October, after which it is closed for the
winter months; this pattern is echoed at
Yamunotri, Gangotri, and Kedarnath,
the three major Himalayan pilgrimage
sites. The town’s name comes from its
presiding deity, Vishnu, whose temple
is the reason for the site’s existence. The
main image in the temple is claimed to
have miraculously emerged full-formed
from a shalagram, a particular type of
black stone containing fossilized
ammonite, which is itself considered a
“self-manifested” form of Vishnu.
Badrinath has a long history as a ven-
erable sacred site. Scholars believe that
it was occupied by a Buddhist temple
until several centuries into the present
millennium, based on the architecture
of some of the temple’s older parts. Local
tradition reports that until the middle of
the twentieth century when the Chinese
sealed the Tibetan border, Buddhists
came from Tibet for the temple’s closing
rites in the fall, bringing a hand-woven
blanket to drape around the image. In
Hinduism, Badrinath is one of the four
dhams (“divine abodes”) connected
with the philosopherShankaracharya.
Shankaracharya reportedly chose one
Hindu sacred center in each corner of
the subcontinent to combat the spread
of Buddhism and revitalize Hindu reli-
gion. At each center he established a
Dashanami Sanyasi monastic center
(math) to train learned monks.
Badrinath is associated with the sacred
center Jyotir Math in the Himalayan
town of Joshimath, forty miles south.
Each winter, the image at Badrinath is
symbolically transported to the
Narasimha temple in Joshimath.
According to Badrinath temple
records, for several hundred years tem-
ple worship was performed by the
Dandi Sanyasis; they were a group of
asceticsdevoted to the god Shivawho
were also Nambudiri brahmins, the
same casteinto which Shankaracharya
is supposed to have been born. When
the last of these ascetics died without a
successor in 1776, the local king who
served as the protector of the shrine
invited a non-ascetic Nambudiri brahmin
to serve as the temple’s priest. In defer-
ence to his ascetic predecessors, this
priest was given the title rawal
(“deputy”), and his extended family has
run the shrine since then. The rawal is
the only person allowed to touch the
image, and as a consequence he is
required to remain a bachelor, lest the
ritual impurity (ashaucha) arising from
the birthof a child (sutakashaucha)
render him unable to attend to his
duties. For a long time, the rawals had
sole rights to the offeringsgiven at the
shrine, but since 1939 the temple has
been managed by a committee, and the
rawal has been restricted to ritual duties.Bahi
(“account book”) Name for the pilgrim
registers maintained by hereditary pil-
grimage priests (pandas). Each panda
family in any sacred site (tirtha) has the
right to serve pilgrims whose ancestral
homes are in a particular place, whether
or not the pilgrims still reside there. For
example, a family from the Marwar
region of the state of Rajasthan will
always be served by the Marwaripanda,
even if the family has not lived in
Marwar for generations. Pilgrims make
an entry in their panda’s pilgrim register
during each visit, in which they write
down the date, the names of those who
visited, and the reason or reasons for
which they have come. These details are
noted on a thick sheet of paper about
ten inches wide and three feet long, and
there may be multiple entries on a page.
One of the page’s narrow sides has holes
punched in it, and a string can be
threaded through these holes to tie a
number of such sheets together. This
allows the panda to compile registers for
a particular village or specific family,
and when not in use these bahis are
rolled into a circle and tied.
These registers provide not only a
record of pilgrim visits, but are also the
unassailable evidence of the hereditary
connection between a panda and a pil-
grim family. Most pilgrims will demand
to see the entries for their ancestors asBahi