone andmeat .of all Vedanta. Lost in their argument, thetwo old men trudged along, with heads close together,pursuing some vigorous train of thought. The Sadhuwas of somewhat austere cast, and excitement wasnot upon him. His voice grew louder and louder,rising to a perfect shout, and with each increment ofintensity we could see our panda's smile broadeningand his head nodding still more rapidly. Suddenlythe conclusion of the whole matter was arrived at.3.

50 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANThey sprang, with a simultaneous impulse, toopposite sides of the road, and there stood noddingand sawing the air at each other, while the laterSadhu, with the emphasis of repetition, continuedto vociferate the point of their mutual delight. Thisquaint spectacle compensated us for much that wemight otherwise have felt as sad oblivion on thepart of our own companion and guide IFrom Ukhi Math it is eight miles to Potibasa ;then two miles to Bunea Kund ; and still half a milefurther to Chota Chobda, another village restingplace.Of all the Chatties I have ever seen, ChotaChobda is the most beautifully placed. The wholeseries of these places is at the summit of the pass,looking out on a great range of snows which includesKedar Nath and Badri Narayan as sister-peaks, andalso Gangotri and Jam'notri. But Potibasa and BuneaKund, though high, are in pockets of the pass. OnlyChota Chobda is frankly on the open hillside. Herewe pass the last of the carpenters" sheds where wemight buy wooden bowls, one of the small specialitiesof the pilgrimage. Under foot, we have short closeturf, absolutely starred in all directions withanemones, blue and white, like English daisies. It iscold and bracing and while we were there, indeed,we had a severe snowstorm. We quitted the heightreluctantly enough next morning, and proceeded onthe long descent through thick forests, that brought usto Jungle Chatty, four miles off, and finally to MandalChatty eight miles from Chobda, at the very bottom

A PI]•a •9- ^fi, \-s ^i,"'yfe^SRY ^ Jj 51of the hill. It is at ch0^^^^^^ leavefor Tunganath. such of jo thisextra climb. The beauty of Tunganath is that all thesnows can be seen from there, even better than fromChobda. Nor is the Journey, it is said, so hard asone would suppose. The Maharajah of Gwalior hasmade it easy, by cutting paths and mending roads.The Tunganath pilgrims return to the main road againat a dismal place called Bhingoda Chatty where oneactually sees the staircase in the mountain by whichthey have descended.We were doing double marches in these days,owing to the illness of one of our party, that wemight reach a place called LaII Sanghao or Chamoli,where we should be on the Thibetan Road, and enjoythe resources of a dak bungalow. Thus even onreaching Mandal Chatty, we were still some eightmiles away from our destination.It was at the end of the pass, when still about amile and a half from Chamoli that we came toGopeswara, a place which is almost a town in size,and forms a pilgrimage on its own account. Thereis a large temple here to the Mother, but Gopeswarais really Siva, as the Lord of the Cows. The storytold of its foundation is the familiar one of the cowthat was followed to the jungle and found to bepouring her milk over a natural Siva in the rock.Taking this as the altar, says the story, the templewas built over it. In plain fact, we have here acourt like that of Bhethu Chatty, on which open thea ^(fi^?-^^—— p

52 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANquarters of the Mahunt or Raoul by means of a door,surmounted by the familiar frieze of elephants in redand black. The quadrangle gives access to the templeproper, with all the shrines and memorials that havegrown up round it. The place is of unexampledwealth in Sivas of pre-Sankaracharyan type,—cube^octagon, and thimble-shaped top—and even containstwo at least of the older four-headed form with onelater supecimen, covered "with what I take to be thefeet of the Lord, but said by the country people tobe a crore of heads. There was a small chaityashapedshrine containing one of the four-headedSivas, under a tree. This was the shrine of AnasuyeDevi, the goddess who unveiled herself before thechild who was Brahma-Vishnu-Siva, to give alms.There is history in this little story, could we observinglydistil it out! The old Raoul says with pridethat this temple has been here 'since the days ofRama.' One of the most remarkable things aboutthe place is a trisul of victory made of ancient swordswith an inscription. Lower down on the hillside, aswe came along, we had seen another temple, withsmall shrines near it. We were not able to go andexplore, but it would not be surprising to find thatthis was Vaishnava centre of the mediaeval period.Gopeswara is the cathedral city of a small independentdiocese. Two miles further we came down intothe gorge of the Alakananda, and found ourselves inthe Canyon-like scenery of the Thibetan Road.From this point on, the hills about us were almost

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 53naked, except of scanty pines, and only played uponby green and purple lights and shadows. Nine milesfrom Chamoli by an easy march through desolatescenery, is Pipalkoti. Here there is a charminglysituated amioki" crowned temple in a gorge and in thetown itself, an old market-square. In a rude littleshrine near the dak bungalow, surmounted by apre-Sankaracharyan Siva, are some bits of old carving,with old Narayanas and Devis. The view ismarvellous. Golden, green, rice terraces fall awayfrom our feet ; then suddenly comes a gap, wherethe slope dips into the ravine below us ; and thensteep sombre cliffs and crags rise abruptly beyond,and the whole valley is closed in, in front of us, bythis curving line of sharp purple peaks. These linesof steeps and scarps are wild and grand like thescenery of the north coast of Ireland or the west ofScotland, and one can hardly believe that the whitesea-gulls are not nesting there, above the scantypines. We are at a height of four and a halfthousand feet.About nine miles further is Gulabkoti, passingGarura Ganga half way. To worship at Garura Gangais supposed to be sovereign against snake-bite forthe following year. Here we suddenly come uponthe sight of the snows again. There is a handsometemple at Gulabkoti. to Lakshmi-Narayana. Thelandscape grows more and more austere and fine.We go through narrow gorges with cliffs of purpleshadows and green blushes. It is on this up-joumey

54 KEDAR NATH ^ND BADRI NARAYANthat we see best the beauty of colour, though thedown-journey, bringing us to exposed places whenthey are in shadow, is in many respects easier tomake.Two or three miles beyond Gulabkoti is KumarChatty, in a pocket of the mountain, Khanoti Chattyis much better placed. It is about ten miles in all,to Joshi Math, the winter-quarters of the BadriNarayan Raoul and his staff. The main temple isnow Vaishnava though it is easy to see that the wholeplace has once been Saivite. The bazaar is quaintand interesting. Beside the temple there is a roofedspring, and opposite, the entrance to the monastery.A second square, on the other side of the math,contains an old Siva-temple with its bull before it.The main temple of Joshi Math is significant. It isbuilt on a strong terrace of masonry, which supportsa series of seven shrines as buttresses. The dedicationsof these shrines are supremely interesting. Oneof them, which is chaitya-shaped in form, in fullworking order, and evidently important, is to theNine forms of the Mother—rather incongruous, wereit not for the explanations of history, in a professedlyVaishnavlte temple I There is also one which contains,as a member of our party tells me, an extraordinarilybeautiful Parbatty and Mahadeva. Thereis also a shrine to Ganesha ? I ! We constantly findin these mountain-temples, that even when makingchanges and restorations fragments of old-buildinghave been used for ornament. In this way, here we

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 55find the lintel of the main temple carved with doorsof viharacells, sumounted by three horse-shoepatterns evidently representative of ornate chaityas.The next day, passing Vishnu Prayaga at thebottom of the Joshi Math valley, we come after sixmiles march, to Pandukeswara. Vishnu Prayaga is atiny temple perched on a rock above a boiling confluence.The Alakananda and the Vishnu-Gangameet here in a whirlpool, and the great rapids of theAlakananda, just above, throw up a perpetual vapour,which is really fine spray. The Gohonna floodentered the valleys we know, somewhat above thispoint, so Pandukeswar is the only village on our lineof march that escaped it. And this has not been wellfor Pandukeswara I The population too is Bhuitya,which cannot be said to improve the cleanliness ofthe place. Here there are two temples, standing sideby side. Both have succumbed to mediaevalVaishnavism, so it is now impossible to say whatwere their original dedications, though it is evidentenough that the site was saivite. One of the templesis slightly peculiar in form. The tower is a cylinderon a cube, with flying gargoyles at the corners. Theother is of the usual form, and less old. The placeis famous for five copper-plate grants, of which fourremain. They were deciphered by Rajendra LalaMitra, and refer to obscure grants of land. They aremost beautiful in appearance, especially one, whichbears a bull as its seal.The next day brings us, with a twelve miles

56 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANmarch, to Badri Narayana itself. About six milesaway there is a chatty (called Hanuman Chatty,guarding the pass. The road is beautiful, but also aMttle difficult, though not to be compared in thisrespect with that to Kedar Nath. Badri Narayanitself is said to have been established by Sankaradiarya, who placed it where it is, because of theneighbourhood of the hot springs in the tank close by.^n this is differs from Kedar Nath, which holds by thetradition that it was already established, andSankaracharya only made it famous, a distinctionwhich in all probability is perfectly true. Thearchitecture of the temple is painfully modern, havingundergone repair, without regard to history, and thegateway and walls are late Mogul in style. Butpwing to this very modernness, the worship is betterorganised, the pandas may not enter the temple withtheir clients, and the whole space is reserved fordevotion pure and simple. In the course of ages,vested rights have grown up at the Saivite centre, andthe conduct of the pandas within the temple is irritatingin the extreme. As befits a shrine of the Mahammedanperiod, the Vaishnava temple is even moreexclusive than Kedar Nath. But one of the mostbeautiful things I have ever seen was the walk roundit of the pilgrims, telling their beads, in the earlymorning. They seemed to be lost in a dream ofpeace and prayer. It is significant of the mediaevalfrom of Vaishnavism to which it belongs—the sameAS that of Tulsidas Ramayana—that Ghanta-Karna is

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 57the Kotwal of this shrine. Ghanta-Karna, the Man.who would not hear the name of Vishnu, belongsto the time of Hari-Hara, and a purely theologicalmyth of the first order. An older Vaishnavism wouldhave had integral images of Garura and Hanumana.There is a Garura out in the courtyard, but he hasevidently been an after-thought. The real guardianis Ghanta-Karna, Kotwal of synthesis.The turf and flowers of Badri are if possible stillmore beautiful than what we have already seen.Not so varied nor yet so alpine, for the height is notso great as Kedar Nath. But the turf is short andthick and close, and falls away in terraces with roundededges, which are strewn with grey boulders of awonderful weather-tint. Oh the grey of the stonesof Badri Narayan! Never have I seen anything elselike this, and here and there they were purple, withlong fragment trails of wild thyme. There were pinkand white briar-roses close to us, and our garlands ofwelcome were made of many-tinted violet primulas.Four miles from Badri there is a fine waterfall calledBasudhara, which all who are young enough ought tosee. For us. however, being old Badri itself, withits glaciers and snows, its velvet terraces and its silvermoonlight, was enough. Our only regret was theshortness of our three days* stay.

IV.RETURN :Place. Distance. Accommodation.Badri Narayan }to Chamoli or j- 32 miles 4 days.Lall Sanghao JKuvera ChattyNanda PrayagSouniaKama PrayagDharmsalas.2 miles7 miles Town, with Dharmsalas.3 miles Dak bungalow and Chatties.13 miles Town: Dak bungalow; andHere roads divide: ordinary pilgrim route leads to RANINUGGUR, near Kathgadam, via Adh-Badri and Mehal Chauri,where the coolies are changed. About days* journey.Alternative route for return, by Srinagar, thence leaving forHardwar or Kotdwara. If Kotdwara be chosen, the travellerproceeds from Kama Prayag as follows :—NagrassoRudra PrayagDharmsalas.ChhantikhalBaltiseraSrinagarPauriAdoanivillage.Kalethwater.Banghat10 miles A Dak bungalow only.10 miles Town: dak bungalow and10 miles Dak bungalow.1 Y^ miles Chhappars.8 miles City.8 miles Town.10 miles Dak bungalow and small10 miles Dak bungalow only, and no2 miles Dak bungalow and Dharm-

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 59Place. Distance. Accommodation.DwarikalDaramundiDagodaKOTDWARA7 miles Dak bungalow and village.6^ miles Dak bungalow and village.5 miles Dak bungalow and village.10 miles Railway to Najibabad.NANDA PRAYAG is a place that ought to befamous for its beauty and order. For a mile or twobefore reaching it, we had noticed the superiorcharacter of the agriculture, and even some carefulgardening of fruits and vegetables. The peasantryalso, suddenly grew handsome, not unlike theKashmiris ! The town itself is new, rebuilt since theGohonna flood, and its temple stands far out acrossthe fields, on the shore of the Prayag. But in thisshort time, a wonderful energy has been at work, onarchitectural carvings, and the little place is full ofgem-like beauties. Its temple is dedicated to NagaTakshaka and as the road crosses the river, I noticedtwo or three old Pathan tombs, absolutely the onlytrace of Mahammedanism that we had seen, northof Srinagar.All this part of the road is embowered in pineforests.But never did we see anything more beautifulthan GOUNLA DAK BUNGALOW. In the midst ofsprings and streams and pines, it would have been ajoy to have lived there for months. KARNA PRAYAG,where the return-routes divide, we reached by moonlight.—Itwas a wonderful combination of rocks.pines, and bo-trees. There is an old temple here,restored since the flood, which is a perfect little

60 KEDAR NATH XND BADRI NARAYANmuseum of beautiful statues. The people call somefragments by the name of Kama, which we felt sure,from the gravity and nobility of the faces, must havebeen Buddhas or Bodhisattvas.We passed many interesting temples on the roadnext morning,—though none so imposing as that ofKama,—and one in especial, to Chandika Devi, atthe village of Punnai. This was two-fold, a squarerath-like cell, side by side and distinct from the moremodern and ordinary tapering obelisk-shrine withthe rectangular chamber attached to it in front. Thevillage of this part was excellent, and on a heightabove, a magnificent stretch of grazing-land had beenbought by a merchant, and given in perpetuity tothe people, who call it their Gocharra Sorgama.This, enabling them to keep numerous oxen, mayaccount for the fine ploughing.Ten miles from Kama Prayag, we reachedNagrasoo Dak Bungalow. This was a lonely place,and inconvenient in many ways. But a bazar wasunder construction. Late in the afternoon twohungry and belated pilgrims arrived, and made theirmeal ready under a tree close by.Still another ten miles, and we reached RUDRA-PRAYAG once more, with its incomparable rocks,Henceforth, down to Srinagar, where we must changeour coolies, the road would be familiar. We shouldmeet with no surprises.In choosing to return by Pauri to Kotdwara,from Srinagar, we were influenced by the fact that

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 61the road lies nigh, and that there were dakbungalows. Pauri, about 8000 ft. high, is the officialstation, instead of Srinagar, and is most pleasantlysituated, as regards climate. Our luggage wascarried up to that point by coolies, but there we wereable to transfer it to mules, for those who havepermits for the dak bungalows, nothing could bemore pleasant than this road to Kotdwara, and wepassed small parties of pilgrims from time to time,who were using it. But it is a long and lonely road,sparsely populated, and for those who may not availthemselves of the bungalows, there must be onlyscanty accommodation. Kaleth, owing to want ofwater, is utterly unpracticable for a night's stay ; andBanghat, in the valley of the Vyasagunga (or Pindar?)is low-lying and malarious, none but boiled watershould be drunk there. Dwarikal is on the summitof a mountain pass, and Daramundi and Dagoda,though of wonderful beauty, are low and warm.Kotdwara is the terminus of a narrow gauge railway,by which we reach the E. I. R. at Najibabad.The historic route for the return of the pilgrimsused to be that from Adh Badri and Mehal Chaurito Kathgodami. That road has now been absorbedfor military purposes, and a new pilgrim-routeopened, which ends at Ram Naggar, a station fromwhich Moradabad is easily reached. This new roadis splendidly made, but it is still low and unassimilated.The chatties are small, and few and farbetween. Water is difficult to get. Food is scarce

62 KEDAR NATH IND BADR1 NARAYANand dear. And the accommodation is very insufficient.Doubtless each year that passes will tendto rectify this state of things. More bunneas willsettle along it, and its facilities will be improved.In the mean time, the pilgrim's road is one ofausterity, and he is sustained in the toils requisite toreach his distant home, by the thought of howwelcome and sweet it will be to rest.

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NORTHERNTIRTHA.A Brief Summary of the Sequence of Hinduism asseen in the Himawant.Buddhism and pre-historic Hinduism, largely planetary, worshipof Daksha, Ganesha, Garura, Narasinha, &c.Hindu Siva—in succession to Brahma—the four-headed Sivasat Gopeswara. the four-headed Dharmachakra at Agastyamuniand at Joshi Math.Era of Devi-worship—Synthetising itself to Siva, with Ganeshaas son. Nine forms of Devi, Kedar Nath Joshi Math, Sivaand Parbatty. Latter, Siva becomes Arddhanari and theSiva in three stages as at Gupta Kashi, also Gopeswara,also Devi Dhura, above Kathgodam, also Kamaleswar inSrinagar.Possible Era of the Ramayana—Dronprayag and all placesnamed on behalf of Rama, &c.Era of the Mahabharata, bringing in worship of Satya Narayan.Traces numerous, Vyasagunga to Kedar Nath. &c.Esp. Temple of five Pandavas, before entering Srinagar.Sankaracharyan Siva-worship. ESilwakedar, Kedar Nath, BhethuChatty.Mediaeval Vaishnavism. Srinagar, Gupta Kashi, BhethuChatty, Kedar Nath, and the valleys of Badri Narayan.Siva again substituted for Narayana at Gupta Kashi underpressure of some special circumstances.

It must be understood that each of these phases is liableto develop itself continuously, from its inception, so that noneof the succeeding eras stands alone. At each place named, itmay be only a trace that is left of any given era. It mustnot be expected that the site shall be eloquent of it.

64 KEDAR NATO AND BADRI NARAYANKedar Nath and Badri Narayan are thus to beregarded as the cathedral cities of adjacent dioceses.Each has its four dependent centres, and the stillsmaller diocese of Gopeswar has also its minor sitesof religious importance. On the road to Gangotri,there is an old religious capital called Barahat ; andAdh Badri must not be forgotten—on the road toKathgodam. By all, the visit of Sankaracharya,—sometime between 600 and 800 A.D.,—is claimed asif it had been a recent event, vividly remembered,and this would tend, other things being conformable,to show that these sites were already old, at the timeof his coming. We can hardly doubt that this wasso. It is evident enough that in his name,—whetherhe was in fact the Malabari Sankaracharya who wrotethe Commentaries, or, as a recent writer, RajendraLal Ghose, would have us believe, a Bengali scholarwho formed the power behind Shashanka, the anti-Buddhistic king—a strong wave of Saivaism swept upall the valleys of the Himalayas. It was this wave,the work of this gigantic epoch-making mind, thatfinally purged the sawite idea of all its pre-historic,physical elements, and fastened upon Siva the subtlepoetic conception of the great monk, throned on thesnows and lost in one eternal meditation. Everything in Hindu imagery of Mahadeva that conflictswith this notion, is pre-Sankaracharyan.Even in this, however, it must be rememberedthat Sankaracharya is rather the end of a process thanan individual. In the Kumara Sambhaba, the Birth of

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 65the War Lord, of Kalidas, we see the same Aryanisingprocess at work on the congeries of elements thateven then were seething and fuming about the feetof one who would fain cast himself upon the occeanof the thought of God as Siva. A people that hadlearnt under Buddhism to worship the solitary life ofspiritual culture, a people whose every instinct madefor the sanctity of the home, and the purity of thefamily, found themselves on the one hand enrapt bythe conception of God as the Great Monk, and onthe other puzzled by the presence of Parbatty. witha train of alien associations. The riddle was solvedby the genius of Kalidas. In the Kumara Sambhaba hevindicated triumphantly the Indian ideal of womanand marriage. In Uma, we have a vision of life andlove in which the Aryan imagination can rest, withouttremor or misgiving. The last remnant of earlyBacchus-ideals is banished, however, by the stern fiatof Sankaracharya. Even the popular imagination iscalled into leash. The Great God is establishedfinally, as the light of knowledge within the soul,Purusha the stirless, the Destroyer of Ignorance.The great prayer to Rudra,—From the Unreal, lead us to the Real!From Darkness, lead us into Light!From Death, lead us to Immortality!Reach us through and through ourself *.* ^ *And evermore protect us Oh Thou Terrible!from ignorance,By Thy Sweet Compassionate Face!

66 KEDAR NATH 'AND BADRI NARAYANmight well have been the utterance of Sankaracharya,in the hour of placing the keystone in the arch of thenational conception.The emblem of Siva which was established bythe teacher for worship, in supersession of all others,would seem to have been the hump or heap ofnatural rock, as we find it at Kedar Nath, at the KedarNath monastery in Benares, at Bilwakedara, and elsewhere.I found it a few weeks ago, in a temple onthe Ganges bank above Dakshineswara. The emblem,that had been in use before his time was undoubtedlythat in three stages, cube, octagonal cylinder andthimble-snapped top, the form which was universalin the time of Varaha Mihira, 550 A.D.But this Siva was too intimately associated withthe image of Arddhanari, even as we find it at GuptaKashi, to be tolerable to the fastidious mind ofSankaracharya. He would have no Siva in the midstof his Saktis,—the interpretation which had nowtransformed the four-headed Brahma into the TantrikMahadeva, as at Gopeswara, and at Chandra Nathnear Chittagong.Nor would he have a form even remotely capableof a phallic rendering. To this fiery monastic intelligence,such a significance was in itself degradation,and he could not away with it. Back, then, to theancient sanctity of the mound, back to the purity andsimplicity of nature! By a curious irony of history,the violent enemy of Buddhist Tantrik abuses becamethe restorer of the Buddhist Stupa to worship !

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 67The taste of the whole people endorsed his criticism,and even as they seem to have accepted hisrepudiation of human sacrifice, in the cause ofmother-worship, at Srinagar, so at each sacred site,they set up the Great God for supreme veneration,and where this deity was new, they established Himin His Sankaracharyan form. At Gupta Kashi,whatever its name then was, Siva was alreadyworshipped as Arddhanari, and no change was made,though we cannot doubt that the spiritual impact ofthe new thought was adequately realised. But atKedar Nath itself, and at Bhethu Chatty, whereSatya-Narayana, or Vishnu was the chief deity. Siva,in His new form was substituted.The same tide of the Sankaracharyan energyswept also over the valleys leading up to BadriNarayana, and Joshi Math and Pipalkoti still remain,to testify to the pre-Ramanuja Saivaism of theseparts. But at Joshi Math there are traces in abundanceof a world still older than that of Sankaracharya.Its theological name—Dhyani Badri—suggests to theear that Badri is a corruption of Buddha, and opensup a long vista of antiquity. Whether this be so ornot, its position on the Tibetan road has exposed itto a whole series of influences, from which the moresecluded valleys of Kedar Nath have been protected.By comparing the two, we may perhaps succeed incomputing the number and importance of theMongolian elements that have entered into the greatsynthesis called Hinduism.

68 KEDAR NATH 'AND BADRI NARAYANThe true place of Badri Narayana in history mayperhaps be better understood when it is mentionedthat it was long a pilgrimage of obligation to theTibetan Lamas, and that even now certain Tibetanmonasteries pay it tribute. It is for them, in fact, thefirst of that chain of sacred places that ends, for theBuddhistic nations, with Gaya. Seen from this pointof view the importance of Badri Narayan as a placeof Srdddha acquires a new significance. It is theholiest of all. The requiem that has been said here,may be repeated nowhere else. The dead whoserepose has here been prayed for, reach final peace.It will, I think, be found that that there is no specialplace of Sraddha in India, which is not either a placeof Buddhistic pilgrimage, or else, like Deva Prayaga,an important point on the Tibetan road. And whilethe habit of prayer for and benediction of the deadis one to which the human heart everywhere mustrespond, there is not an equal universality, perhaps,in the mode of thought that regards as somehowspoilt and exhausted, the rice, furnishings, and moneythat are dedicated as oblations to the departed.There is in this an element curiously incongruous withour modern, Indo-European modes of feeling, thoughit has much that is kindred to it, in ancient Egyptian,and in the Chinese faith. Yet the poetry of theprayer that can be perfected only on the sunlitheights of Badri Narayana, none will. I think gainsay.Here sorrow ends in peace. Here the dead parentand the living child are uplifted together in a

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 69common soothing. And the Love of God throbsout, like a lighted lamp within the shrine, across thattemple-court, where the women perform pradakshina,telling their beads, and lost in the dream beyondlife and death alike.The mediaeval Vaishnavism that began withRamanuja and dominated the whole life of India inso many ways, during the middle ages, capturedBadri Narayan and its subject seats. But at KedarNath, it only succeeded in establishing the minorpilgrimage of Triyugi Narayana in the immediateneighbourhood. The name of this shrine marks thesame eager ambition that we saw in the legend ofNarada, at the temple of the five Pandavas inSrinagar, to claim for itself continuity with an olderpre-Sankaracharyan orthodox authentic Hinduism.This was the same Vaishnavism that blossomed laterinto the Ramayana of Tulsidas. It was the same thatfound expression in Guru Nanak in the Punjab, inTukaram in Maharashtra, and even—though In suchdifferent form !—in Chaitanya in Bengal. Even inthe life of Ramanuja, in Chaitanya, in Guru Nanak,and in Tukaram, it is pre-eminently an uprising ofthe people. Even in Meera Bai in Rajputana, it representsopportunity for women and in the Himalayasat least it found expression in a new order of architecture,seen in perfection at Bhethu Chatty—the talllily-like tower crowned with the amaZa^f, which isslightly more modern than the great temple ofBhubaneswara in Orissa, even as that represents a

70 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANlater phase of the Bodh-Gaya type. One of the mostinteresting problems of Indian history lies in thequestion why a movement that was marked by somany common features throughout the rest of India,should have assumed so distinctive a character inBengal. Vaishnavism, as a whole, is a subject thatcalls for careful and extensive study. Its history willbe found to be twisted out of many strands, and itwill often happen that some slight disaggreement on apoint of doctrine or symbolism indicates a differenceof ages and of provinces in origin. Going back tothe period before the Saivaism of Sankaracharya andbefore even the Satya-Narayan that that superseded,what do we find, of an older Hinduism still ^ Therecan be no doubt that the Ramachandra of Deva-Prayaga is older. Here Ramachandra would seem tohave been established before the time of the Guptas(319 A.D. onwards) when Siva was the chief deity ofHinduism. Just as in the Ramayana itself, so alsohere at Deva Prayag the one statement made andemphasised is that Rama the Incarnation of Vishnu,is Siva. That is to say, the Godhead of Siva, whenthis site was dedicated, was nowhere in dispute. Itwas not a point that called for argument. We cannothelp wondering if there was not an early attempt toRamayanise the whole Himawant, so to say.Lakshman-Jhula and Dronghat met us at the veryoutset of our journey. And it is certain that "thedays of Rama'* seem antiquity itself to the people,

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 71and that every village not otherwise named isRampur or Rambarra, or Ramnagar.Whether this was so or not, it is fairly certainthat in the age when a knowledge of the Mahabharatrepresented ideal culture, a great and authoritativeeffort was made, to associate this whole region withthe Pandavas. That the attempt was undertaken,with an eye to the -work as literature, and not on thebasis of ancient, pre-historic traditions, is shown bythe little chapel dedicated to Vyasa, in the valley ofVyasagunga. Here the pilgrim about to follow upthe stations of the Mahabharata could first makesalutation to the master-poet. Of all the elementscontained in this particular stratum of tradition, thepersonality of Bhima—or. as the people call him,*Bhim Sen*—the strong man of Hinduism, stands outas most pre-historic. There is here somethingunique, something that has a sanction of its own, inthe popular mind, not derived from its place in thenational epic. **Bhima/* as a member of our ownparty exclaimed, "is undoubtedly the genuinearticle !**If there really was a prior movement for connectingHimawant with the ideas of the Ramayana,succeeded by the Mahabharata-epoch,—bringing inthe worship of Satya-Narayan—then before either ofthese came the great era of Devi. There is a chapelof the nine forms of Devi still, at Kedar Nath, andthe oldest and most active of the seven minor templesat Joshi Math contains the same images. In order

72 KEDAR NATH AND BADRl NARAYANreally to understand this idea, it would be necessaryto make a separate and complete study of it, as it isfound in all the different parts of India. But in themeantime, it is fairly certain that in its most elaborateform, it made its advent into these mountains beforethe era of Satya-Narayana, and it is worth while alsoto note the relationship of its great centres to theTibetan road. Two of these are Gopeswara nearChamdi and Devi Dhura above Kathgodam.The impulse of Devi-worship seems to have beensynthetising. It attached itself to that cult of Sivawhich was already accepted and carrying with it thepre-historic Ganesha, established a holy family. Noone who has heard the tale of the headless Ganesha,below Kedar Nath, can fall to recognise the fact thatthis god had already had a history, before beingestablished as the son of Siva and Parbatty. Thefrequency of his images is one of the surest marks ofage, in a Siva-shrine, and his medallion over the doorof the chaitya-shaped building that covers the springat Bhethu Chatty, marks out that structure, as surelyas its Buddhistic form, as the oldest of the buildingsin the neighbourhood.Before any of these developments, came theBuddhistic missionaries, who, from the time of thegreat Nirvana, carried the Gospel to the Himawanta.Of this phase of history, little or no trace remains >save in the chaitya-form of the shrine of the Motherat Gopeswara, the spring-cover at Bhethu Chatty, andthe temple of the nine forms of Devi at Joshi Math,

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 73and in the fact that at Nalla we seemed to see thedevelopment of the temple out of the stupa.Whether, besides this. the very word 'Badrf—withits *Dhyani Badri* as the esoteric name of Joshi Math—is also a trace of Buddhism must be decided byothers. One thing is clear. All the Buddhistic textsand deeds that are written on birch bark come fromthe Himalayas, and as these are many, the Himalayasmust have been the scene of great life and activityduring the Buddhistic period.The whole region of the pilgrimage forms acul-de-sac of Hinduism—even better than that ofOrissa,—in which one may study the birth and originof manifold things that have gone to form the greatsynthesis of the national faith. The sensitivenessthat certain sites have shown to the whole historicsequence of religious developments, marks their earlyestablishment as Buddhistic centres. And in everycase we find the characteristic that distinguishes theHindu temple still, the tendency to gather round thecentral theme or shrine an account of the religion asit stands at the moment. The tendency to crowdon a single site, temple, stupa, sacred tree, school,monastery and dharmsala is one that may be seen inBuddhist countries still, throwing a flood of light onthe genesis of such places as Agastyamuni. Kamaleswar,Nalla, and Gopeswar.The northern Tirtha forms a great palimpsestof the history of Hinduism. Record has here beenwritten upon record. Wave has succeeded wave.4

74 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANAnd still the bond that knits these farthest pointsnorth, to the farthest south, is living and unbroken,and the people stream along the pilgrim roads, inworship, to testify to the fact that without the conceptionof India as a whole we can explain no singlepart or item of the Indian life. But the greatest ofall synthesis is that which is written in the minds andhearts of the simple Himalayan peasantry themselves.Successive waves of sectarian enthusiasmhave made their country what it is but the peoplethemselves are no sectaries. To them, Siva, Devi,and Narayan are all sacred, and in their grasp ofthe higher philosophy of Hinduism, they are,without exception, true Hindus.^ tWTO ^Hiff ^t ^T 1^ ^

KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYAN.If any man doubts that Hinduism is the romanceof India let him make pilgrimage to the Himalayasand judge for himself. The famous shrines of KedarNath and Badri Narayan are like the cathedral citiesof two remote northern diocese upon which hasbroken for the last two thousand years the tidal waveof every great spiritual movement in Indian history.Usually a little late. For the Himalayas have notbeen central. They have been receptive, not creative.The forces that have overswept them have alloriginated elsewhere. But sooner or later they havearrived. Sooner or later they have made their impress.Till to-day, anyone who has thoroughlystudied the country between Hardwar, Kedar Nath,Badri Narayan and Kathgodam, cannot fail to knowthe story of his nations past, at least in so far asthat of her thought can make it clear.For while religion and philosophy are not thewhole of the national life of India, they are undoubtedlythe key to that life. Hinduism gives acontinuous precipitate as it were, from Indian history.It is a stratified deposit, and each period of advancingthought has made its own contribution to theseries. The two last and most important are representedby the Saivism of Kedar Nath and the

76 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANVaishnavism of Badri Narayan. But these are not themost ancient forms of those ideas. The Saivism ofKedar Nath quite rightly describes itself as Sankara"charyan. and the Vaishnavism of Badri claims withperfect truth the name of Ramanuja. Neither is primitive.Neither has been accidental. Each in its turnhas been a great emotional revival, calling men toreturn to the memory of an older and purer faith thanthey saw about them. Sankaracharya, or his movement,took the Himalayas by storm. Traces of theolder systems that had preceded him, remain, it istrue, to this day, but we cannot doubt that at a givenperiod the whole region was dominated by his influence,and by the school that he founded. Badri itselfwas Saivite then. Even now there remain within thecircle of its authority many relics and traces of theage when Mahadev was as much the centre of worshiphere as in the sister-diocese.Each of the two great shrines is built in a glacialvalley, and smaller preparatory sanctuaries occuralong the roads that lead up to them. A line ofSivas, a line of Narayans, lead to Kedar and Badri.Again, each can only be served by monks inresidence for six months in every year. Hence thereis in each case a winter-monastery at a distance ofsome score of miles or so, which acts as a sort ofabbey guest-house to the chief shrine. In the caseof Kedar Nath this is Akhi Math, and in that ofBadri Narayan it is Joshi Math. In the last-namedthere is abundance of evidence that it was originally

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 77Saivite and that the tides of Vaishnavism flowedover this pre-existing condition. Some think that thevery name is a corruption of Jyotir Math, theprobable older form. »The temple of Badri itself is exceedingly modern.That will be a glad day in India when a developedrespect for history shall guide the councils of all whohave to do with the building and repair of temples 1At present they see no reason why the mortar of themaster-builder should not be smeared all over thebeautiful weathered surfaces of the grey stones of thetemples. They call it necessary repairs. As if askin that was renewed every few years could everlook beautiful to those who loved us I I know nothingthat so puts one out of tune for worship as a look ofaggressive newness on the face of a church or templethat one knows to be old and fraught with manymemories 1 Even at Joshi Math, the main sanctuaryhas successfully rid itself of most of the traces ofits past. In this case, however, there is a mold ofsmaller shrines, built on the edge of the magnificentplinth-like terrace, which have never been interferedwith, though some of them have fallen into decay,and these witness to the history of the spot inunmistakable terms. At Badri Narayan itself, thegateway and ramparts of the temple are not somodern. They are built in a Mogul style of somewhatlate type. Within, the only minor shrine is that ofGhanta-Karna, the Bell-eared, who acts as Kotwal ofthe sanctuary. In temples of the older Vaishnavism,

78 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANthis place would have been held by Garura, as wesee throughout the whole Himalayan region.Badri Narayan, then, stands before us as theevident crowning example of that mediaeval uprisingof Vaishnavism which began with Ramanuja, andfound one of its greatest voices in Tulsidas*Ramayana. This Vaishnavism was all-powerful,apparently, in the Deccan and in the South. But inBengal the wonderful personality of Chaitanya gaveit a turn of expression which was peculiar to thatprovince and thus prevented the Vaishnavism of hiscountrymen from taking the more theological, lessmythological, form of Lukshmi-Narayan. Hari-Haramoreover is obviously the creation of the same age.How unthinkable to us now that there was a timewhen pious and devout men would not consent evento hear the name of Vishnu! Yet such was undoubtedlythe case, and, more by token, here is thevery head and front of such offending crept up tostand outside His shrine, and, in an excess ofpassionate chivalry, to guard it from all harm!An interesting question is whether Narayan wasalways coupled with Lukshmi. The little shrine ofVishnu-Prayyag, at the junction of the Dhanii andVishnu Ganga, Just below Joshi Math, inclines meto think not. Here we have an altar of Narayanalone, and on the opposite side of the narrow pathway,obviously a later addition, a tiny chamber ofLukshmi. This looks as if the paring of the two hadbeen a subsequent concession to popular ideas,

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 79which must have been long tinged with the tendencyto assume such a duality in the Divine Nature.The Vaishnava conquest it represented, even atKedar Nath itself, by the neighbouring shrine ofTriyugi Narayan,—the Narayan of three aeons—ona companion mountain. The fire which burns thereis said to have been lighted long ago in Satya-Yuga—a claim which may possibly be an indicationof veritable antiquity.This is not impossible, because there really wasan older Vaishnavism, and we do here and therecome upon the attempts of the mediaeval revival toidentify itself with it. The Siva of Sankaracharya,even at Kedar Nath, supersedes a worship of Satya-Narayan. The same Has also happened at thealmost-deserted temples of Bhethu Chatty, nearGupta Kashi. Now whoever Satya-Narayan reallywas, he is claimed by Vaishnavas as one of theforms of Narayan, and it is clear that he would beequally so held in the early Ramanuja period. Fromthe time that Hinduism begins to emerge intodefinition and distinctness, against the contrastingbackground of Buddhism, the whole history ofIndian thought becomes a sort of plaiting togetherof these two threads, in which first one and thenthe other may be expected to reappear continually.At Kedar Nath there is indeed the question whetherthe worship of Devi did not intervene, as theofficially recognised form, between Satya-Narayanand the Sankaracharyan Siva. Certainly in the

60 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANvillage-street there, is a small chapel containing thenine forms of the Mother in sculpture. At BhethuChatty, however, there is no trace of Devi-worship.There, Siva follows hard on Satya-Narayan, andthere is no long distance of time even between thebuilding of their respective temples. A certainGandharan pattern is indeed integral to both, andthis, if my own theory is correct, might possiblyhelp us to date the earlier as subsequent to 540' A.D. IThe worship of Devi has a long and importanthistory of its own, which with the help of theseHimalayan regions, is not difficult to make out. Didit come down upon India, already elaborated andhighly formalised, from Thibet or China ^ There ismuch to favour this view. Amongst other things, thetwo most perfect shrines of ancient Mother-worshipleft in India are both on, or close to, roads betweenThibet and the plains. One is Devi Dhura, between.^Cath^odam and Thibet, and the other is Gopeswar,near Chamoli or Lall Sanghao, on the Badri Narayanroute. There is no denying the immense influencethat China has had, in developing some of theIndian images, but chiefly, I suspect, those of theMother. It would also seem as if the moment ofthe introduction of Devi in this form had been thesame time at which the worship of Siva took on aphallic complexion, for pundits, and pujaris, thoughnever for the people as a whole.The highly elaborate worship of Devi was alwaysassociated with Siva, apparently, as the guardian of

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 81Her shrines. And the characteristic form of Siva atthe period in question is that of Varaha-Mihiranamely a cube surmounted by an octagonsurmounted by the rounded top of the Siva proper.These Sivas we find constantly, at all the olderreligious sites, throughout the mountains. And theyalways mark a development of the site prior toSankaracharya. But nowhere do they occur in suchabundance as at Gopeswar and Devi Dhura.Gopeswar indeed carries proofs of having been arecognised religious establishment even before this,for I found there no less than two still surviving, ofthe four-headed Sivas that are commonly known asBrahmas. This is eloquent and incontestableevidence that in all propability the shrine wasoriginally a Buddhist monastery. Further evidencein the same direction is afforded by the chaitya-formof the little shrine of Anusuya Devi, standing to theside of the main temple.With Buddhism we come to the bedrock ofHimalayan religion. There is only a trace here andthere. Most of the evidence is built upon inference.One or two of these chaitya-like buildings, and hereand there the head of a bodhisattva are all the directtestimony that I have been able to find, yet it seemsprobable that the first religious organisation of theHimalayas was the work of Buddhism, that allsubsequent movements poured their influence inupon the spots which that first enthusiasm hadcreated, and that therefore all the most ancient sites

62 KEDAR NATO AND BADRI NARAYANin the Himawant derive their authority and sanctityfrom the Buddhist orders.Conspicuous amongst such are those villagesquareswhich are really the temple-close made intobazaar and inn. To this type belong AgastyamumGupta Kashi. Gouri Kunda, Akhi Math, Gopeswara.Joshi Math, the court of Kamaleswar in Srinagar,and more obscurely Kedar Nath itself. This is thekind of inn-yard that saw in England the developmentof the drama. How full of interest it is!One arrives in the village with all one's baggage,and beasts of burden, and servants, to spend afew hours, and be off, mayhap, before dawn thefollowing morning. One is accorded a place ofbivouac in one of the great verandahs that lookdown upon the court, and at once one becomespart and parcel of the village life. At the far endyonder is the door that leads into the temple cloisteritself, if indeed it does not happen that the shrineis reared in the very midst of the scene before us.Coming and going, going and coming, are brahminsand friars, merchants and travellers, and simplepilgrims. Here we watch some grave ceremony ofincantation, there again we see a family at theirmidday meal. Beneath us a moment later is raisedthe cry of 'thief and the patriarchal brahminappears, to lead away into the more decent seclusionof the temple-precincts an excited woman, herembarassed husband, and the remonstrating youthwho stands charged with the villainy. How easy

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 83and delightful it would be to fill the court at nightfallwith a crowd of villagers, for a magic-lantern lecture.or a Mahabharata katha-katha I A party of Bengalistudents did something of the sort a few years ago,headed by the monk Sadananda, and the auditorscame, I have heard, from twelve and fifteen miles,to enjoy the treat.The pre-historic elements of Hinduism are notmissing from even this cursory glimpse of theHimalayas. There has been a definite Mahabharataperiod when the whole culture-energy of the regionseems to have been devoted to dramatising andappropriating the heroes and incidents of the greatepic. There is a little river called Vyasa-Ganga,upon whose banks stands a tiny chapel containingan image of Vyasa 1 And beyond its boundary liepractically all the associations of the five Pandavas,ending in the great snowy road of the Mahaprasthanaat Kedar Nath itself. Could evidence have beenclearer that there was once an attempt, definite,deliberate, and literary, to impose the ideas of thenational epic on an Himalayan kingdom, of whichperhaps this particular river was the frontier, and toparcel it out into a sort of Mahabharata holy land?At Kathgodam, the Pandavas are said to have beguntheir last pilgrimage, and their road leads us pastBhim Tal, or the lake of Bhima, and past Dhari, theirtreasury, while the ice-scratches on the rock at DeviDhura are said to mark the place of their pachisi"board! The caves on the road to Kedar Nath are

84 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANassigned each to one of the princes, to Draupadi, orto the dog. There are wayside shrines dedicated tothem. Okie of the great prayags is sacred to thename of Kama. But amongst all this, the one namethat impresses one as genuinely pre-Mahabharatan,that is as non-literary, and savouring of the soil itself,is that of the Hindu Herakles, Bhima, or, as thepeople call him. Bhima Sena. When we come tothe village of Agastyamuni, indeed, and learn thatthe tale of the sage who drank up the ocean is alsotold of the vale of Kashmir, which is merely a largeredition of this little valley of Agastyamuni, we cansee for ourselves that the story is a pretty geologicalmyth of a ravine that was once a lake. And we feelagain a thrill of wonder at the encyclopeediccharacter of the information that went to makeup the great poem. But the fact that the geographyof distant Himalayan valleys receives notice showsin fact that the culture-level of this neighbourhoodwas then such as to contribute scholars to the boardof composition. Thus we come back to the integraland important part which Himawant must haveplayed in Indian thought ever since the Asokanorganisation of the propaganda. From the facts ofliterary history it would appear probable that theMahabharata period between Vyasa-Ganga andKathgodam must have coincided with the completionof the poem about the middle of the Gupta era.The eagerness of the great dynasty and therefore byinference of all friendly and allied states to nublish

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 85the mighty work and their idea that it constituteda kind of educational scheme is evident enough inmany other directions. Hence we cannot besurprised at the energy with which it seems to havebeen taken up here, nor at the appeal that has beenmade to the pride of the people and to their lovefor their beautiful country, in giving them as it werea local claim upon it all.The systematic way in which this was attemptedbecomes particularly incontestable when we comeupon such traces as the shrine and image of Sringiat Agastyamuni. At Srinagar again there is a templeof the Five Pandavas. And every here and therewe come upon some muni or other as for instanceKapila Muni. One can imagine the miracle plays ofthe Mahabharata that must have taken place fromtime to time in these temple courts, half theatre halfcollege, like the rude dramas still seen in the villagesof Maharashtra 1 And what about the Ramayana ?Was it an earlier, or a rival scheme to that of theMahabharata? Close to Hrishikesh in Lakshmanjhulabegins its terminology, which comes to a headat Devaprayag, in the temple of Ramachandra. Herewe realise what a large and compelling synthesis wasoffered by early Vaishnavism, for just as we cannotfail to understand that Ganesha has been gatheredinto the Saivite scheme from older pre-historicsources, so here we find Hanumana behind andGarura in front of the temple as guardians, andknow suddenly that vast antiquity which these two

84 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANassigned each to one of the princes, to Draupadi, orto the dog. There are wayside shrines dedicated tothem. One of the great prayags is sacred to thename of Kama. But amongst all this, the one namethat impresses one as genuinely pre-Mahabharatan,that is as non-literary, and savouring of the soil itself,is that of the Hindu Herakles, Bhima, or, as thepeople call him, Bhima Sena. When we come tothe village of Agastyamuni, indeed, and learn thatthe tale of the sage who drank up the ocean is alsotold of the vale of Kashmir, which is merely a largeredition of this little valley of Agastyamuni, we cansee for ourselves that the story is a pretty geologicalmyth of a ravine that was once a lake. And we feelagain a thrill of wonder at the encyclopaediccharacter of the information that went to makeup the great poem. But the fact that the geographyof distant Himalayan valleys receives notice showsin fact that the culture-level of this neighbourhoodwas then such as to contribute scholars to the boardof composition. Thus we come back to the integraland important part which Himawant must haveplayed in Indian thought ever since the Asokanorganisation of the propaganda. From the facts ofliterary history it would appear probable that theMahabharata period between Vyasa-Ganga andKathgodam must have coincided with the completionof the poem about the middle of the Gupta era.The eagerness of the great dynasty and therefore byinference of all friendly and allied states to publish

A PILGRIM'S DIARY 65the mighty work and their idea that it constituteda kind of educational scheme is evident enough inmany other directions. Hence we cannot besurprised at the energy with which it seems to havebeen taken up here, nor at the appeal that has beenmade to the pride of the people and to their lovefor their beautiful country, in giving them as it werea local claim upon it all.The systematic way in which this was attemptedbecomes particularly incontestable when we comeupon such traces as the shrine and image of Sringiat Agastyamuni. At Srinagar again there is a templeof the Five Pandavas. And every here and therewe come upon some muni or other as for instanceKapila Muni. One can imagine the miracle plays ofthe Mahabharata that must have taken place fromtime to time in these temple courts, half theatre halfcollege, like the rude dramas still seen in the villagesof Maharashtra 1 And what about the Ramayana ?Was it an earlier, or a rival scheme to that of theMahabharata? Close to Hrishikesh in Lakshman"Jhula begins its terminology, which comes to a headat Devaprayag, in the temple of Ramachandra. Herewe realise what a large and compelling synthesis wasoffered by early Vaishnavism, for just as we cannotfail to understand that Ganesha has been gatheredinto the Saivite scheme from older pre-historicsources, so here we find Hanumana behind andGarura in front of the temple as guardians, andknow suddenly that vast antiquity which these two

86 KEDAR NATH AND BADRI NARAYANrepresent. It must always be a feature of dominantreligions that when fully formed they incorporatethe debris of preceding systems. Garuri is astrangely persistent element of Himalayan religion.He crops up occasionally even on the road to KedarNath itself. How remote may have been this atancient sites is that of synthesis behind the actualdedication.

UDBODHAN SERIES :SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S WORKS.Rs. A. P.Raja-Yoga (6th Edition) ... ... 1 40Jnana-Yoga (3rd Edition) ... ... I 8 0Bhakti-Yoga (6th Edition) ... ... 0 12 0Karma-Yoga (6th Edition) ... ... 0 14 0Chicago Addresses (7th Edition) ... 0 6 0My Master (5th Edition) ... ... 0 6 0Pavhari Baba (4th Edition) ... ... 0 3 0Religion of Love (4th Edition) ... 0 12 0The Science and Philosophy of Religion(3rd Edition) ... ... ... 0 12 0Realisation and its Methods (3rd Edition) 0 10 0Thoughts on Vedanta (3rd Edition) ... 0 10 0A Study of Religion (3rd Edition) ... 0 10 0Christ, the Messenger ... ... 0 3 0The Vedanta Philosophy—(at the HarvardUniversity) 2nd Edition ... ... 0 6 0Six Lessons on Raja-Yoga ... ... 0 8 0Indian Lectures of^Swami Vivekananda ... 2 8 0Most of the above mentioned books are tobe had at reduced rates by the subscribers ofUdbodhan, a^ Bengali Monthly Organ of theRamkrishna Math (Annual Subscription Rs. 2/8/-).Besides the above,original Bengali Works

of the Swami and the Bengali translations of theEnglish works, as also Photos and Half-tone Picturesof Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. arealways available. For Catalogue apply to—THE MANAGER, UDBODHAN OFFICE./, Mukheijee Lane, Baghbazar P.O., Calcutta.

SISTER NIVEDITA'S WORKS,1. The Master as I saw Him.—(Being pagesfrom the life of the Swami Vivekananda). ThirdEdition. D. Crown 16mo. Pages 510. With appendicesof 25 pages more. Cloth-bound. PriceRs. 2-8 as.The book can have no truer or better introductionto the public than the following citations, onefrom Indian, and the other from European appreciation:—** * ^ * in the volume before us, we can feelthat he was a Master indeed, a living fountain ofinspiration/'PROF. JADUNATH SARKAR.14 * * * it (this book) may be placed amongthe choicest classics, below the various scriptures,on the same self with Confessions of St. Augustineand Sabatier's Life of St. Francis/9T. K. CHEYNE,Professor of Oxford University.Contents:—A Word to Western Readers. 1.The Swami in London: 1895. 2. The Swami inLondon: 1896. 3. The Conflict of Ideals. 4. TheSwami Vivekananda and the Otder of Ramakrishna.5. Wanderings in Northern India. The Awakener ofSouls. 6. Flashes from the Beacon Fire. 7. Amar-"ath. &. Kahir Bhawani. 9. Calcutta and the Holy

Women. 10. The Swami and Mother Worship.11. Half-way accross the World. 12. Glimpses ofthe Saints. 13. Past and Future in India. 14. TheSwami on Hinduism. 15. Glimpses in the West.16. The Swami*s Mission considered as a Whole.17. The Swami Vivekananda's attitude to Buddha.18. His estimate of Historic Christianity. 19.Women and the people. 20. His Method of traininga Western Worker. 21. Monasticism andmarriage. 22. Our Maste/s Relation to Psychic-Phenomena, so-called. 23. His Teaching aboutDeath. 24. Super consciousness. 25. The Passingof the Swami. 26. The End.2. The Civic and National Ideals.—Containinga nice Portrait of the Sister. Third Edition.D. Crown Pages 125. Price Re. /.This is the first of a series of volumes to bepublished to comprise all the writings of the SisterNivedita as yet unavailable in book form. Thepresent volume deals with the problem of IndianNationalism, its basis and the resources to bedeveloped.Contents:—1. The Civic Ideal. 2. Civic Elements in IndianLife. 3. The Modern Epoch and the National Idea.4. Unity of Life and Type in India. 5. The IndianNational Congress. 6. The Principle of Nationality.7. The Function of Art in Shaping Nationality. 8.The Message of Art. 9. Indian Sculpture. 10. TheIndian Painting. 11. Shah Jahan dreaming of theTaj. 12. The Passing of Shah Jahan. 13. Sari.

3. Notes of some Wanderings with theSwami Vivekananda.—Containing a beautiful penand ink picture of the Swamiji, a fac-simile of hishandwriting, and a portrait of the Sister. Edited bySwami Saradananda. D. Crown Pages 128. PriceRe. /-8as.This book offers bright glimpses of the yet undiscoverednooks of the private life of the greatSwami Vivekananda, and the period of trainingthrough which the late Sister Nivedita had to pass inthe hands of her Master, ere she came out before thepublic gaze as the wonderful champion of truth andjustice and righteousness and of the cause of India.A short synopsis of the contents of each chapterhas been added by the Editor.Contents:—Foreword.1. The Home on the Ganges. 2. At Naini-Taland Almora. 3. Morning Talks at Almora. 4. Onthe Way to Kathgodam. 5. On the Way toBaramulla. 6. The Vale of Kashmir. 7. Life atSrinagar. 8. The Temple of Pandrenthan. 9.Walks and Talks besides the Jhelum. 10. TheShrine of Amarnath. 11. At Srinagar on the ReturnJourney. 12. The camp under the Chennaars.Concluding Words of the Editor.4. Hints on National Education in India.—(3rd Edition Revised and enlarged) being valuablesuggestions for the education of men and womenof India. 180 Pages. Pnce Re. 1-8 as.

Contents:—1. Primary Education: A call for Pioneers.2—6. Paper on Education (I to V). 7. The placeof Foreign culture in a true Education. 8. Thefuture Education, of the. Indian women. 9. TheProject of the Ramakrishna School for girls. 10.Suggestions for the Indian Vivekananda Societies.11. A note on Historical Research. 12. A note onco-operation. 13. The place of Kindergarten inIndian Schools. 14. Manual training as a part ofGeneral Education in India. 15. Manual training inEducation—Supplementary note. 16. Appendix.5. Aggresive Hinduism.—Pocket size. 54Pages. Price "141" as.It deals in a forcible style with the dynamic sideof Hinduism—impressing on the mind, its elementsof strength.Contents:—(1) The Basis. (2) The Task before us. (3)The Ideal. (4) The Way to the Ideal.6. Siva and Buddha.—D. Crown. Pages 50.Nicely bound, with two illustrations in colour bySj.JManda Lal Bose.Prescribed by the University of Calcutta as aPrize and Library book. (Vide, Cal. Gazette, 24thAugust 1921.) Price 6 as.This book comprises, in the Sister's characteristicallyelegant style and masterly way of delineation,a short stroy of Siva—the great God, and thestory of the Buddha.

Other Books of the Sister NiveditaRs. A. p.7. Lambs Among Wolves (Missionariesin India) ... ... ... 0 6 08. Kali the Mother ... ... 0 14 09. The Cradle Tales of Hinduism ... 1 12 010. Footfalls of Indian History ... 4 0 011. Religion and ^Dharma ... ... 1 4 012. Web of Indian Life. ... ... 2 8 0 j13. Studies from an Eastern Home ... I 40The sale proceeds of the Sister's books go toNivedita Girls' School Fund.WORDS OF THE MASTER(SELECTED PRECEPTS OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA)—For the whole human race irrespective ofcreed and colour. Complied by His Holiness SwamiBrahmananda.Fifth Edition. Pocket Size. Pages 134. PriceAs. 5. Cloth Bound As. /O.Paramahansa Ramakrishna.—A short sketchof the life of Sri Ramakrishna by Rev. PratapChandra Majumdar. D. Crown 16mo. 14 Pages.Price One Anna,'-The Yedanta (Its theory and practice) by SwamiSaradananda. As. 6*