Absent Lord: The Pujaris' Tale

The pujaris of the Saciya Mata temple gave me a somewhat different version, but thematically it comes to the same thing. The tale begins in 170 C.E. when there was a marriage of a boy of Osiya to a girl from another village. When it was time to return to the boy's family (in Osiya) after the marriage ceremony, the bride said that she would neither eat nor drink without her Durga, for it seems that there was a temple for Durga in her native village. So when they brought her to her conjugal village they made a Durga temple for her, which is the present Saciya Mata temple. The goddess then came to the girl in a dream and said that an image for the temple would emerge. The mountain split and the image came out - one leg in, the other out, riding a lion.

The tale (as I paraphrase what was told to me) now turns to Raja Upaldev. He and his people all had a dream that at a certain location would be found 900,000 gold coins. They went to that spot, which is 2 kilometers from the temple, and there was a stone with a copper pot under it with the 900,000 golden coins. That's why the name of the place is "nine hundred thousand pond" (navlakhtalab). The king then founded the temple (that is, he built it on the site of the previously existing shrine). The goddess was non-vegetarian. The population of Osiya was then 380,000.

At this point, along came Ratnaprabhsuri, and now we find ourselves on familiar ground. He went to the jungle, sat in the forest, and made a snake out of a roll of cotton which he enlivened by means of his special powers. He then sent it to bite the king's only son. The prince sickened and died, despite the best efforts of magicians and physicians. As in the version of this tale given above, the ascetic restored the prince to life; he made another cotton snake that sucked the poison out, and the king and the people became Jains.

Now, because the king and his people had converted to Jainism, the sacrifice offered to the goddess had to stop, and this made the goddess very angry. As it happened, at this time the people were building a Vaisnava temple. These people were all Vaisnavas - the pujari says - before they become Jains.^[1] Each day they would build it a little higher, and each night the angry goddess would tear down what they had built. So they went to the monk for advice, and he said, "I'll tell you tomorrow." That night he went to the goddess's temple and prayed to the goddess Durga. She said to the monk that she was angry because the people had stopped giving her meat and liquor. She said that if she was to become a Jain goddess, then the temple being built should be a Jain temple, not a Vaisnava temple. So the next day the monk told the people to build a Jain temple, which they began to do, and the construction went ahead with no further trouble.

But when the temple was finished there was no image. Now, the king's chief minister had a cow, and this cow started going to a particular spot three times daily and dropping her milk on the ground. When asked for the meaning of this, the monk Said, "I'll tell you tomorrow." He then went to the goddess at midnight. She said, "I knew you'd come to me," and then went on to say that an image was being made from milk and soil under the ground and that it would be complete in seven days. The next day the monk told this to the people. But they were impatient and dug up the image - which of course was an image of Lord Mahavir - before the seven days had elapsed. As a result, the image had a tumor on its chest. They installed the image in the temple, and the monk performed the consecration.

But then the people, unwilling to leave well enough alone, tried to remove the tumor on the image's chest by hitting it. The people who did this died on the spot, and a mixture of milk and blood flowed in a river from the wound on the image and brought various diseases to the people. Thousands died. So, as usual, the people went to the monk and asked him what to do. "I'll tell you tomorrow," he said. He went to the goddess at midnight. She was still angry from being denied her meat and liquor. He said, "You'll get sweets but not meat." She replied with recriminations. The people had pulled the image out too soon, and had hit it - and this was the image she had made. She said that she would punish the whole village, but she also said that she would come to the aid of whoever gave her sweets and had faith in her. Because of her curse the people had to leave the village, which they did within three days. The goddess then established the following rules: 1) that after a marriage the bride and groom must come and honor her at the Osiya temple, 2) that her followers must also perform the tonsure rite at this temple, 3) that her followers should go to the temple for darsan, and 4) that they must worship her as their kuldevi (lineage goddess). Because of the curse, no Osvals can live in Osiya (or at least not, the pujari added, "with families").