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'Hail Narmadama': The Richness of India's Narmada Pilgrimage
| Article
# : |
20614 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
4,525 Words |
| Author
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Christi Ann Merrill; photographed by Jane Schreibman
Christi Ann Merrill is a freelance writer and teacher
residing in New York. |
The monsoon rains had just come to a close in the Hindu month of Kartik, which runs from October to November, when Ramchand left his rural home along the banks of the Narmada River in central India to start his pilgrimage. He had worked all his life as a field laborer and had dutifully played out the role of householder-second of the four prescribed stages in a Hindu man's life. He had worked hard tending the landowner's cotton and wheat crops in his home state of Gujarat, hoping to eke out enough to feed his wife, children, and parents.
On this day in Kartik, however, he took a vow to complete the religious pilgrimage of Parikrama, in which he would circumambulate the eight hundred-mile length of the Narmada River. As he took this vow, his familial responsibilities became secondary.
Instead of laboring in the fields from sunrise to sunset, Ramchand would spend his days walking along the riverbank. He would sleep in temples or under trees instead of on his familiar cot at home. He would wake early in the morning for his ritual bath, or snaan, just like he was supposed to at home, but now he would be bathing at a different spot in the river almost every day. He would pray and do special puja ceremonies to the gods, telling stories of their deeds to himself and others en route. He would eat only the food offered him in charity by people hoping to gain merit from feeding a mahatma, or great soul, as he would become for the duration of his journey. Back in his own village his family had fed many parikramavasis for the same reason. Now Ramchand would be the one bestowing, not just receiving, merit.
Indian pundits claim that Parikrama is unique, the only such pilgrimage in the world where one circumambulates an entire river. Although the Ganges and Yamuna rivers to the north are more famous within India and abroad, those who live alongside the Narmada say that its virgin waters are the most sacred of all. "Goddess Ganga herself comes here for snaan," worshipers often remark.
From its frothy and turbulent source in the northeast of Madhya Pradesh at Amarkantak to it languid confluence with the Indian Ocean north of Bombay in Gujarat, Narmada's waters generate a way of life along its banks that makes this river one of the most seminal parts of everyday life in central India, and also one of the most revered. The journey becomes a walking meditation on the relationship that this holy body of water has established with the many diverse forms of life along its
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