Mahabhairab: The Temple an Asura Built

The story that gives Tezpur its name is one of the better narratives in the Puranas and it belongs to this town.

As it is told:

• Banasura, the asura king of Sonitpura, had a daughter, Usha
• She dreamed of a young man and fell in love with him, without knowing who he was
• Her friend Chitralekha, who could draw anyone from a description and could travel through the air, drew portraits until Usha identified him
• He was Aniruddha, the grandson of Krishna
• Chitralekha went to Dwaraka and brought Aniruddha, by her powers, to Usha's chamber
• They were together, in secret, in the palace
• Banasura discovered it and had Aniruddha imprisoned, bound in serpent coils
• Krishna, Balarama and Pradyumna came from Dwaraka to recover him
• A great battle followed
• Shiva fought on Banasura's side, because of his boon to him, and Krishna on the other
• Banasura's thousand arms were cut away by Krishna, all but a few, which Shiva asked to be spared
• Banasura submitted
• Aniruddha and Usha were married

The name Tezpur. Tez means blood. Pur means city.

The town is named for the quantity of blood spilled in that battle, and the older name Sonitpura means the same thing, since sonita is blood.

Why this story is good. Several things.

• It is a love story in which the woman initiates. Usha dreams of a man, identifies him and has him brought
• Chitralekha is a remarkable figure: an artist whose portraits are so accurate they function as identification, and who can travel through the air. She is the one who solves the problem
• The conflict is not between good and evil. It is between a father and his daughter's choice, escalated into a war between two gods
• Shiva fights Krishna, which is theologically awkward and the tradition handles it by having neither lose
• It ends in a marriage, and Banasura, having lost, is spared

The Shiva and Vishnu conflict. It is worth noting how the tradition manages it.

• Stories in which Shiva and Vishnu are in conflict exist and are frequently uncomfortable for the tradition
• They are generally resolved by mutual recognition, in which each acknowledges the other
• The Harihara form, half Shiva and half Vishnu, is the iconographic statement of the resolution
• Sectarian traditions have their own versions in which their deity comes off better, and reading several is instructive

At Tezpur, Shiva fought for the asura because he had promised to, and Krishna spared the asura because Shiva asked.

Both kept their obligations. That is how the tradition prefers these things to end.

Tezpur maps the Usha and Aniruddha story onto its own topography, and the sites can be visited.

Agnigarh:

• A hillock in Tezpur, above the Brahmaputra
• Agni means fire and garh means fort
• Tradition holds that Banasura built a fortress here surrounded by fire, to keep Usha isolated and to prevent anybody reaching her
• It is now a park with a walkway and sculptures illustrating the story
• The view over the Brahmaputra from it is very wide

What it is worth. It is a municipal park with a story attached, and it is a good place to be at sunset with the river below and the story in your head.

The sculptures are modern and are illustrative rather than ancient, which is fine and should be understood.

Bamuni Hills:

• Ruins of temples of around the ninth to tenth centuries
• Carved stone fragments, including doorframes and panels, of a high standard
• Under the Archaeological Survey
• Substantially ruined but the carving that survives is very good

Da Parbatia. This is the most important archaeological site in Tezpur and one of the most important in Assam.

• A stone doorframe, of around the sixth century, in the Gupta idiom
• Carved with Ganga and Yamuna as door guardians, in the standard Gupta arrangement, with attendants and floral ornament
• Set into the ruins of a later brick temple
• The oldest surviving architectural remains in Assam
• The carving is of very high quality and is directly comparable to Gupta period work in the Gangetic plain

Why Da Parbatia matters. It establishes that Assam in the sixth century was fully within the artistic world of Gupta north India.

That is not obvious. Assam is a long way east, across the Brahmaputra valley, and the assumption that the northeast was peripheral to Indian cultural development is common and is wrong.

Da Parbatia is a sixth century Gupta style doorframe in Sonitpur district, and it should change how anybody thinks about the region's place in Indian art history.

Kamarupa. The ancient kingdom, of which Assam was the centre, is worth setting out because it comes up throughout this batch.

• Kamarupa ruled the Brahmaputra valley from around the fourth to the twelfth centuries
• Its capital was at Pragjyotishpura, which is Guwahati
• Ruling dynasties include the Varmans, the Mlechchha dynasty and the Palas of Kamarupa
• Bhaskaravarman, in the seventh century, was a contemporary and ally of Harshavardhana, and Xuanzang visited his court and recorded it
• The kingdom is attested in inscriptions, in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta, and in Chinese sources

Which means that the same Xuanzang who recorded Harsha at Thanesar, described in the Haryana batch, also went to Assam and described Kamarupa.

That single traveller's account connects Kurukshetra to Guwahati in the seventh century, which is a useful thing to hold in mind about how connected the subcontinent was.

Assam's religious landscape has features found nowhere else and they are worth setting out before visiting anything in the state.

The layers:

• Shakta traditions of great antiquity and power, centred on Kamakhya
• Shaiva traditions, of which Mahabhairab is one
• Vaishnava traditions, transformed by the Ekasarana movement
• Tribal and community traditions across the hills and the valley, of which the Dimasa material described elsewhere in this batch is one
• Substantial tantric currents running through all of the above

The Ekasarana Dharma. This is the distinctive Assamese development and it deserves proper explanation.

Srimanta Sankardeva:

• Born in the fifteenth century in the Brahmaputra valley
• A poet, playwright, composer, painter and religious teacher
• Founded Ekasarana Dharma, the refuge in one, a form of Vaishnava devotion focused entirely on Krishna as the single object of devotion
• Rejected image worship, caste distinction in access to devotion, and elaborate ritual
• Taught that naam, the recitation of the name, was sufficient

What he created:

• The sattra, a monastic institution which became the organising centre of Assamese Vaishnava life
• The namghar, the prayer house, which exists in virtually every Assamese village and is the community's religious and civic centre
• Borgeet, devotional songs, which he composed
• Ankiya Naat, a form of one act play, and Bhaona, its performance
• Sattriya dance, which is now recognised as one of India's classical dance forms and which was developed in the sattras
• A body of writing including the Kirtana Ghoxa

The namghar deserves emphasis. It is not a temple.

• It is a hall, with no image in it
• At its centre is the guru asana, a throne on which the scripture rests
• The community gathers there for naam prasanga, congregational singing
• It also functions as the village assembly, where disputes are settled and decisions taken
• It is open to the whole community

That is a religious institution designed as a village hall, without an image, in which the book is the object of reverence and everybody sits together.

Madhavdeva, Sankardeva's principal disciple, continued the tradition and composed the Naam Ghoxa.

Why this matters for visiting Assam. A visitor who goes looking only for temples will miss most of Assamese religious life, which happens in namghars and sattras.

The Majuli sattras. Majuli, the large river island in the Brahmaputra, holds a number of active sattras and is the centre of the tradition. Visiting one, watching a bhaona or hearing borgeet, is the single best introduction to Assamese religion.

And the tension. Assam holds both an intensely image based and sacrifice associated Shakta tradition at Kamakhya, and a tradition that rejected image worship entirely, within a hundred kilometres of each other, and has done for five hundred years.

That coexistence is characteristic of Indian religion and is one of the more interesting things about the state.

Assam's festival calendar is organised around Bihu, and it is unusual enough to be worth explaining.

Three Bihus:

Bohag Bihu or Rongali Bihu:

• In Bohag, mid April, at the start of the Assamese new year
• The spring festival and the sowing season
• The largest and most joyous of the three
• Bihu dance and Bihu geet, the songs, which are courtship songs performed by young men and women
• The husori, in which groups go from house to house singing
• Gorubihu, the cow's Bihu, on the first day, when cattle are bathed, rubbed with turmeric and pulse, fed, and released with new ropes
• Lasts about a week

Kati Bihu or Kongali Bihu:

• In Kati, mid October
• Kongali means poor, and the name is honest: this is the lean season, when the granary is empty and the crop is standing but not harvested
• Lamps are lit at the tulsi plant and in the paddy fields
• A quiet, austere observance with no feasting, because there is nothing to feast on
• Prayers for the standing crop

Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu:

• In Magh, mid January
• Bhogali from bhog, enjoyment: the harvest is in and there is food
• Meji and bhelaghar, structures built of bamboo, thatch and wood, in which the community feasts the night before and which are burned at dawn
• Enormous feasting
• Traditional games including buffalo fighting, which has been restricted following court rulings on animal cruelty

Why the three Bihus are worth explaining. They are an agricultural calendar with the emotional register of each season built in.

• Spring: joy, courtship, planting, abundance ahead
• Autumn: anxiety, scarcity, lamps in the field, prayer for the crop
• Winter: relief, feasting, fire, the year completed

That is the year of a rice growing society expressed as three festivals, and the middle one is named for being poor, which is an unusually honest thing for a festival to be called.

Kati Bihu deserves a note. A festival that acknowledges the lean season, in which people light a lamp and pray because there is nothing else to do and nothing to eat, is a more affecting institution than the feasts on either side of it.

Bihu dance. It is what Assam is known for outside the state.

• Performed by young men and women, in groups
• To the dhol, the pepa which is a hornpipe made from buffalo horn, the gogona which is a bamboo jew's harp, and the taal
• Fast, rhythmic and physically demanding
• The songs are frankly about desire, courtship and longing, which is what a spring festival is for

Where to see it. Bohag Bihu in April, anywhere in Assam. The Bihu functions in Guwahati and the town celebrations across the valley are open and everybody attends.

A visitor in Assam in mid April should simply be outside.

Getting there

• Mahabhairab temple, Tezpur, Sonitpur district, Assam
• Tezpur is on the north bank of the Brahmaputra
• About 180 km from Guwahati
• Tezpur has an airport with limited connections; Guwahati is the main airport
• Rangapara North and Dekargaon are the nearest railheads
• Buses run from Guwahati and the road journey takes around five hours

Timings

• The temple opens early and runs through the day. Check locally

When to go

• Maha Shivaratri, the principal festival, with a large mela
• Bohag Bihu, in April, for the town at its best
• October to March for weather. Assam from April to September is hot and very wet
• Avoid the peak monsoon, when the Brahmaputra floods and roads are affected

What to see in Tezpur

• Mahabhairab temple and the linga
• Agnigarh, the hillock with the Usha story and the river view
• Da Parbatia, the sixth century doorframe, which is the most important thing in the town
• Bamuni Hills, the ninth to tenth century temple ruins
• Cole Park, the town park with sculptural fragments
• The Brahmaputra and the bridge

Combining the visit

• Nameri national park, about 35 km, on the Jia Bhoroli river, with excellent birding and river rafting
• Kaziranga national park, about 100 km, for the one horned rhinoceros, which is the reason most people come to this part of Assam
• Bhalukpong and Tawang, into Arunachal Pradesh, for which permits are required
• Guwahati, 180 km, with everything described in this batch
• Majuli, further east, for the sattras
• Orang national park

Kaziranga deserves a paragraph. It is one of the great conservation successes and it is close to Tezpur.

• A UNESCO World Heritage site in the Brahmaputra floodplain
• Holds around two thirds of the world's population of the greater one horned rhinoceros
• Also holds tigers at high density, wild water buffalo, swamp deer and an enormous bird list
• Rhino numbers recovered from a few dozen at the start of the twentieth century to over two thousand, through very determined protection
• Poaching remains a serious threat and anti poaching operations are intensive
• The park floods annually and animals move to higher ground, crossing the highway, which is why there are speed restrictions and why they should be observed

Arunachal permits. Indian citizens need an Inner Line Permit for Arunachal Pradesh, and foreign nationals need a Protected Area Permit. Apply in advance, online or at the relevant office.

Assam travel practicalities:

• October to March is the season. April to September is hot, humid and wet, and the monsoon flooding is very substantial
• The Brahmaputra floods annually and can cut road links
• Distances take longer than they look
• Guwahati is the hub for everything
• Assamese food is excellent and distinct: rice, fish, duck, pork in the hills, khar, tenga which is a sour fish curry, and pitha

A closing thought. There is a very large stone linga in a modern concrete building on a hill in a town called the city of blood.

It is there because an asura who was a devotee of Shiva put it there, and the town is named for the war his daughter's love affair started, and half a kilometre away is a doorframe carved in the sixth century that is as good as anything made in India that century.

Assam is not peripheral to anything, and Tezpur is where you can see that in an afternoon.