come when they gain disproportionate
power and use it to their own ends.
Manmatha
(“churning the mind”) Epithet of the
Krishna, reflecting his ability to
bewitch and beguile his devotees
(bhakta). See Krishna.
Mansa Devi
Presiding deity in the village of
Manimajara, located in the Shiwalik
Hills, a short distance from Chandigarh,
and one of the nine Shiwalik goddesses.
According to local tradition, this is one
of the Shakti Pithas, a network of sites
sacred to the Goddess that spreads
throughout the subcontinent. Each
Shakti Pitha marks the site where a body
part of the dismembered goddessSati
fell to earth, taking form there as a dif-
ferent goddess; Mansa Devi was Sati’s
head. The word mansa means “wish,”
and it is claimed that Mansa Devi
will grant whatever wish the devotee
(bhakta) brings to her. There is another
temple of Mansa Devi on the hill above
the bathing (snana) ghats in the sacred
city of Haridwar; here, too, the officiants
claim that the presiding deity will fulfill
all one’s wishes.
The charter myth for the Manimajara
Mansa Devi, set in the time of the
Moghul emperor Akbar, illustrates her
power and concern for her devotees.
Akbar appoints a Rajputchieftain to
manage the land around Manimajara.
One year the chieftain is unable to pay
his taxes because bad weather has
ruined the crops. The chieftain is put in
prison, but his plight moves one of
Mansa Devi’s devotees, who implores
her to intervene in his behalf. The chief-
tain is released and the taxes waived;
when the chieftain discovers how this
has happened, he is so grateful that he
erects a temple in honor of the goddess.
See also pithaand Moghul dynasty.
Manthara
In the Ramayana, the earlier of the two
great Indian epics, Manthara is the
hunchbacked maid of King Dasharatha’s
wife, Kaikeyi. Manthara’s whisperings
against Dasharatha’s son Rama, the
god-king who is the epic’s protagonist,
slowly poisons Kaikeyi’s mind. She
succeeds in convincing the queen that
after Rama has been crowned
Dasharatha’s heir, she and her son
Bharata will be little better than
slaves, if they are allowed to live at all.
Goaded by Manthara, Kaikeyi decides
to demand two boons Dasharatha
gave her years before. With the first
boon she dictates that Rama be sent in
exile to the forest for fourteen years,
and with the second she stipulates
that her son Bharata be crowned heir
in Rama’s place.
The epic’s oldest version, the
Ramayanaof Valmiki, paints Manthara
as a genuine villain. There is little
explanation for her actions, although
given the belief in karma, her physical
disabilities would have been seen as
revealing moral and spiritual deformity
as well. In the Ramayana,written by
the poet-saint Tulsidas (1532–1623?),
Manthara’s behavior is ultimately attrib-
uted to the gods who send the goddess
Saraswatito confound Manthara’s mind,
setting in motion the chain of events
leading to the demon Ravana’sdeath. In
typical fashion, Tulsidas puts a more
charitable spin on the event, relating it
to Rama’s ultimate purpose for being
born on earth.Mantra
In its most basic sense, sacred sound. A
mantra is a collection of phonemes that
may or may not have syntactic meaning
as actual words, since their importance
comes not from the meaning of the
utterances, but from the very sounds
themselves. Mantras are believed to
confer power and varying spiritual
capacities on those who have been given
the qualification (adhikara) to use
them. The qualification comes fromManmatha