town where Krishna is said to have lived
as a child, and spent the rest of his life
sublimating that attraction through his
devotion to Krishna. The main themes
in his poetry are the attraction of the
cowherd women (gopis) to Krishna,
sparked by Krishna’s physical beauty
and, especially, the enthralling music
of his flute. With Raskhan one finds
a person who was a Muslim by birth
but who used images and attitudes
belonging to Hindu culture in an
absolutely genuine manner.
Ras Lila
In the mythology of the god Krishna, the
ras lila is the “circle dance” that Krishna
and his devotees (bhakta), the gopis,
perform on autumn nights on the shore
of the Yamuna River. In this dance—a
symbol of communion with the divine—
Krishna offers a form of himself to every
woman present, in order to convince
each one that God is paying attention to
her and to her alone.
Rat
An animal with a prominent place in at
least two religious contexts. On one
hand, the rat is famous as the animal
vehicle of the elephant-headed god
Ganesh, and reinforces Ganesh’s iden-
tity as the Lord of Obstacles. If Ganesh’s
elephant head represents his power to
remove obstacles by simply knocking
them aside, his rat vehicle shows a
stealthier approach. Rats are famous
for their ability to work their way
around obstacles, slipping through the
smallest cracks in granaries to get to
the grain inside. In their ability to slip
around and between obstructing
objects, they stand as a worthy comple-
ment to Ganesh’s power.
Rats are also important to the temple
of the goddess Karni Matain the village
of Deshnok, in the state of Rajasthan.
The Karni Mata temple is inhabited by
thousands of rats, considered to be
Karni Mata’s sonsand thus sacred ani-
mals. According to tradition, when the
rats die they are reborn as members of
the families that comprise the temple’s
hereditary servants, and thus the rats
and the temple priests are all members
of one extended family.Rath Yatra
Festival falling on the second day of the
bright (waxing) half of the lunar month
of Ashadh ( June–July). The primary
deity worshiped in this festival is
Jagannath, who is considered a form of
the god Krishna. This festival is cele-
brated all over India but especially in the
sacred city of Puri, where the principal
temple of Jagannath is located. During
the festival in Puri, Jagannath, his brother
Balabhadra, and his sister Subhadra
are carried in procession through the
city’s main street to another temple
about a mile away. They stay in this
nearby temple for a week, and then
return to the Jagannath temple.
The deities are processed by their
devotees (bhakta) in three enormous
wooden chariots (rath), which the devo-
tees pull using long ropes. The largest of
the three, belonging to Jagannath, is
forty-five feet high, thirty-five feet broad
and wide, and travels on sixteen wheels
each seven feet high. The English word
“juggernaut” is a corruption of Jagannath,
and the connotation of a juggernaut as
an unstoppable force undoubtedly
derives from the momentum that these
carts attained once they began to
move. One of the staple fictions of
British colonial lore described Jagannath’s
frenzied devotees committing suicide
by throwing themselves under the
car’s wheels, so that they would die in
the sight of God. Despite such tales
being widely repeated, suicides of this
sort were extremely uncommon. Still,
there was some risk in pulling the
carts, since people losing their footing
in the massed crowd would be unable
to get up, and could potentially be
crushed by the wheels. For further
information see T. N. Madan (ed.),
Religion in India, 1991.Rath Yatra