La possession en Asie du Sud
| ,Territoire
Remembering the city
The incarnation of the goddess and the boundaries of the Metropolis
La cité remémorée. incarnation de la Déesse et démarcations d’une métropole
Résumé
Neuf jours durant, pendant les mois chauds de mars-avril, la procession dite du « Karaga », liée au culte de la déesse Draupadī, se déroule dans la cité de Bangalore en Inde. Elle a lieu dans le coeur historique de la métropole, et attire environ 200 000 personnes le dernier jour. L’élément central de cette fête est l’incarnation de Draupadī, l’epouse polyandre des cinq frères Pāṇḍava dans l’épopée du Mahābhārata. La déesse se manifeste d’une part, sous la forme d’une effigie sacrée, et, d’autre part, dans le corps d’un prêtre masculin, qui devient un avec elle du seul fait qu’il porte l’effigie et qu’il se soumet à un entraînement ainsi qu’à tout un processus de pénitence. À la différence d’autres situations ethnographiques, la possession n’est pas ici liée à la parole du prêtre : il ne parle pas sous l’effet de la possession, ni ne crie, ne chante ou n’agit comme oracle. Ce sont plutôt sa transformation pendant les jours de la fête, le fait qu’il porte l’effigie, son parcours dans la cité, accompagné d’un groupe de « protecteurs », qui constituent les faits significatifs. La cité ou se déroule la procession est un centre pour la recherche en technologies de pointe et pour l’élaboration de logiciels, la nouvelle « Silicon Valley » de l’Inde ; mais c’est aussi un lieu ancien de peuplement, fondé au xvie siècle. Des réseaux de liens rattachent ainsi historiquement Bangalore au dernier grand empire de l’Inde du Sud, tandis que d’autres la relient de façon plus contemporaine à la période du pouvoir colonial britannique et aux migrations venant des régions voisines. Pour nombre d’habitants, l’occupation de l’espace et les pratiques sociales dans la métropole, aujourd’hui, occultent ou font resurgir tour à tour ces multiples histoires et la mémoire des lieux. Dans cet article, j’etudie la façon dont la possession du prêtre et l’incarnation de la Déesse créent un « paysage de mémoire » particulier dans la ville, par le biais d’une procession qui en est venue à être considérée, à Bangalore, comme le rituel public le plus important de la cité.
Note de l’auteur
This article is based on fieldwork in Bangalore carried out over three years between 1994-1997. Part of this research was done under a project ( “Draupadī’s Story: Symbolism and Practice in the Karaga Performance”) funded by the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore, at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, from 1996-97. The article has also benefitted greatly from discussions at the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, where I was based as a Rockefeller Fellow (1997-98).
Texte intégral
- 1 There is now a substantial amount of work on the cult of Draupadī and performances related to it; m (...)
1For nine days in the hot months of March or April, a performance called the ‘Karaga’ surrounding the cult of the goddess, Draupadī, takes place in Bangalore.1 The Karaga occurs in the older hub of the metropolis and attracts about 200,000 people on the final day alone. The key moment within the performance is the incarnation of Draupadī, the polyandrous wife of the five Pāṇḍava brothers in the Mahābhārata epic. The manifestation of the goddess occurs, first, in the form of a sacred icon and, second, through the body of a male priest who, by carrying this icon and going through a process of penance and training, becomes conjoint with her.
2Unlike many other ethnographic instances, the possession is not tied to utterances of the priest: he does not speak while possessed, cry out, sing, or act as an oracle. Rather, it is his transformation during the festival days, his carrying of the icon (first on his waist and then on his head), and his movement with a band of protectors through the city that is significant in the performance. The word ‘Karaga’ itself has three levels of meaning in Kannada. First, it refers to the nine days of festivities in the city that are identified as a genre of performance called jātre. A jātre is basically an inter-local festival and refers to all manners of transactions from a market and fair to a dramatic performance and a religious event. Second, the word ‘Karaga’ indicates the sacred icon–an earthen pot–that embodies the power (śakti) of the goddess. Third, it refers to the priest when he carries the icon on the final day of the festival, his transformation seen as being complete when he carries the icon on his head. To keep the meanings separate in this article, I will refer to the festivities as a whole by the term, ‘Karaga jātre; to the icon, as the ‘Karaga’; and to the priest as the ‘Karaga priest/bearer’ unless he is carrying the icon and is identified with it.
- 2 The use of the term ‘landscape’ here is an allusion to the akam genre of classical Tamil poetry in (...)
3The city where the Karaga jātre occurs is a center for high technology research and software production, the new ‘Silicon Valley’ of India; it is also an old settlement founded in the 16th century. Some skeins of historical connection in Bangalore, thus, stretch backward into the last great empire in South India (Vijayanagar), while others intersect more contemporaneously with British colonial rule and migrations from neighboring regions. For many citizens, spatial and social practices in the metropolis today weave in and out of these numerous histories. Memories of place also follow certain cultural pathways in the city. These recollections–which I term ‘landscapes of memory’–are not static even when they are spatially marked.2 They are modes of cultural self-invention, and intimately tied to current local practices. These landscapes are essentially matrices of order in which current sites and symbols are placed and are prisms for ‘re-collecting’ (in the sense of collecting, organizing, collating) locations and signs of what is considered to be ‘past’. In other words, memory as recollection implies crafting, constructing and inventing. New matrices and narratives can appear and overlay each other. Various matrices are, naturally, possible but in this article, I examine how the possession of the priest and the incarnation of the goddess create a particular landscape of memory in the city through a jātre which has come to be regarded as the largest civic ritual in Bangalore. The landscape is specific to the community of gardeners who are the main ritual players in the performance. Although other groups and persons participate in, and intersect with, this landscape in complex ways with their own matrices of order, the topic is too vast to be treated here.
- 3 See Munivenkatappa n.d.: 24.
- 4 Similar arguments have been made for ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that is reworked into a context of soc (...)
4Possession and incarnation have, ultimately, political value. Only some portion of the extensive writing on this topic has examined the political implications of these processes and these studies have largely dealt with rural locations, at least in South India. Bangalore presents a novel case in the discussion of the politics of possession, and not only because the Karaga jātre is an urban event. There are theories that see performances such as the Karaga jātre as a carnival space, a ritual of rebellion at the end of which normal social order is restored. Nevertheless, the study of the Karaga jātre reveals a much more complex process. It is imbued with a dialogue of contexts, both past and recent. The jātre is deeply implicated within existing and previous regimes of place and work and the effects of these on self-identity. The Karaga jātre began to receive explicit state patronage and public legitimization in 1811 when the ruler of Mysore, Kriṣṇarājēndra Woḍeyar, donated a large amount of land to the temple.3 This support came when the rulers of Mysore were politically in decline and de-facto vassals of the British who had established a cantonment in Bangalore in 1809. The main object of cult devotion, Draupadī, is represented in the performance as a hot (angry, reproductive, fiery) goddess, not a serene one, and is relatively independent of her male consorts who have a smaller role to play in the festival. Her chief relationship is to the Vīrakumāras, the ‘hero-sons’, who are male members of the community carrying swords, and who regard themselves as protectors of the goddess. The Karaga jātre relies on the icon of the hot goddess surrounded by a group of male, celibate offspring, who roam a region between the forest/exile and the city/battlefield. The martial, maternal imagery of the performance is thus shot through by elements of valorized celibacy and masculine prowess. All this takes place in a context in which the ritual players and community associated with the Karaga jātre face increasing impotence within the city’s production base and its politics, particularly those over space.4 The patronage of the Woḍeyar king in the previous century for the jātre occurred within a larger context of political powerlessness. Today, although the state supports the civic celebration, in economic terms the gardeners have steadily yielded their lands in the city to its explosive growth and have either moved to the peripheries of the metropolis to cultivate or have become an urban working class and petty bourgeoisie.
5In cities such as Bangalore, old elites, the state and other groups struggle over cultural and economic resources within the city due to globalization processes, regional hegemonic aspirations, and the impact of state policies. These contests happen in various public domains and have specific spatial manifestations: in the context of the Karaga jātre, two kinds of spaces that are sites of public debate and conflict today are tanks (reservoirs) and garden land. To illustrate, one of the main tanks connected with the performance is now the site of a huge sports stadium. This process of converting tanks and gardens in the city into concrete has aroused a great deal of discussion about planning in the city and definitions of public space. The gardeners’jātre is located in an arena which is occupied by other groups, multinational capital and the state, all of whom struggle with conceptualizations about the city, whether they be “cities of the past” or “cities of the future”.
6The creation of a landscape of memory in the Karaga jātre proceeds in three main modalities, each of which reworks the boundaries of the city and the body in specific ways:
7(a) Praying, welcoming the goddess to their homes, and walking in the city with the Karaga troupe to specific locales, tie the community of gardeners somatically and kinetically to the space of the metropolis. Older memories of the city come to be entwined with current spatial and social practices and experiences. The ritual processes of the jātre add value to sites within a city even when their previous meaning has been submerged by more recent configurations of space. For instance, the Karaga icon is believed to emerge from a small pond called ‘Upnīrinakuṇṭe’ in one of the main parks in the city, Cubbon Park. This green area formed an important border between the old settlement (established in the mid- 16th century) and the cantonment (established by the British in the early 19th century). The community of gardeners preserve this older history by creating a ‘story line’ through paths that lead in and out of this park and pond and connect it to locations within the old city. In this case, the story line involves a narrative about the manifestation of the goddess and the descent of the gardeners from her.
8(b) A related issue is that garden land and water-bodies are combined together as a ritual and symbolic unit in the jātre. In doing so, the community of gardeners contest bureaucratic modes of presenting space. Dominant ways of conceptualizing space require control, classification and naturalization of representations of place and a creation of a single use and social valuation for certain sites. Further, in many cities, oral and somatic ways of relating to urban places have largely shifted to “theme parks of memory”, sites for social and civic memories like statues of leaders, museums, and political monuments, nature parks and recreation areas (Boyer 1995; Nora 1989; Sorokin 1992; Yaeger 1996). Ruptures of these memories can, and do, occur–through violence, fantasy, myth, desire or sacrality–, using traces and fragments of memories of the city by various communities. What the ritual players do through the jātre is to create a landscape of memory through sacrality and the myths and fantasies of such sacrality. The landscape created is both a conceptual construct as well as an experiential moment, a kind of scheme of possibilities. In this process, older sites which have been overlaid by other practices and institutional networks are collected into a different pattern of meaning and another configuration of space, and stand in contrast to bureaucratic modes of representing the city.
9(c) The processes of the Karaga jātre also redefine the identities of those participating in the festival; above all, those of the Karaga priest himself and the Vīrakumāras. Both go through a process of transforming their bodies through training in gymnasiums (garḍi-mane). This training begins when these men are young boys, but achieves a special significance during the festival period itself. As will become more obvious in the second section of this article, two kinds of boundaries are negotiated within the bodies of these men during the Karaga: the boundary between sexuality and celibacy, and the boundary between the goddess’s śakti and male power.
LAND, WATER AND PEOPLE
10The male priest and the main ritual players in the festival belong to a community called the Tigaḷas. They are legally regarded as a backward class who number, according to community estimates, about 250,000 in Bangalore and surrounding areas of the district where they are concentrated. The term ‘Tigaḷa’ itself is a Kannaḍa word used to refer to Tamil-speakers who migrated to Bangalore (chiefly from the Arcot districts of Tamil Nadu) in two waves of migration. The first wave appears to have occurred during the years of the Vijayanagar empire in the late 14th and early 15th centuries when groups such as the Paḷḷis and the Paḍaiyichis from the plains were inducted into the armies of the empire and those of local chieftains. The second wave of migration occurred in the 18th century during the reigns of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan, rulers of Mysore, when various powers–French, British, and other local rulers–battled for supremacy in South India. It is commonly believed that most Tigaḷas migrated to Bangalore during the latter period as soldiers and gardeners. The Tigaḷas appear to have filled a particular niche within the city of Bangalore–by supplying trade revenue through their horticultural efforts, by serving the needs of militia and by involving themselves in landscaping the city. As horticulturists, they cultivated gardens (tōṭa) in the city irrigated by a network of tanks, wells and ponds. The community appears to have acquired caste-like characteristics within the city by evolving a corporate identity through the patronage and celebration of a festival dedicated to Draupadī (Aiyangar 1910-11; Hasan 1970; Iyer 1988; Jois 1988; Thurston 1975 [1909]; Rao 1978).
11At the time of the Tigala’s large scale-migration to Bangalore in the early 18th century, the city looked quite different. Even then, just as in the mid-16th century when Bangalore was founded, it was largely an area with thick forests in between settlements, somewhat hilly, with the presence of a large number of water-bodies, large and small (see Map 1, next page). The city was not a riverine settlement but a tank-based one. The old settlement (pēṭe), bisected by two main streets with a market alongside on the western side of the present metropolis, lay adjacent to a mud fort (kōṭe). Different areas of the settlement came to be occupied by different caste and community groups still recognizable in the city by the names of localities and streets. Many of these were artisanal and merchant groups devoted to a variety of trades and products. During the late 18th century, a new oval fort to the south of the settlement of Bangalore was completed. The fort and the settlement together formed a joint civic unit surrounded by gardens or open land and various tanks around the area, big and small. This garden and water-world separated the city and fort from other settlements, both as a defensive measure and as an identifying marker of a single politico-civic entity. The main landmark was the fort (with the palace within), for inside the settlement habitation was dense and there were no open vistas for the creation of landmarks or even a perspective to view it as such. The fort itself surrounded a site graced by an older landmark, the Venkaṭaramaṇaswāmy temple, built in the 17th century. The palace of Tippu Sultan stood about 40 feet away from this temple. The fort was extensively damaged after the battle for Bangalore in the last Anglo-Mysore war of 1799.
12In the old city, there were many centres of civic life including markets, religious sites, and tanks. The market to the south of the settlement and north of the fort was one: here goods were traded, here stood small temples, shrines of Sufi saints, a mosque and, a little distance away, the entrance to the fort. Another was the Dharmarāja temple, the ritual center of the Karaga jātre, on the eastern entrance of the settlement (called Halsoor gate). Tanks also contained in their vicinity several temples but cultural life appears to have been patterned somewhat differently from the temple-tank culture of Madras city which is, and was, heavily overlaid by Brahmanical forms. From the 17th century onwards in Bangalore, one kind of pattern was a quadrilateral set of festivals centered around four female deities, each located at points on the boundary of the city. One such temple was dedicated to Aṇṇamma close to the Dharmāmbudi tank, visited even today by the Karaga troupe.
13Another important tank was the Sampangi tank. Around the borders of the tank were a number of garden plots. This area was known as ‘Sampangihalli’ and Tigaḷa households cultivated land there. The Sampangi tank, which was the site of the emergence of the Karaga icon every year, formed the eastern boundary of the settlement, especially the area known as Tigalarapet near the Dharmarāja temple where Tigaḷas lived. Cultivation of gardens on the north and the south of the tank was done chiefly with water from wells which were full most of the year round due to the rainwater stored in the Sampangi and other tanks. The Tigaḷas supplied vegetables to the market and the palace for sale. The area south of the tank was also known for the growth of certain fruits like grapes. In areas around the settlement, the Dharmarāja temple owned a great deal of land donated by the king; it was used for the maintenance of the temple and the Karaga jātre.
14During the Karaga today, various altars are created around the city at different sites: in Cubbon Park, in temple enclosures, homes, and wrestling houses. The trident representing the goddess and various sacra are decorated with flowers– above all, jasmine–, watermelon, coconut, bananas, lemons and other fruits. The offerings distributed after the rituals consist of lemon-juice, some fruits, and lentils mixed with cucumber. The altar is a reminder of the material embeddedness of the rituals in the garden economy of the Tigaḷas. The plots of land cultivated with water from wells and tanks formed an economic and symbolic unit as well as a cohesive land-use category. As tanks and gardens gave way to concrete in the city in an unprecedented manner after the 1950s, the occupations of members of Tigaḷa households changed from being mainly gardeners to an urban working class–both in the formal and informal sectors–, petty businessmen, and government employees. In the Karaga jātre, however, this unit (of garden land and water-bodies) and its products–fruits, vegetables and flowers–appear as a sign of the city of gardeners as it existed about 1800. The point of procreation of the sign, as it were, is the pond in the park where the Karaga is born; at the edge of this water-body is a tree where an altar is recreated every day at noon during the festival for which many gather to worship. From the waters of this pond, according to the narratives of the community, emerges an icon made of earth that houses the power of the goddess. This event, like others during the performance, creates public spaces in the city through ritual action.
15Since 1949, when the Bangalore City Corporation was created, space in the city in terms of urban planning has been conceived very differently. Bangalore is a large metropolitan agglomeration with a population of approximately 4.5 million today. Control over public space and land is exercised through a number of separate laws and institutions. While these work at different levels, in terms of the classification of land use in Bangalore, the key documents are the development plans prepared by different planning bodies: the Outline Development Plan (1963, modified in 1972), the Comprehensive Development Plan (1984), and the Revised Comprehensive Development Plan (1995). The plans give data about land use at different points of time in the city classified under separate, single use categories (agricultural, commercial, residential, and others). The planning area as a whole is composed of two divisions–the ‘conurbation area’, which is the area delineated for the purpose of development, and the ‘green belt’ on its outskirts. The latter is supposed to retain its green character without any development in that region. The plans, however, indicate that the total area under residential use has increased continuously since 1949 and the green belt has shrunk. A study conducted by the Indian Space Research Organization reported in 1985 corroborates this feature of Bangalore’s growth. It shows that in 1912, 69.3 % of the study area (652 sq. km.) was under agricultural land and that this area decreased to 32.6 % in 1985. At the same time the built-up environment increased from 6.1 % to 48.7 % (Ravindra 1996: 105).
16The data from these sources, however, do not show how the nature of specific public spaces have actually changed within the city and what the experience of such shifts has been in daily life of various communities. For instance, a number of water-bodies and gardens have been lost in the city since they have been converted into stadiums, bus-stands, residential areas, and golf courses. Private developers and government agencies such as the City Corporation, the Bangalore Development Authority and the horticulture department have encroached upon most of them. At the turn of the century, the city area and its immediate hinterland apparently contained over 400 active tanks. In 1985, a committee set up by the Government of Karnataka (the Lakshman Rau Committee) reported that within the conurbation limits, there were 46 disused tanks and only 81 live ones.
17In the case of the three tanks associated with the Karaga performance–the Dharmāmabudi, the Sampangi, and the Kempāmbudi–only the last one precariously remains. Not only these tanks but the site of the Karaga icon’s birth itself, the Upnīrinakuṇṭe, has been affected over the decades so that it now can barely be recognized as a water-body at all; once a large pond, today it is not even a puddle. No large park has been added to the cityscape since the efforts of the previous centuries. Much of the area under gardens, forests and agricultural land has been swallowed up by the growth of the metropolis leading to all kinds of public concerns from the effect on the climate to threats to the aesthetics of the city. What is not recalled is that much of the land in the city area, which is now under housing extensions and other buildings or under parks, was previously horticultural land owned or cultivated by Tigaḷas. Further, the relationship between water-bodies and garden land was a close one, with material as well as ritual connections. These connections are recreated in the Karaga jātre.
THE PRIMAL GODDESS AND CELIBATE WARRIORS
- 5 In Karnataka, as in other parts of the sub-continent, religious festivals are timed primarily in re (...)
18Every year, the Karaga jātre begins with the flag at the Dharmarāja temple in the old city being raised on the seventh lunar phase (tithi) of the month of Caitra.5 This approximately corresponds to the beginning of the Tamil new year, which the Tigaḷas tend to follow for the most part. Festivities go on for nine days, excluding the first and the last day when the flag of the temple is raised and lowered. At the festival time, the market area remains functional almost through the entire night as city dwellers are to be found out on the streets, either doing the rounds of the temples in the area (practically every street has a small shrine), listening to scriptural recitations, or transacting business. In previous years, movie theaters even ran an extra late-night show for viewers.
19The temple, not a very imposing structure, was probably built about 1800, although it was refurbished at different times. On entering the main temple wall, there are two guardians to be found of which one is Āñjanēya (or Hanumān, as he is known in North India). Āñjanēya has a specific role in this cult: the Karaga priest carrying the icon is accompanied by Vīrakumāras who are distinctively attired in a white pant, a white turban with gold work on its fringe, and a red and white checked neck-cloth. Nearly all members of the community send at least one male member to the performance as a Vīrakumāra. These males take a vow either at the beginning of the festival period or, more commonly, on the day of the Karaga icon’s emergence, to perform the service of guarding the deity. During this period, they must remain celibate, separated from their women-folk (especially their wives), and also eat only one meal a day, usually uncooked food or that cooked in a special pot; they do not consume meat or alcohol during this period. They also do not visit a house where a marriage or a death has occurred or where there is a menstruating woman. The symbols of their allegiance are a wristband and a sword. The sword is in possession of every family that supplies a Vīrakumāra. Brahmin priests tie the wristbands since they are regarded as sacred threads of celibacy. The wristband binds the hero-son to the goddess and represents the strict demands on his character and sexuality during the Karaga.
- 6 Indian-style wrestling is a form that dates back at least to the period of the Mahabhārata (probabl (...)
20The Vīrakumāras also wrestle regularly in a gymnasium where the main deity is Āñjanēya. Central to Indian wrestling is the belief that sexual energy and celibacy are linked and strength is a function of directing sexual energy. The variety of exercises that are part of the wrestlers’ daily regimen include jack-knifes and knee-bends which are linked to the production and control of semen. The possession and store of semen is important for strength although it has to be kept in balance and should not be in excess.6
21In many medical traditions like Ayurveda and Siddha which are popular in South India, semen is regarded as being a transmutation of blood, and therefore processes which increase the correct ingestion of food and the circulation of blood also lead to the production of semen. For a wrestler, these processes include a proper diet (vegetables are important here, especially leafy ones, milk and clarified butter), attention to breathing during exercise, and vigorous workouts ranging from duels to lifting weights. According to one informant, the sheen and heat of the body produced by exercise is considered similar to that produced by ejaculation. The wrestler becomes virile by channeling his sexuality, and strong because of his self-control. The wrestlers revere Āñjanēya because he was a great devotee, unmarried, and celibate and therefore able to contain all his ‘strength’. Yet this control is always tenuous: once, as an informant narrated to me, while flying over the ocean, a drop of his sweat fell into the water and was swallowed by a fish; from that ‘union’ was born his son, Āñjan.
22The gymnasium is a real focus for the community’s men–even for those who are not serious wrestlers–and for the boys and girls who train there during childhood. After the girl child menstruates, or even a few years before that, she is withdrawn from the gymnasium, although I was given the impression that it has become increasingly uncommon for females to attend it at all. For some years, girls may also train in a variety of gymnastics and perform during the Karaga jātre as part of a public display. Adult women are strictly prohibited from entering these premises. For men and boys, however, the gymnasium continues to be a meeting-place, a site for an everyday regimen of the body and for preparation for the jātre. It is associated with the perception of their roles as militia in the various armies to which they were historically attached after the 15th century.
23The gymnasium is usually a large room with traditional instruments (sticks, maces, stone weights, and clubs), the floor of which is covered by red earth with a mirror leaning on one wall. There the wrestlers may carry out daily exercises or engage with others in training. A picture of Āñjanēya is found gracing a wall. There are three gymnasiums belonging to the community in the old city, each of which is visited during the Karaga jātre by the priest and his troupe, and named after famous wrestlers and teachers. A ritual is performed at each wrestling-house: the instruments are decorated and worshipped, and a conical icon is made out of the red soil on which the wrestlers exercise. This icon is decorated with jasmine and vermilion and surrounded by fruits; the image closely resembles the Karaga icon itself. The soft red soil, which is meant to balance ‘heat’ within the body of the wrestlers, is specially brought from distant villages. This earth covers the wrestler’s body and maintains a critical level of heat within it after exercise.
24The Karaga priest trains regularly in the wrestling house since the physical regimen built up there allows him to perform many of the strenuous activities that are achieved during the jātre. These include living on a very meager diet of uncooked and vegetarian foods for the duration of the performance, strict celibacy, and walking several miles in the city daily as part of the ritual sequence. Central is the act of carrying the icon in the procession on his head without touching it once with his hands for almost 8-10 hours as he strides through the old city. The hero-sons also train: for those accompanying the priest, the regimen is as strenuous as that of the priest for all the main rituals are performed after moon-rise and before dawn with subsidiary rites occurring during the day. During the jātre, the priest and most of the hero-sons go without sleep for almost nine days in a row. Strength and celibacy are crucial and interconnected.
25The circulation of fluids in the body, food into blood and then semen, also appears in another form in the jātre–this time in connection with a woman’s body. The sanctum of the Dharmarāja temple contains the central icon of the Primal Goddess (Ādi-śakti), the principle of female divinity. Behind the icon are two idols of Dharmarāja and Kriṣṇa; on her right is Arjuna and on her left is Draupadī. Surrounding Ādiśakti are the processional icons of the Pāṇḍava brothers. The icon thus resonates with two aspects of Draupadī in the festival: the first being her aspect as ‘Pañchāli’–the one from the region of Pāñchāla who married the five Pāṇḍava brothers; and the second is that of Ādiśakti herself as depicted in various scriptures. This dual nature also emerges from this account:
There was a demon called Thimmarasu. He was hiding behind a rock in the forest when Draupadī was passing by alone. He called out to her and made advances. The blood of the demon was such that if a drop fell on the ground a thousand prototypes were born from it. Draupadī, angered, shook the portion of her sari covering her breasts. From that sprung the Durga Pujāri, the Gaṇṭe Pujāri and the Gaṇāchāri [ritual players in the Karaga]. When she shook it again, out sprung the Vīrakumāras. They fought the battle against the demon, but each drop that fell gave birth to a hundred thousand more. Finally the goddess felled him with one stroke and before the demon’s blood could reach the ground, she licked up the blood and also swallowed him whole. [Interview with Ramdas, a Gaṇṭe Pujāri, March 1996]
26There are many other accounts which circulate in the community about the nature of feminine (divine) power. The powers of Draupadī in these narratives– sometimes her own and sometimes given to her by the gods–allow her to swallow the demon and his blood and also to produce the Vīrakumāras non-genitally. In all the accounts, Draupadī appears in her own ‘birth’ as Ādiśakti herself, while in another she is Pāñchāli, the spouse. In the period from the beginning of the Karaga jātre to the final day, she stands alone in her unmarried, powerful and singular state being joined to Arjuna only on the day of the procession. The crowning symbols of her power are jasmine flowers that during the jātre decorate the icon as well as the hair of the priest. Jasmine, which is white, is considered to be ‘hot like fire’. Only the ‘marriage’ on the last day of the festivities returns the goddess to a state in which the heat can be controlled although paradoxically, this heat is channeled through the body of a man who has become the medium of the goddess.
FLUID, FIRE AND AIR
- 7 See Kondos 1986: 180; Tapper 1979: 18-19; Whitehead 1921.
27Cultural ideas about the body are embedded in these ritual processes. The control of male and female bodies in preparation for and during the festival is connected to the power that is felt to inhere in their heat, blood and semen. The maintenance of celibacy for men during the performance is fragile and dependent on women’s acquiescence and in a way draws from their self-control. While women are circumscribed by this ideology, during the jātre, Draupadī’s role is not amenable to a similar construction and in fact, she has to go through several stages before she can be contained within it. Goddesses who appear alone, consortless, are seen as endowed with dangerous powers: most village/boundary goddesses are of this nature in South India. Such goddesses should not be read as malevolent beings, but as formidable protagonists because they possess destructive powers; in fact, the word ‘mother’ (amma) used to designate her is not so much a description of her attributes of motherhood than an ‘euphemistic disguise’ for her uncontrolled powers.7 When the goddess’s heat is extreme, then pox or disease (with which she is identified) is caused. At this time, in many temples dedicated to the goddess, cool substances such as curds as well as blood-sacrifices are offered. It is her heat that counteracts the heat of the fire-walking pit that a devotee enters in her name after taking a vow during many festivals.
- 8 White states that these concepts were available at least from the 2nd century B. C. and are to be f (...)
- 9 See White 1996: 16.
28A theory about the body (and its interaction with the macrocosm) underlies these practices as well as the training in the gymnasium. In a brilliant study, White states that common to various traditions like yoga, Ayurveda, Siddha, and cults around the goddess, are concepts in which a threefold structure of fluid-fire-wind (rasa-agni-vāyu) interacts with ideas of the human, the divine and sacrifice.8 The polarity between the human and the divine or the microcosm and the macrocosm is mediated by the act of sacrifice that allows a transfer from one domain and substance to the other. According to different domains of usage, this triad has taken the form of moon-sun-wind, semen-blood-breath, and mercury-sulfur-air. In other words, fluid, semen, moon and mercury, and fire, blood, sun and sulfur are mediated by the active element of air, wind, and breath in a sacrificial structure.9
- 10 Cf. ibid.: 20-28.
29In Ayurveda, the relation between the three substances is worked out in terms of the body, disease, and the environment which has parallels in the models developed by yoga. As I will describe below, it also continues in various combinations in the ritual processes in the Karaga jātre. White states that the cycle of seasons and life and death are related to the dynamic interaction between the sun and the moon in which moisture and vital fluids are the goal. The year is divided into two semesters–the fiery (when the sun rises higher in the sky and drains the moisture from living beings), and the lunar (when the moon is relatively higher than the sun in the sky and rains moisture on the world). The first semester corresponds to the period between the winter and summer solstices, while the second, to the period between the summer and winter solstices. The turning point between each falls approximately on January 14 and July 14. The connection between the rejuvenation of the moon and human bodies is an explicit one. Food in the body can be ‘cooked’ and the end product of digestion is, in males, semen, which is lunar. The waxing and waning of the moon during the year and the lunar month subjects semen to the same dangers as the moon in relation to the sun. The lunar month is the time taken for the food that males ingest to become semen and for females to produce an ovum. “These perceived dangers to the very survival of the male sexual fluid are compounded by an Ayurvedic identification of the female uterine blood with the fiery (āgneya) sun that drains the ecocosm of all its vitalizing moisture in the first semester of the year: the ‘lunar’ semen a male is capable of producing is but a drop in the fiery maelstrom of his partner’s sexual fluid” (White 1996: 26). In traditions of yoga, the lower abdomen is associated with the female sun; the head is the locus of the cooling moon whose fluid is semen carried upwards by yogic practices and transformed to become nectar, the drink of immortal life. In both these traditions, as well as in other seasonal festivals, there are customary practices for channeling and balancing this polarity.10
30During the Karaga jātre, these practices of balancing fluid-fire-air include the control of the breath and semen, the veneration of Āñjanēya (who was the son of Vāyu, the wind-god), exercises performed in the gymnasium, and the offering of certain substances. In the ‘hot’ months of March and April when the Karaga jātre occurs, men and women both offer cool substances to the Primal Goddess– for instance, lemon juice and a variety of fruits by men and jaggery by women. Yet balance between heat and coolness is crucial and the dominant imagery during the jātre is one of heat which has to be kept constantly in check by counter-offerings of ‘cool’ substances. This necessity for maintaining a tenuous balance is spatially perceivable in the separation of male and female members of the community during the festival; women remain almost totally apart from the main ritual sites during the festival and have no roles as ritual players. Men’s heat too, especially as hero-sons, is in constant danger of overflowing and must be contained through a variety of practices such as the smearing of ‘cool’ turmeric on their chests.
31However, it is the heating of the goddess and her embodiment in the priest that reveals most fully the ambiguities involved in the construction of sexuality in the jātre which the wrestling as everyday regimen produces. As the heating of Ādiśakti gradually escalates during the performance on the one hand, on the other hand, it is a man who comes to embody her hot power and the sign of this heat is the headdress of jasmine which the Karaga priest wears. Carried by the force of the icon, the Karaga priest begins a special dance that is regarded as a sign of the presence of Ādiśakti. Till this moment, the priest has been called by a variety of terms–usually ‘master’ or ‘the Karaga priest’; now he is referred to as ‘the Karaga’ and in neuter gender: people say, “it came by”, “it danced”, or “the Vīrakumāras made it play.”
- 11 Vermilion and turmeric, red, white and yellow have various significations during the festival. The (...)
32‘Hot’ dominates over the ‘cool’ till the night of the procession that marks the end of the festivities. Two nights before this event, the icon manifests as a gleaming, bejeweled, red-colored cone decorated with jasmine flowers which the priest carries on his waist. At the procession on the full-moon night, the icon rests on his head. Members of the community associate this with the power and heat of Ādiśakti and see it as having traveled up the length of the priest’s full form, a state of tremendous energy and bliss. The two states are also reflected in the dress of the priest. On the day of the icon’s emergence, the priest is bare-chested wearing only a red waist-cloth reaching to his feet but during the procession, he wears a turmeric-colored sari and blouse covering his complete form.11 Fully in contact with the icon now, the power of the goddess has totally filled him.
33The central role of the Karaga jātre, thus, is held by the Karaga priest who is the locus of flows and transformations as bearer of the Karaga icon. Traditionally, the role of the Karaga priest has passed from one generation of the family to another. In the past five decades, that role has rotated between three families, male members of which belong to different occupational strata in the city. For instance, in 1995, the Karaga bearer (named Shiv Shankar) was an employee in the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, although not at the management level; and in 1996 and 1997, the Karaga bearer (Abhimanyu) was a carpenter.
- 12 This feature is common to other priests in many goddess shrines as well as other bearers of the god (...)
34The man who is a Karaga bearer must be married. He leaves his house on the night that the flag of the festival is hoisted and comes to stay in the temple. His wife removes various insignia of marriage such as vermilion on her forehead, and is considered to be in a state akin to widowhood for the period of the festival. She is prohibited from seeing her husband’s face; all these prohibitions are lifted when he returns home after the festival and the two are once again ‘married’. The marriage of the Karaga priest is explicitly related to the possession of śakti. He comes into contact with this power, in part, through training, and in part through the establishment of correct sexual relations with his wife who also embodies this power: asceticism and desire are terms of an unified field here rather than being opposed. Thus, through certain taboos and the establishment of ritual distance from his wife during the festival period, he achieves power and, in effect, substitutability with her.12
35The Karaga icon is said to weigh about 15-20 kilos. This requires training on the part of the bearer to be able to lift its weight on his head for nearly 10 hours and move all over the city on the final day’s procession. In Malur, a town close to Bangalore where the Karaga also occurs, the Karaga bearer often begins his training about three months in advance. Among other things, this involves his running every morning with a sandbag weighing about 25 kilos on his head, and special dances which he practices in the courtyard of the temple. The weight of the jasmine garlands decorating the icon alone is about 10 kilos (Taranga 1983: 41–42). There are norms about how this icon should be structured which are considered to be secret knowledge. After the Karaga icon is covered with jasmine (special families of florists supply the garlands), the representations of the insignia of the goddess–the conch, the discus, the trident, the mace and the drum–are stuck on the flowers. Once mounted on his head on the day of the procession, the priest may not touch the icon; in his right hand, he carries a dagger (bāku), and in his left, a sacred staff (mantra-betta). Layers of jasmine crown the icon and the priest also wears a huge headdress, flowing from head to ankle, made of jasmine buds which is likened to the jasmine decoration worn by brides although this is, of course, far more elaborate. The Karaga bearer’s garb is part of the process of recalling another identity through the performance–that of Draupadī as spouse. The splitting of the identity of Draupadī into two roles–the Primal Goddess and a polyandrous wife–is suggested within the jātre especially with the manifestation of the icon. The first role is given form in the icon and as the bearer of the icon, the possessed priest is also identified with that role. But through his enactment of Draupadī’s marriage on the last day of the festival, he resolves the split identity of the goddess within his male body. Thus there are a series of displacements and resolutions that are visible temporally within the ritual calendar, spatially through the procession of the priest and his retinue in the city, iconically in the temple, and somatically within the priest.
THE INCARNATION OF THE GODDESS
36The two most significant days in the performance are the ‘Hasi Karaga’, which takes place on the thirteenth tithi of Caitra, and the ‘Pēṭe Karaga’, which takes place on the full-moon night of the same month. Hasi Karaga is called thus because the Karaga icon is said to have been prepared from unbaked clay; it is ‘raw’ (hasi) as it were. It is popularly believed that the icon takes form in Upnīrinakuṇṭe in Cubbon Park. A small group of Vīrakumāras, the Karaga priest, and other officiants–about 15 persons in all–bring this icon to the Sampangi tank area not far from the temple. They emerge after some secret rites that no one may witness. A group of Vīrakumāras carrying their swords is entitled to prevent others from viewing this event.
37The events that occur during the performance each year are fairly standardized: gathered in the premises of the Sampangi tank are other Vīrakumāras and the general public. Excitement is high in the triangular area that has been left over from the construction of a stadium that looms behind the little tank. The roads are devoid of vehicles since it is past midnight, but devotees are awake to wait on the appearance of the Karaga śakti. Only the Tigala women are absent from the scene. The compound is bustling with activity as flower-sellers sell handfuls of jasmine buds (this is thrown on the Karaga priest as he passes by with the Karaga), peanuts, and other refreshments. A pillared building stands in the centre of the area. This is completely dark but one can make out the outline of a tent inside.
38At about 2 a.m., we hear the sound of drums and pipes playing, and the Vīrakumāras rush in from the entrance accompanying the Karaga priest. He is shielded from public gaze by a moving curtain made of scarves. He disappears into the tent in the pillared building. For the next hour or so, on the grounds of the tank, groups of Vīrakumāras are getting their wristbands tied by Brahmin priests. Their swords are lined up in the shape of a crescent moon.
39Suddenly, lights are turned on in the pillared building. Drums echo the shouts of “Gōvinda, Gōvinda!” by the Vīrakumāras and the public. The tent begins to tremble and shake. In a few moments, the swaying of the tent is over and it is thrown off to reveal in its midst, a ruby-red, cloth-covered Karaga icon decorated with jasmine. The Karaga śakti has manifested itself. After the priest bathes and dresses, he returns to the building with the Vīrakumāras carrying their swords. Again, a chant goes up among the crowds: “Gōvinda, Gōvinda!” The priest stands on the platform and, in a flash, the Karaga icon ‘sits’ on his waist, his left hand curved around it. The Karaga icon is said to leap onto his waist with its own power. A curved dagger is held in the priest’s right hand. The frenzy of the crowd is great. At this moment, the priest is only partly identified with the Karaga, its power being at waist level. He begins to sway and dance a few steps. He goes around the building a few times carried by the force of the Karaga. After circling the building, he begins to move regally across the grounds clockwise. The public has lit camphor all over the ground to welcome the appearance of the Karaga and the priest and his troupe step on these flames as they move across the ground. A procession with the priest accompanied by the hero-sons carrying their swords enters the Dharmarāja temple.
40During the Hasi Karaga, Draupadī appears as Ādiśakti. This aspect is absent or at least not stressed on the Pēṭe Karaga day when Ādiśakti returns to her guise as Draupadī and further, as the wife of Arjuna. In the afternoon of the Pēṭe Karaga day, the priest is adorned with black bangles by a local bangle-seller. Both men and women from the community come to watch this event. From the temple, a procession of officiants and others moves towards the house of the priest carrying a sari, a blouse, and other items necessary for the ‘wedding’. There, the priest takes leave of his family and goes to ‘the groom’s house’, i.e. the temple. The marriage of Arjuna to Draupadī occurs inside. This rite takes place in secrecy inside the sanctum and there is no public event till the emergence of the Karaga icon from the temple after 10 p.m.
41Outside the temple there are heavy precautions and arrangements made by the police because the crowds that have come to witness the Karaga jātre are gigantic and often include the Chief Minister of the state. Outside the compound of the temple stands the chariot that will carry the idols of Draupadī and Arjuna. A little while before the priest emerges from the sanctum, the Vīrakumāras are doing an elaborate swordplay (called alagu-sēve, which literally means ‘service with the blade’). This includes their swords touching their bodies to ritual chants (it never draws blood unless the Vīrakumāra has been ‘impure’). The service is performed to excite the goddess enough so that she emerges from the sanctum. After midnight (although in 1996 it occurred about 10.45 p.m. because of a lunar eclipse which was to follow later), the Karaga emerges from the temple, the priest on his knees with a huge headdress of jasmine containing the icon within it. He is completely identified with the śakti, being in full contact with the Karaga. Gunshots are fired outside the temple and shouts of “Gōvinda!” fill the air. The Karaga ‘dances’ around the courtyard of the temple stepping on camphor flames that have been lit by devotees before going outside to embark on a procession through the city, a distance of almost 10-13 kilometres.
THE LANDSCAPE OF MEMORY
42The procession has a designated route in the old city; all along it, city-dwellers stand with jasmine buds to throw on the Karaga. The crowds are thick and the city appears a vast pilgrimage site. The areas that the procession passes through are areas of the old city of which Cubbon Park was a new border. The second section of this article described how the city looked before the establishment of the cantonment and Cubbon Park in Bangalore. According to accounts of the Tigaḷas, the park was laid between the old city and the cantonment on garden land owned or cultivated previously by the community of gardeners. The creation of the park and a number of buildings on it, such as the Public Offices (built between 1864 and 1866), certainly altered the cityscape of Bangalore from its previous form. How do we understand the shifts in the structure of a city as a whole? What changes the relationship of elements of a built environment to each other? How are the layers and fragments of the city recalled into current experience through a landscape of memory?
43One can use the idea that there are various elements ordering the image of a city: ‘Landmarks’ are points of reference external to the observer in a cityscape; a building or a space becomes a point of reference through notable components, siting, materials, scale, use or unusual form. ‘Nodes’ are interactive points that are made up of several structures and spaces that may or may not centre on a landmark. They are formed by the concentration of meanings and activities. ‘Districts’ are sections with a two-dimensional area defined by common use, appearance and topographical definition; people are inside or outside of a district. ‘Paths’ are kinetic, somatic and memorable experiences that occur through the creation of linkages between urban components along a route. Story lines can be created along a path because of the existing and previous associations of components on the route. ‘ Edges’ are borders between areas with different characteristics (Favro 1996; Lynch 1960).
44The Cubbon Park created a new edge for the old city. The British cantonment lay first in the area of Ulsoor village near a tank by the same name. However, the period of the British Commission (1831-1881) changed the axes of administration dramatically in Bangalore that came to have two districts–the old city and the cantonment. This became perceptible in the cityscape. One of the first acts after the Commission was established was to shift the Government offices from Mysore to Bangalore where it was then housed in the palace of Tippu Sultan in the fort area. This was the only building in those days with sufficient space for accommodating officials. But the orientation shifted further to the northeast a few decades later with the creation of Cubbon Park and Public Offices on one portion of the park (this later became the High Court of the state), creating a new landmark to replace the fort of the old city. The Park mediated the separation between the city and the cantonment, softening the boundaries between the two.
45There were now paths that led out of the old city through Cubbon Park linking the cantonment and the old settlement on a regular basis. As this path came to be frequented more and more, and as garden lands disappeared increasingly around it, Cubbon Park was transformed into a large, groomed and green space. It began to lose its character as an edge, becoming more a node for leisure and business for the residents of the cantonment.
- 13 On Bangalore’s development after 1950, see Gist 1986; Heitzman 1992 and 1997; Holmström 1994; Praka (...)
46A century later, nothing of this landscape remained.13 As the development plans somewhat generally allude to, the most startling changes came in the decades after 1949 when the old city and the cantonment merged to form a new civic entity. In Sampangihalli, for instance, now called Sampangi Ramnagar locality, all land in the southern and central portion was transformed into housing sites or acquired by the city for its housing projects. The northern edge came to be filled by a number of buildings–theatres, hotels, community association buildings, and shopping complexes. The Sampangi tank itself bore no resemblance to that of the earlier period. The Kanteerva stadium, a new and impressive engineering landmark, was built on the tank area that was filled in, and all that remained of the huge tank was a small square enclosure of water, walled in by concrete. Near the tank, a small pillared hall was constructed as the Hasi Karaga site where the Karaga priest was brought after his rituals on the night of the icon’s birth. Just outside the enclosure, a triangular piece of temple land had become a petrol station. The fate of Sampangi tank was similar to that of Dharmāmbudi that had been converted into a new node after being drained and filled–the city’s central bus stand. In Sampangi Ramnagar, gardens have been totally transformed into concrete-houses, Corporation quarters, the offices of the Bharat Earth Movers Limited, the Telephone Exchange, and several other such sites.
47A landscape of memory is crafted during the Karaga by the creation of new story lines through the city, other than those given by the above historical process. This landscape is not merely a map of the city although it refers to the geography of the city about 1800. Unlike city maps or categories of the development plans for the city, it combines water-bodies, garden lands, temple sites, streets, and the bodies of persons and deities through various story lines. One kind of story line is the origin of the Tigaḷa community from Draupadī and the connection of the local community to the epic narrative. Another is the double identity of Draupadī and her dual personification during the festival. Other story lines occur at different moments in the performance, but their most powerful evocation comes during the procession on the final day.
48The procession passes through the old city stopping at a number of sites on the way, stations on a mnemonic journey. At each of the main sites that it stops at, rituals are conducted. The procession goes through main paths in the old city, both on an east-west and north-south axis (see Map 2, next page). The Karaga surrounded by Vīrakumāras begins from the Dharmarāja temple at Tigalarapet and moves down Nagarthapet main road towards Avenue road. It then moves southwest at this junction towards the old fort, the City Market and the Āñjanēya temple that marks the remains of the oval fort. The third station on the journey is the tomb of a Sufi saint, Tawakkal Mastan, a reminder of the large Muslim presence in the old city as rulers and commoners especially from the early 18th century onwards if not earlier. Chickpet road on which the procession moves and Avenue road were probably the two roads that bisected the old city constructed by the founder of Bangalore. The fort of Tippu Sultan replaced the old mud fort at the south of these two bisecting roads. The Aṇṇamma temple, to which the procession next moves, is a node of the quadrilateral structure of pox goddess temples that existed in the old city. Aṇṇamma’s shrine not only stands in the vicinity of the city bus stand on Subedar Chatram road, but she is also considered to be the ‘goddess of the city’. The last stop is an Āñjanēya temple near the junction of Avenue road and Killari road. Āñjanēya, as mentioned earlier, has an important role in the festival of Draupadī being associated with the Vīrakumāras. This temple also marks one of the ‘gates’ of the old city, Yelahanka gate.
- 14 See also Assayag 1993, Bayly 1989, Beck 1981 and Hiltebeitel 1989, for a discussion of the goddess (...)
49Many of these paths, edges and nodes belong to different fragments of the history of the city before 1800 and the landscape of memory thus constructed is not a monolithic entity. Sites that partake of separate eras and traditions are recombined in new story lines as when the goddess is allied with the Sufi saint.14 The Karaga priest visits the shrine of Tawakkal Mastan, a Sufi of the Saharwardi order, and stops inside for a prayer after circling the tomb of the saint. According to the priest of the shrine, Hazrat Tawakkal Mastan was one of the 900 disciples of a saint (Bābā Buḍangiri) who came to India from Turkey (some devotees say Iraq) having brought with him coffee seeds which were sowed in South India for the first time. The shrine is said to be about 300 years old. Other informants state that Tawakkal Mastan came to Bangalore during the time of Tippu Sultan and Hyder Ali and even worked on the fortification of the mud-fort of the rulers which was in progress at that time. A well-known story that tells of the relationship of the tomb to the temple is that one year, the Hazrat was watching the Karaga procession through the city. He was knocked down and injured by the crowd and cursed it. The procession could not move any further because of the saint’s wrath. Finally, turmeric paste was brought from the temple and applied to his wounds. His wrath thus ‘cooled’, the procession moved forward. As a mark of respect to the saint, the Karaga troupe visits the tomb on the final day of the festival.
50Given these alliances between different sites and traditions, what kind of contours does this landscape of memory have in relation to the previous history of the city and current practices? There are empty spaces within this topos where related points of a node have disappeared or do not appear within the frame of the Karaga jātre as when only one of the four goddess temples of the older quadrilateral structure appears during the procession. There are ‘veiled’ sites, zones of secrecy such as the pond when the icon emerges, the priest as he moves from that site to the pillared building covered by scarves, and the sanctum at the time of the goddess’s marriage. There is also an overlay of signification as when Dharmāmbudi tank is remembered existing ‘beneath’ the city bus-stand, as it were, which now stands ‘on top of’ the old tank bed. Sites are signified and resignified creating different networks of meaning within the material and symbolic resources available to the Tigaḷas and these rework the boundaries of the city, public spaces and the body. At the centre of these combinations, significations and resignificative networks stands the possessed priest with his headdress of jasmine buds, crowned by the icon of the goddess. His transformation, as that of the Vīrakumāras through penance, training and ritual, allows another identity to be realized. At the same time, the community of gardeners standing on the route waiting for a vision of the goddess or following the goddess along the paths she weaves, experience and remember another landscape.*
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Notes de fin
1 There is now a substantial amount of work on the cult of Draupadī and performances related to it; most of it is based in Tamil Nadu and a large portion of it relates to rural locales (see especially Bruin 1994; Frasca 1984 and 1994; Hiltebeitel 1988, 1989 and 1991).
2 The use of the term ‘landscape’ here is an allusion to the akam genre of classical Tamil poetry in which five landscapes–the mountains, forest, lowland, seashore and desert–are described (see Ramanujan 1975; Pillay 1975: 160-88). In the case of this article, the landscape we are discussing is an urban metropolitan one although the forest is recalled at several moments during the performance, a theme that cannot be taken up in the article.
3 See Munivenkatappa n.d.: 24.
4 Similar arguments have been made for ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that is reworked into a context of social and economic marginalization (see Taylor & Jamieson 1997 on Sheffield, the ‘city of steel’). Speaking about Buffalo Bill’s Wild West with spectacles of armed and costumed Plains Indian warriors in the 1880s in New Orleans, Roach argues that it dramatized the fact that frontier space was embattled, and the disenfranchisement of the American Indians. Again, border skirmishes enacted by Mardi-Gras Indian gangs in the city, their masculine emphasis, fraternal organization, and patriarchal dedication to the Big Chief recall post-Civil War rhetoric about resurgent black manhood and the bravery of black regiments on behalf of the Union cause in that period just as the nation accepted Jim Crow (Roach 1996: 202-06).
5 In Karnataka, as in other parts of the sub-continent, religious festivals are timed primarily in relation to lunar months (candra māsa)-a month corresponding to a synodic revolution of the moon. A lunar month comprising of thirty lunar phases (tithi) is reckoned between successive new moons (āmavāsya). The fifteenth phase of the bright fortnight is reckoned as the full-moon (pūrṇima). The solar year is sidereal, which means that the revolution around the sun is calculated with reference to fixed stars. The year lasts a little more than 365 days with twelve months (saura māsa) which correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac (rāśi). The point at which the sun leaves one zodiac sign and enters another is called samkrānti. The name of the solar month begins with the name of the zodiac sign into which it moves on a samkrānti. Since the solar year is 365/366 days in duration while the lunar year is about 354 days, the two are synchronized by various rules. While the solar year begins with the movement of the sun into Aries (Mēśa-samkrānti), the luni-solar year in most areas begins with the preceding new moon in the lunar month of Caitra. This rule, which is followed in Karnataka, ensures that the lunar months roughly correspond to the same solar months every year. The discrepancies between the two are corrected by deleting or adding some tithis, lunar time phases. While the luni-solar calendar is common in Karnataka and the new year begins on the new moon of Caitra, in Tamil Nadu, a completely solar sidereal year prevails, although the names of the months derive from lunar month names. This makes the new year in Tamil Nadu begin when the sun enters the zodiac sign of Aries which occurs some days after the new moon and beginning of the luni-solar year in Caitra. The luni-solar month and the solar month roughly correspond to the Gregorian month of March-April (Merry 1982).
6 Indian-style wrestling is a form that dates back at least to the period of the Mahabhārata (probably about the beginning of first millennium). In South Indian versions of the classical epic there are many descriptions of wrestling as well. The Paḷḷava ruler in the South, Narasimha Varman I (630-668 A. D.) had the title of ‘Mahāmalla’ or ‘the great wrestler’ and there appears to be a continuous history of wrestling up to the time of the founding of Bangalore in the 16th century. There are descriptions, for instance, of wrestling at the court of the Vijayanagar emperor, Kriṣṇadevaraya, who ruled over much of South India at that time. One historian remarks that duels and contests were very common in the court of the emperor and lands were granted tax-free for running gymnasiums (Mahalingam 1975: 68-70). In North India, wrestling may have absorbed some elements from the Mughal form of wrestling brought to the sub-continent by Persian armies in the 16th century. There might be some features in it that are owed to Greek classical wrestling introduced by the armies of Alexander. Technically, both northern and southern types resemble Western free-style wrestling though the theories of the body within the two systems differ (see Alter 1992 and 1995).
7 See Kondos 1986: 180; Tapper 1979: 18-19; Whitehead 1921.
8 White states that these concepts were available at least from the 2nd century B. C. and are to be found in the Vedic corpus (especially the Atharva Veda). Tantric practice, Indian medical traditions like Ayurveda, and alchemical and yogic traditions were heirs to these themes. Following various 10th to 11th century reconfigurations, these were aestheticized and internalized in various ways, although they continue in the practices of various Siddhas who were considered to be alchemists and masters of yoga (White 1996: 1-14).
9 See White 1996: 16.
10 Cf. ibid.: 20-28.
11 Vermilion and turmeric, red, white and yellow have various significations during the festival. The red vermilion, like the white jasmine, appears to signify not only ‘a hot state’ but also stands in contrast to cooler turmeric and yellow color. Thus the Karaga priest during the entire period of the festival except the final day wears yellow-colored clothes to signify the singular and unmarried state of the goddess although he carries the red icon. The hero-sons similarly tie on their wrists a woolen thread wrapped around a turmeric root signifying their allegiance to this hot goddess whose ‘children’ they are. See also Moreno & Marriot (1989) for a discussion of hot and cool in Tamil cults.
12 This feature is common to other priests in many goddess shrines as well as other bearers of the goddess’s power (see Beck 1981; Fuller 1979; Kapadia 1996; Tapper 1979).
13 On Bangalore’s development after 1950, see Gist 1986; Heitzman 1992 and 1997; Holmström 1994; Prakasa Rao & Tewari 1986; Vyasulu & Reddy 1985.
14 See also Assayag 1993, Bayly 1989, Beck 1981 and Hiltebeitel 1989, for a discussion of the goddess and her ‘others’–saints, demons, protectors and guardians–in various local (ritual) contexts.
Table des illustrations
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Titre | Map 1. The old city of Bangalore. |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/editionsehess/docannexe/image/26352/img-1.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 74k |
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Titre | Map 2. Route of the Karaga procession through the old city of Bangalore. |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/editionsehess/docannexe/image/26352/img-2.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 23k |
© Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1999