live a strict and disciplined religious life.
This includes a morning bath, followed
by gift-giving (dana) and worship;
eatinga restricted diet, and evenings
spent singing hymns (kirtan) and
listening to religious discourses. Some
pilgrims even take a strict vow, known as
kalpavas, to remain there for the entire
month, a vow which also entails a strict
asceticlifestyle. More than a million pil-
grims attend this festival. Every twelfth
year, when the Magh Mela becomes the
Allahabad Kumbha Mela, attendance
increases. In 1989 an estimated fifteen
million pilgrims came for a single day,
with millions more coming during the
rest of the month.
Magic
In Hindu tradition there are many differ-
ent powers in the universe, and many
ways of influencing them, both seen and
unseen. The emphasis on magic goes
back to the Atharva Veda, one of the
oldest Hindu religious texts, which is
mostly a collection of spells. Even today
many Hindus accept that certain pow-
erful religious adepts have the power to
command unseen forces, as well as the
power to counteract the spells levied by
others. People who have gained high
levels of religious attainments are also
believed to have superhuman powers
(siddhi), allowing them to do things
that ordinary people cannot. These
superhuman powers are not seen as
magical, but rather as the normal exer-
cise of a level of understanding higher
than most people have attained. Indian
culture also has a long tradition of illu-
sion, sleight of hand, and other sorts of
trickery, baffling and entertaining
onlookers for centuries. For an extensive
account of these powers, see Lee Siegel,
Net of Magic, 1991.
Mahabalipuram
Village on the Bay of Bengal in Tamil
Nadu, about thirty miles south of
Madras. Although famous as a beach
resort today, during the Pallava dynasty
(6th–9th c.) Mahabalipuram was a
major port, second in importance only
to the capital at Kanchipuram.
Mahabalipuram has several impressive
religious monuments, erected during
the reigns of Narasimhavarman I
(630–668 C.E.) and Narasimhavarman II
(700–728 C.E.). One of the monuments is
a rock-cut sculpturedepicting the myth
of the Descent of the Ganges, using a
natural vertical fissure to lay out the
river’s path. Other notable constructions
are the “Rathas,” a series of free-standing
temples carved from one giant boulder,
dedicated to the Pandavas, the protago-
nists in the epic Mahabharata. The
most recent attraction is the temple
along the shore, built during the reign of
Rajasimhavarman(early 8th C.). The
temple’s major deityis the god Shiva; a
smaller shrine also holds an image of
the god Vishnu. Although all of these
have been weathered by time and the
elements, they remain some of the most
visited sites in southern India.Mahabharata
One of the two great Sanskritepics,
traditionally ascribed to the mythical
sage Vyasa. The Mahabharatais much
longer than the other great epic, the
Ramayana. At almost 100,000 stanzas,
the Mahabharatais the world’s longest
epic poem. If the Ramayana can be
characterized as the tale of the “good”
family, in which brothers cooperate to
support and preserve their family, the
Mahabharata describes the “bad”
family, in which hard-heartedness and
the lust for power in an extended royal
family ultimately cause its destruction.
The epic is set in the region west of mod-
ern Delhi and describes a fratricidal civil
war. A greatly abridged account can be
given as follows:
Shantanuis the king of the Kurus. He
dies an untimely, heirless death. In a
desperate attempt to preserve the royal
line, Shantanu’s wife, Satyavati, calls
upon her elder son, the sage Vyasa, who
fathers children by Shantanu’s two
wives. The elder son, Dhrtarashtra, isMahabharata