Khaliapaai
Near Joranda, in Khalliapala, is the
Gaddi of Bhima Bhoi for the Kaupinadhari group, an additional centre.
The temple is not surrounded by a wall, it stands freely accessible surrounded
only by several smaller shrines for the wives and children of Bhima Bhoi.
Temple and shrines have only empty niches. A farm building is directly
attached to the temple in which the Baba responsible for the shrine lives.
By the side of the temple lives Sriya Ma, Bhima Bhoi’s adopted daughter,
a woman scintillating with temperament, who looked after the temple until
a few years back and does not refrain from criticizing the present management.
Unlike Joranda. There is “no activity” here besides the festivals.
Baunsudi
Besides these two centres, there is
also a complete range of local centres which I often discovered only by
accident. Besides and between both the denominations they have a special
existence and are often more important than Khalliapala or Joranda for
the closer surroundings. As an example I should like to mention the temple
complex of Baunsudi (near Keonjhar). Besides Kitching, it is the only
bigger temple, in an area covering a wide countryside a region, which
can e termed as wild and is almost exclusively inhabited by tribes.
The enclosures, a Sunya Mandira and
a small Gaddi Mandira rises impressively on a rock. This rock is said
to have been a “holy place” from time immemorial to which
people came, especially to implore for rain. As narrated by the residents
of the village, numerous followers used to go earlier to Joranda on a
pilgrimage until the people (about 1900) built their own Sunya Mandira
at which a Samnyasi from the next village, a Khond by parentage had settled.
After his death (about 1940)a Gaddi Mandira was built for him.
Thus a perfect pendant of Joranda
has been formed here, with all the three temples making the visit to Mahima
Gaddi superfluous. The present managers of the temple, father and son,
have only a loose connection with the organisation of Kaupinadhari and
no one from the surroundings visits the Mahima Gaddi any longer. All festivals
are celebrated under their own management and donations for ghee too (between
2 & 5 Rs.) do not go to Joranda, but are used on the spot. At this
shrine and its surroundings the affinity of the idol less Mahima Dharma
religion, especially in the original Kaupinadhari stamping, to the religiously
of the tribals and the folk religions becomes evident [see above Eschmann
chapter – 4]. Their gods are not worshipped in ichnographically
determined idols or images as in Hinduism, but are formless and their
presence is often less tied down to the presence of a definite symbol,
tree, stone, pillar, fire, than to a definite place. The renunciation
of idols which at first appears to be shocking within Hindu surroundings
is, therefore no renunciation for those groups that constitute a majority
of the Mahima Dharma followers, but conforms on the contrary to their
custom.
Present Dialogue between Mahima Dharma
and the Orthodoxy
Synopsis : Attitude towards the tradition
Mahima Dharma accepts regional traditions
and those esoteric traditions partly connected with the Jagannatha cult
which the sect generalizes and institutionalizes. Therewith the conflict
with the orthodox tradition which, to some extent, is covered by esoteric
teachings and reinterpretation is intensified in practice, but not in
theory. The Mahima Dhrama teaching are understood as secret, real and
true interpretation of Sruti and Smruti; stress is laid on the relationship
with the Panchasakha which in the mean time have themselves become a constituent
of the tradition. Only with Visvanatha Baba the theoretical relationship
with the tradition changes: the connection with the regional esoteric
tradition is abandoned in favour of an approach to the Sanskrit tradition
which is used as “scriptural proof” for the legitimacy of
the Mahima Dharma teachings. The direct initial success of the sect certainly
traces back, at least, partly to the string and new influence of Hinduism
and especially the Jagannatha cult in the former Feudatory states during
the late 19th century, which exerted strong pressure on the rural and
tribal population. Mahima Dharma appeared and also regards itself as a
counter and alternative movement to Jagannatha worship which is open to
all castes, as was also the case with the Jagannatha cult initially. Nevertheless,
the Mahima Dharma remained important after independence as well, when
the Jagannatha cult was losing its strong position in the hinterland,
and even has been spreading further. The sect evidently acts as a third
force between caste Hindus on the one hand and folk religion on the other
and is also for the lower, especially the landless labourers, attractive.
This constant success in the villages distinguishes Mahima Dharma among
other things from neo-Hindu movements whose modernistic reinterpretations
of the traditions rarely penetrated in the countryside beyond the sphere
of the middle classes. Apart from this success the Mahima Dharma has also
succeeded, chiefly owing to the work of Visvanatha Baba in the last thirty
years. In gaining a new circle of followers from the educated middle and
upper classes, that see a new access to their own tradition in this reformatory
and yet in no way western but tradition bound movement.
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