situation prompted the British to for-
mally ban this practice, despite their
general reluctance to interfere in Hindu
religious affairs.
Devaki
In Hindu mythology, the god Krishna’s
mother. Krishna is considered the
eighth avatar(incarnation) of the god
Vishnu, and like all of the avatars, he
comes down to earthto restore the cos-
mic balance by destroying the forces of
evil that are upsetting it. Devaki is the
niece of King Kamsa, the evil king of
Mathura, and on the day she is married
a heavenly voice proclaims that her
eighth child will kill Kamsa. Kamsa seeks
to destroy this prophecy by imprisoning
Devaki and her husband, Vasudeva,
killing each of their children as they are
born. Devaki’s seventh child is magically
transferred to the womb of her co-wife,
Rohini, and is born as Balarama.
At the birth of the eighth child,
Krishna, the locked gates magically
open, and a deep sleep falls over all the
guards, allowing Vasudeva to spirit the
infant child to his foster parents, Nanda
and Yashoda.
Devanagari
Name for the most common northern
Indian script, in which the sacred
Sanskrit, modern Hindi, and Marathi
languages are commonly written to this
day. It is a descendant of the ancient
Brahmiscript, and from it developed
the scripts used for the modern Bengali,
Gujarati, Oriya, and Punjabi languages.
Its most characteristic feature is that the
top element of most letters is a horizon-
tal line, which, when the letters are writ-
ten together, causes the letters to
“hang,” like laundry from a clothesline.
Its name literally means “[script of the]
city of the gods,” and according to one
theory, it was given this name because it
was developed in Benares, one of the
holiest cities in India.
Devapratishtha
(“establishing the deity”) Rite by which
the image of a deity is established in a
temple and consecrated for worship.
The image itself must be constructed
according to carefully defined sculptural
and artistic canons that date back to the
early centuries of the common era, as
the sculptures at the Deogarhtemple
clearly show. The image, temple site,
and the performers must be purified
before the rite begins, and this purity
must be maintained throughout the
entire rite—which can last for days—to
ensure that the image remains pure. All
parts in the transmission and physical
installationof the image are carefully
done, but the climactic rite is the
pranapratishtha, in which the image is
infused with the breath of life and
becomes the seat for the deity. After this
point, the image is considered to be rit-
ually “alive,” and must receive regular
worship and ministrations.Devaprayag
(“divine confluence”) Sacred town
(tirtha) in the northern part of the state
of Uttar Pradesh, in the Himalaya
Mountains about sixty miles up the
Ganges from the city of Haridwar.
Devaprayag is sacred because it is at the
confluence of the Bhagirathi and
Alakanandarivers, the largest Himalayan
tributaries of the Ganges. Devaprayag is
the final such river confluence in the
Himalayas, and it is at this confluence
that the Ganges is definitively formed as
one indivisible sacred stream.Devar
In the northern Indian joint family, the
term designating a husband’s younger
brother. The traditional Indian joint
family is headed by a husband and wife.
The couple’s sons, the sons’ wives, and
unmarried daughters live with them.
The married daughters live with their
husbands’ joint families. The joint family
is not just a group of people living
together. The good of the family is givenDevaki