In an expanse of flat country, from which, however, the blue outlines of the Himalayas may be traced in the distance, the traveller finds, a short way outside Thanesar, a shallow swamp about three miles in circumference and overgrown with weeds. This is the historic lake which, according to General Cunningham, was a sacred place long anterior to the great war; indeed, as far back as the time of the Rig Veda itself. “Can it be possible,” I mused, as I stood beside this weed-covered pool, “that for a hundred generations the affectionate devotion of the Hindu race has consistently and persistently clung to this unattractive bit of water in an open plain?” “And how is it,” I asked myself, “that their piety never adorned its banks with temples (for there are here no ruins worth speaking of), and why is it now so neglected?”
Will the reader accompany me round the lake and survey it from all points of view?[109] On the east side are the only important buildings, the largest being a temple of very modern date and no architectural pretensions. It is an ordinary Mandir; but has just a slight local character in the fact that it contains five coloured clay statues of the Pandavas, railed off from the too curious or too pious spectator by a strong, rudely constructed railing of bamboos. It rejoices in the possession of a huge iron frying-pan—not less than eight feet in diameter and about nine inches deep—to which my attention was specially directed. This gigantic frying-pan is much in demand on festival days, when the multitude pays to be fed by the Brahmans.
A flight of steps leads from the temple into the water, and runs nearly along one-half of the eastern and northern sides of the lake. A causeway on arches extends into the lake and ends in a small temple picturesquely shadowed with trees. Another bridge, now but little above the level of the water, parallel to the causeway just mentioned, leads right across the lake, joining to both east and west banks a small island in the middle, on which that famous bigot, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, erected a diminutive fort to accommodate a small garrison, intrusted with the duty of preventing the Hindus from bathing in their sacred pool.
Proceeding along the east bank we pass a number of small tumble-down shrines, overshadowed by majestic banyans, extending their mighty arms in graceful curves over the tranquil green water. We still follow the steps and arrive at the north end which has quite a recent look about it. Our guide tells us that this modern addition was the work of one “Larkeen Sahib,” an official in these parts, who was very fond of the Hindu, and had built this ghat for them out of a feeling of gratitude because his wife had owed her recovery from a mysterious illness to the intercession of the Brahmans. Oh! “Larkeen Sahib,” I wonder if the pious local legend which is told about you has ever reached your ears!
On the western side we find a little brick cenotaph which commemorates the suttee of the five wives of a Brahman whose name is now forgotten.
Somewhat in advance of this cenotaph, and a little away from the lake-side, we are conducted to a “bythuck” of Guru Nanak, the original founder of the Sikh sect, and we take shelter within its walls from a pelting shower of rain which makes the landscape more cheerless than ever. Here our guide informs us Guru Nanak used to sit beside the sacred pool to practise contemplation. But the admiring crowds who came to visit him would give him no peace; so one day, to avoid their unwelcome attentions, he just sank into the ground and, following a subterranean tunnel, emerged at Hurdwar on the Ganges. There could be no doubt about this miraculous underground journey, for there was the very tunnel itself to support the truth of the story, with a substantial flight of steps leading down into it. Yes, true enough, there were three or four steps leading down into a small hole within the walls of the shrine. But how about the tunnel? My son descended into the hole to explore it. A look of chagrin passed over the face of our Brahman guide. Why this unnecessary and irreverent curiosity? The story must be true, for every one believed it; and, certainly, the position of this bythuck of Guru Nanak is interesting, for it shows how persistently the Sikhs attach themselves to the old Hindu faith to which the vast majority of professing Sikhs now practically belong.
THE TEMPLE AND BATHING GHÂTS ON THE SACRED LAKE AT KURUKSHETRA.
If there is anything that strikes one at Kurukshetra—and similar places in India—it is that the Brahmans have clung with wonderful tenacity through the vicissitudes of ages to their sacred spots; and that though they have, according to universal belief, enjoyed considerable revenues, they have, through all these ages, done nothing to adorn their sacred places, which owe what temporary embellishment they have to the not too magnificent and not too frequent liberality of individuals. It strikes one also that, with each changing fashion of belief, each rise of a new sect, the Brahmans having willingly accommodated it with a convenient local habitation and have hastened to associate its glories with those of its predecessors. Hence the shrine of Guru Nanak at Kurukshetra, alongside which we shall, no doubt, some day have one in honour of Swami Dayanand, when the Aryan sect is sufficiently grown to impress the Brahmans with its importance; the mere matter of orthodoxy or unorthodoxy being somewhat unimportant.
The reason for the wonderful persistence with which the affectionate regard of the Hindus has hovered round their old shrines and holy places for thousands of years, though at first sight rather strange, is not difficult of explanation. They have a hereditary priesthood, a priesthood that lives by the proceeds of the shrines, and to whom the shrines are what land is to the cultivator. In this simple fact lies the explanation of the matter, and of other points in Hindu religious history, and probably in the history of other nations with hereditary priesthoods. Successive generations of priests have, for their own subsistence, to attract to the shrine they have inherited successive generations of pilgrims, by keeping alive the old traditions, or inventing new legends to suit the altered tastes of the times. As the weeds that flourish in the lake are lineal descendants of the weeds that grew in the same place time out of mind, so are the Brahmans on the banks of the lake the lineal descendants of the Brahmans who flourished there in times immemorial. As the weeds live on the rank soil and stagnant water of the pond, so live the Brahmans on their wild legends and stale pretensions.