BISHWADEEP MOITRA - The Soul’s Aarohan: Maihar Devi Temple, where the goddess of learning is the presiding deity
Located atop the Trikuta hill, which can now be reached via a ropeway, the temple has been a frequent signpost in the rich stock of Hindu myth and lore. The Pandavas passed this way in the Dwapar Yug, while on exile, en route from Prayag in the north—Maihar was then called Mahidhar. The place was a stopover for Lord Rama too on his way during vanvaas to Panchvati. The well-travelled Adi Shankaracharya is also said to have offered prayers here.
Maihar has a whole templescape of big and small shrines, each claiming to be more
‘pracheen’ than the other, and each boasting an exclusive legend to bolster this claim to antiquity.
All of them, however, remain sideshows to the centrepiece of the small, picturesque town. Traffic is constant at Ma Sharada’s temple, but the highest number of devotees visit on New Year’s Day, according to the officials of the samiti, a local body comprising government officials and members of the civil society which looks after the running of the temple.
The story goes that Dakshraj, father of Sati, Shiva’s wife in the mortal world, organised a sabha especially to ridicule his son-in-law’s bohemian ways and the company of vagabonds he kept. Unable to bear the insults being heaped upon her husband in absentia, Sati fainted. Shiva meanwhile heard about the shindig, and presuming Sati to be dead, carried her body over his shoulder and broke into the tandava, his dance of destruction. Seeing the cosmic carnage this unleashed, the other two of the trinity—Brahma and Vishnu—decided to intervene before he destroyed the Earth and all creation. To contain the rampaging Shiva, Vishnu released the ultimate weapon, the sudarshana chakra, to release Sati’s body from him. Wherever the pieces of her body fell—52 in all—a peeth-sthan of the Shakti came up. In Maihar, it was the Sati’s breast which fell. According to another legend, it was her garland or haar that fell, hence the name Mai-har.
The world of puranas apart, the place has equal underpinnings in medieval folklore, notably that of Aalha-Udal, the valorous Rajput duo of the 11th century who fought the armies of Prithviraj Chauhan in a titanic struggle that cost Udal, the younger of the brothers, his life. They are said to have installed the deity on the hilltop and are still believed to hold the first rights to make an offering to Ma Sharada. Ballads of Aalha’s valour—who spared Prithiviraj’s life, despite the latter killing his brother—are sung all across Bundelkhand even today. There is even an Aalha-Udal akhara at the base of the hill, where the brothers are supposed to have wrestled once.
Maihar’s greatest modern son, however, would have to be Baba Alauddin Khan, the musical genius who lived to be a 110—born just five years after the Sepoy Mutiny, he almost lived to see the Emergency, living till 1972. But longevity was the least of the accomplishments of this mountain of a man who best imbibed the gifts of the goddess of learning, and whose devotee he remained for a lifetime. He wasn’t born in Maihar, though. He had run away as a young boy from Tripura, then in East Bengal, and landed in Calcutta. The sarod was his chosen instrument, but he could play all instruments with ease, and was soon a regular presence at the bhadralok soirees in Bengal. It was, however, at a mehfil in Lucknow that he caught the attention of the Maharaja of Maihar, who promptly invited him to be his court musician.
The maharaja’s patronage and Alauddin Khan’s virtuosity led to the birth of one of the most influential schools of Hindustani classical music—the Maihar Seniya gharana. Over the years, the world would discover India through the music of the Maihar gharana, and the ustad himself would mould two of its glittering gems—his own son, the sarod legend Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and sitar genius Pandit Ravi Shankar. There was a third gem, too, the one that the world never got to hear, Alauddin’s daughter Annapoorna Devi, who the cognoscenti say was the best of the three. Other luminaries came to him too, among them sitarist Nikhil Banerjee, flautist Pannalal Ghosh and violinist V.G. Jog... read more:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?288981
Maihar has a whole templescape of big and small shrines, each claiming to be more
‘pracheen’ than the other, and each boasting an exclusive legend to bolster this claim to antiquity.
All of them, however, remain sideshows to the centrepiece of the small, picturesque town. Traffic is constant at Ma Sharada’s temple, but the highest number of devotees visit on New Year’s Day, according to the officials of the samiti, a local body comprising government officials and members of the civil society which looks after the running of the temple.
The story goes that Dakshraj, father of Sati, Shiva’s wife in the mortal world, organised a sabha especially to ridicule his son-in-law’s bohemian ways and the company of vagabonds he kept. Unable to bear the insults being heaped upon her husband in absentia, Sati fainted. Shiva meanwhile heard about the shindig, and presuming Sati to be dead, carried her body over his shoulder and broke into the tandava, his dance of destruction. Seeing the cosmic carnage this unleashed, the other two of the trinity—Brahma and Vishnu—decided to intervene before he destroyed the Earth and all creation. To contain the rampaging Shiva, Vishnu released the ultimate weapon, the sudarshana chakra, to release Sati’s body from him. Wherever the pieces of her body fell—52 in all—a peeth-sthan of the Shakti came up. In Maihar, it was the Sati’s breast which fell. According to another legend, it was her garland or haar that fell, hence the name Mai-har.
The world of puranas apart, the place has equal underpinnings in medieval folklore, notably that of Aalha-Udal, the valorous Rajput duo of the 11th century who fought the armies of Prithviraj Chauhan in a titanic struggle that cost Udal, the younger of the brothers, his life. They are said to have installed the deity on the hilltop and are still believed to hold the first rights to make an offering to Ma Sharada. Ballads of Aalha’s valour—who spared Prithiviraj’s life, despite the latter killing his brother—are sung all across Bundelkhand even today. There is even an Aalha-Udal akhara at the base of the hill, where the brothers are supposed to have wrestled once.
Maihar’s greatest modern son, however, would have to be Baba Alauddin Khan, the musical genius who lived to be a 110—born just five years after the Sepoy Mutiny, he almost lived to see the Emergency, living till 1972. But longevity was the least of the accomplishments of this mountain of a man who best imbibed the gifts of the goddess of learning, and whose devotee he remained for a lifetime. He wasn’t born in Maihar, though. He had run away as a young boy from Tripura, then in East Bengal, and landed in Calcutta. The sarod was his chosen instrument, but he could play all instruments with ease, and was soon a regular presence at the bhadralok soirees in Bengal. It was, however, at a mehfil in Lucknow that he caught the attention of the Maharaja of Maihar, who promptly invited him to be his court musician.
The maharaja’s patronage and Alauddin Khan’s virtuosity led to the birth of one of the most influential schools of Hindustani classical music—the Maihar Seniya gharana. Over the years, the world would discover India through the music of the Maihar gharana, and the ustad himself would mould two of its glittering gems—his own son, the sarod legend Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and sitar genius Pandit Ravi Shankar. There was a third gem, too, the one that the world never got to hear, Alauddin’s daughter Annapoorna Devi, who the cognoscenti say was the best of the three. Other luminaries came to him too, among them sitarist Nikhil Banerjee, flautist Pannalal Ghosh and violinist V.G. Jog... read more:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?288981
