Narsobawadi: A Shrine With No Image, Only Footprints

The Datta tradition is one of the major devotional streams of Maharashtra and Karnataka, and it is less familiar outside that region than its size warrants.

Dattatreya:

• The son of the sage Atri and Anasuya, whose devotion is the subject of a well known katha
• He is understood as the combined form of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and is shown with three heads and six arms
• He is accompanied by four dogs, generally read as the four Vedas, and by a cow, read as the earth or as dharma
• He stands beneath an audumbar tree, and the tree is treated as his presence
• He is the adi guru, the first teacher, and the tradition around him is above all a guru tradition

The succession of avatars, as the sampradaya counts them:

• Shripad Shri Vallabh, at Pithapuram in Andhra Pradesh, the first
• Shri Narasimha Saraswati, the second, whose padukas are at Narsobawadi
• Later figures including Swami Samarth of Akkalkot, Manik Prabhu, and Vasudevanand Saraswati, known as Tembe Swami

What holds it together. The Datta sampradaya is not organised around a temple hierarchy or a single institution. It is held together by:

• The Gurucharitra, its central text
• A chain of gurus, each of whom is regarded as continuous with Datta
• A set of sites, mostly on riverbanks, each associated with a period of one avatar's stay
• The audumbar tree, Thursday as the weekday of the guru, and a distinctive practice of paduka worship

It is, in effect, a devotional tradition organised around teachers rather than around a deity's temple, which is why its shrines so often enshrine footprints instead of images.

Paduka worship is widespread in India and is worth understanding on its own terms, because visitors often read it as a lesser substitute for an image.

Where padukas appear:

• At the samadhis of sants across Maharashtra, and carried in the palkhis of the Wari
• At Vishnupad in Gaya, where a footprint of Vishnu is the object of worship
• At sites across India marking where a deity or teacher stood
• In guru worship generally, where the guru's padukas are honoured daily

What the form does:

• It marks a place, and asserts that the significance is in the ground rather than in an object that could be moved
• It represents the person by their relationship to the devotee, since what a disciple approaches is the guru's feet
• It avoids depicting the face, which for a historical teacher rather than a mythological deity is a real problem, since nobody knows what they looked like
• It is humble by design. The devotee is not looking a deity in the eye. They are at the feet

Charan sparsh, touching the feet of elders and teachers, is the ordinary daily version of the same gesture, and paduka worship is its formalisation.

Why this suits the Datta tradition particularly. This is a tradition of gurus, not of a single mythological figure with a fixed iconography. Its shrines commemorate teachers who lived, taught in a specific place, and moved on.

A pair of footprints says exactly that. Someone was here. They are not here now. What they left is the place and the teaching, and you may stand where they stood.

At Narsobawadi that is the entire proposition, and five centuries of devotion have been built on it without anyone feeling the need to add a statue.

The Datta tradition's central text is worth knowing about, because it governs how devotees at Narsobawadi behave.

What it is:

• The Gurucharitra, a Marathi work in fifty one chapters
• It narrates the lives of Shripad Shri Vallabh and Shri Narasimha Saraswati, with a large body of teaching and episode attached
• It is attributed to Saraswati Gangadhar, and belongs to the sixteenth century
• It is, for the Datta sampradaya, what the Dnyaneshwari is for the Varkaris and the Ramcharitmanas is for much of north India

How it is read. This is the interesting part, because the text prescribes its own use.

• It is commonly read as a saptaha, a seven day recitation, with a set number of chapters each day
• The reading is undertaken with rules, on diet, conduct and daily routine, kept through the week
• Families undertake it at particular times, in fulfilment of a vow, or during difficulty
• Group readings are held at Datta shrines, and Narsobawadi is one of the principal places for it

What visitors should know. If you arrive during a saptaha you will find people who are in the middle of a week long observance with real restrictions, not casual visitors.

That affects how you should behave in the temple, and it also explains the atmosphere. Datta shrines tend to be quieter and more inward than large deity temples, with fewer vendors and less noise, because a substantial proportion of the people there are in the middle of a personal discipline rather than making a stop on a tour.

On taking a text's claims seriously. The Gurucharitra makes strong promises about what its recitation achieves. Devotees take those seriously. A visitor need not, but should not treat a room full of people doing a seven day reading as a photo opportunity.

Narsobawadi sits at a river confluence on the Krishna, and what that means in the monsoon is part of the shrine's identity.

What happens:

• In the monsoon the Krishna rises, and at the sangam the levels can go very high
• In heavy years the water reaches the temple, and the padukas go under
• The town is regularly affected, and there have been severe flood years in this region within living memory
• Worship arrangements change accordingly, and the temple's routine adapts to the water

How devotees understand it. They do not regard the flooding as damage or as a failure of siting.

• The rising river is understood as the Krishna coming to perform abhishek on the padukas
• The shrine was placed at the sangam deliberately, and floods are what a sangam does
• The padukas are stone, they do not move, and the water goes down

The wider pattern. This is the same logic seen at the tidal Shiva shrines of Gujarat, and at riverbank temples across India that submerge annually.

Indian sacred siting frequently puts shrines exactly where water will reach them, rather than safely above the line:

• Ghats and riverbank temples along the Ganga, Yamuna and Godavari
• The Ram Ghat temples at Ujjain on the Shipra
• Countless village shrines on tank bunds and stream banks

The reasoning is consistent. Water is the medium of purification, and a shrine the river reaches is a shrine the river serves. A tradition that immerses its festival images deliberately is not going to be troubled by a river doing the same thing to a temple once a year.

A practical note for visitors. Whatever the theology, floodwater is dangerous. If you are travelling in the monsoon, check conditions before going, do not attempt to reach the shrine through moving water, and follow local instructions. The river has taken lives in this region and devotion offers no protection from a current.

Getting there

• Narsobawadi, Shirol taluka, Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, at the Krishna and Panchganga sangam
• Roughly 50 km from Kolhapur and about 20 km from Sangli, by road
• Miraj and Kolhapur are the nearest railway junctions, and Kolhapur has an airport with limited connections
• Buses and shared vehicles run from Kolhapur, Sangli and Jaysingpur

Timings

• The temple keeps a full daily schedule with aarti at set times
• Thursday is the day of the guru and the busiest day of the week
• Check timings locally, since the routine changes during floods and festivals

When to go

• October to March for comfortable weather and a stable river
• Datta Jayanti, on Margashirsha Purnima, the tradition's principal festival
• Guru Purnima, given the tradition's emphasis on the guru
• Thursdays for the weekly gathering
• The monsoon brings flooding. Check conditions before travelling

What to do there

• Darshan at the padukas
• Sit at the ghats by the sangam, which is where most of the atmosphere is
• The audumbar tree
• If you want to attend a Gurucharitra reading, ask at the temple in advance

Practical notes

• Dress conservatively and behave quietly. This is an inward shrine, not a busy pilgrimage circuit
• There are dharamshalas and simple lodges. Kolhapur and Sangli have hotels
• Follow the temple's rules on photography, particularly during readings
• Do not enter the river casually. The Krishna is a large river with currents

The wider Datta circuit

• Audumbar, further up the Krishna, another site of Narasimha Saraswati's stay
• Ganagapur in Kalaburagi district, Karnataka, his principal seat
• Akkalkot, the seat of Swami Samarth
• Pithapuram in Andhra Pradesh, associated with Shripad Shri Vallabh
• Kolhapur itself, for the Mahalakshmi temple, is close by

A closing thought. Indian religion is usually introduced through its images, which are its most visible feature. Narsobawadi is a useful corrective. A shrine that has drawn devotion for five hundred years without any image at all suggests the images were never quite the point.