Prashar Lake: The Island That Moves

The temple at Prashar is a three tiered pagoda, and this is one of the two great temple forms of Himachal alongside the shikhara.

What a Himachali pagoda temple is:

• A square or nearly square sanctum in stone and timber
• Roofed with successively smaller tiers, each with its own roof, giving a stepped profile
• Roofs of slate or wooden shingles, steeply pitched
• Extensive wood carving on doorframes, eaves, brackets and railings
• Built in the kath kuni technique described in the Chaurasi entry

Where else you see it:

• Hidimba Devi temple at Manali, the best known example
• Temples throughout Kullu and Mandi districts
• Prashar, this one
• The Bijli Mahadev temple above Kullu
• A great many village shrines

Why the tiered roof. The form solves the same problem as the Chamba umbrella, differently.

• Steeply pitched roofs shed snow
• Multiple tiers reduce the span of any individual roof, which timber can then carry
• The projecting eaves throw water clear of the walls
• The stepped form is stable in wind

The relationship to Nepalese and East Asian pagodas. This comes up constantly and is worth addressing.

• The tiered roof temple appears across the Himalaya, in Nepal, in Kashmir and in East Asia
• The forms are related in the sense that they are all timber solutions to the same climatic problem, and there was genuine contact and transmission across the region
• The Nepalese pagoda temple and the Himachali one share a great deal
• Whether influence ran from India to East Asia, or the other way, or both, has been argued at length and the honest answer is that the relationship is complex and disputed

What is not disputed is that a timber culture, in a wet or snowy mountain region, tends to arrive at tiered roofs, because they work.

The construction story. Local tradition at Prashar holds that the temple was built by a young boy, who carved it from a single deodar tree.

That is not literally possible for a building of this size, and the story is doing what such stories do: asserting that the building is beyond ordinary human capacity, and therefore that its presence is a sign.

What is true is that Himachali temple carpentry required extraordinary skill, that the timber for such a temple came from the immediate area, and that a single very large deodar could indeed supply a great deal of a small building.

What to look at:

• The doorframe, which carries the densest carving
• The brackets under the eaves
• The tiers, and how each one is framed and supported
• The wheel or chakra motifs and the carved animal and figure panels
• The way the stone base and timber superstructure meet

The condition question. Himachali wooden temples are vulnerable and several have been lost to fire in recent decades, including major shrines.

Open flames, electrical work and increased visitor numbers are all risks. If you visit, do not light anything, and note that the temple you are standing in is made almost entirely of very dry cedar that has been seasoning for centuries.

The lake's origin story and its deity belong together.

Rishi Parashara:

• A Vedic sage, grandson of Vasishtha
• Father of Vyasa, who compiled the Vedas and composed the Mahabharata
• Author of the Parashara Smriti, a dharmashastra text concerned with conduct and social duty
• A figure appearing across the Puranic literature

Why he matters genealogically. The line is worth setting out because it is the spine of the Mahabharata's frame story.

• Vasishtha, one of the saptarishis
• Shakti, his son
• Parashara, Shakti's son
• Vyasa, Parashara's son by Satyavati
• Vyasa fathers Dhritarashtra, Pandu and Vidura
• From whom the Kauravas and Pandavas descend

So Parashara is the great grandfather of both sides of the Mahabharata war, and the author of the epic is his son.

The Prashar katha:

• Parashara came to this place and meditated here
• The lake formed for him
• In the version connecting it to the Mahabharata, the Pandavas passed through on their way back from Kurukshetra
• Bhima pressed his elbow into the hillside, and the depression filled with water, forming the lake
• The sage then remained here

The Bhima detail. Bhima's physical strength producing landscape features is a recurring motif across India.

• Rocks moved or split by Bhima appear in many places
• Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, the great rock shelter site with prehistoric paintings, takes its name from him, as Bhima's sitting place
• Various caves, boulders and depressions across the country are attributed to him

What the motif does is attach the landscape to the epic. A hill, a rock or a lake becomes not merely a feature but a place where something happened, and the country becomes a text.

That is the same operation the Shakti Peethas perform, and the Ramayana sites, and the Krishna geography of Braj. India's landscape is read as narrative, and a hollow full of water at 2,730 metres in Mandi district becomes the mark left by somebody's elbow.

The deity and the local system. Rishi Prashar is treated as a devta in the Himachali sense described in the Manimahesh entry.

• He has a territory of villages
• He is consulted, and his responses are given through a gur, a medium
• He travels in a rath
• He attends fairs and has relationships with neighbouring deities
• A fair is held at the lake, generally in June and again around Baisakhi in some accounts

That is worth knowing because it means the temple is not a monument with a story attached. It is the seat of a deity who is, in the understanding of the villages around, an active participant in local affairs, and who is asked about things.

Kamrunag. Related and worth mentioning.

Another Mandi district deity, Kamrunag, has a lake at high altitude where devotees throw gold and silver into the water as offerings. The offerings are not retrieved and are understood to belong to the deity.

The lake is accordingly said to hold a very large quantity of precious metal, untouched, at the bottom, and local practice treats taking anything from it as unthinkable.

That is a striking arrangement and it is a genuine feature of the district.

The town below the lake is called Chhoti Kashi, the little Kashi, and the claim is better founded than most such claims.

Why:

• Mandi holds a very large number of temples, commonly given as 81 in the town and its immediate surroundings
• They are concentrated along the Beas and in the old town
• Many are of considerable age, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the Mandi rulers
• They are principally Shaiva, as at Kashi

The principal temples:

• Bhutnath, in the centre of the town, the principal Shiva temple, sixteenth century
• Panchvaktra, at the confluence of the Beas and Suketi, with a five faced Shiva
• Triloknath, in the town, a different shrine from the Lahaul one
• Ardhanarishwara temple
• Tarna Devi, on a hill above the town
• Numerous smaller shrines throughout

Shivratri at Mandi. This is the reason to time a visit and it is one of the most remarkable festivals in the Himalaya.

• Held over about a week around Maha Shivaratri, in February or March
• Village deities are brought to Mandi from across the district, in some years numbering over two hundred
• Each arrives in its rath, carried by its own villagers, with its own musicians
• They gather at the Paddal ground and process through the town
• The deities pay respects to Madho Rao, the presiding deity of Mandi, in an order of precedence that is taken seriously
• There are days of processions, fairs and cultural events

What makes it extraordinary. Two hundred deities in one town, each with its own retinue, each with its own status and relationships, meeting according to a protocol.

This is the Himachali devta system at its fullest expression, and there is nothing quite like it elsewhere in India except the Kullu Dussehra, which does the same thing in the neighbouring district.

Kullu Dussehra. Worth knowing about because it is the other great expression of the system.

• Held at Kullu, beginning on Vijayadashami when Dussehra ends everywhere else
• Village deities are brought from across the Kullu valley
• They gather around Raghunath ji, the presiding deity of Kullu
• The festival runs for a week
• Deities travel considerable distances on the shoulders of their villagers

The Raghunath story. The reason Kullu's presiding deity is Rama is itself a story worth knowing.

A seventeenth century ruler of Kullu, having committed an offence and suffered for it, was advised that expiation required an image of Rama from Ayodhya. The image was obtained and brought to Kullu, the ruler made over his kingdom to Raghunath and ruled thereafter as the deity's regent.

So the state was formally transferred to a deity, and the ruler governed as his servant. That arrangement is recorded and it shaped the valley's politics thereafter.

Visiting Mandi. The town is on the Chandigarh to Manali highway and almost everybody passes through it without stopping.

It is worth a day. The temples are close together, the old town is walkable, and if you are there at Shivratri it is one of the best things in Himachal.

Prashar is reached either by road or on foot, and both are worth describing.

By road:

• From Mandi, about 49 km by a mountain road via Bagi and Kandha
• The road is narrow, steep in places, and in poor condition in stretches
• Roughly two and a half to three hours from Mandi in reasonable conditions
• Passable in a car in dry weather, better in a vehicle with clearance
• Frequently affected by snow in winter and by landslides in the monsoon

On foot:

• The usual trek starts from Baggi village, reached by road from Mandi
• Around 7 km to the lake, climbing through forest and then open meadow
• Takes roughly three to four hours up
• Not technically difficult but a genuine climb
• A popular trek, including as an overnight or weekend trip from Mandi and Chandigarh

When to go:

• April to June and September to November for the best conditions
• Monsoon, July and August, brings cloud, leeches on the trek and landslide risk on the road, but also the meadows at their greenest
• Winter, December to March, brings snow and the lake can freeze, which is spectacular but the road may be closed and conditions are serious
• Snow trekking to Prashar has become popular and needs proper preparation, since people underestimate winter conditions at 2,730 metres consistently

Staying there:

• A forest rest house and PWD rest house exist, requiring booking in advance through the relevant department
• Basic accommodation and camping have developed to serve the increased visitor traffic
• Facilities are limited. Do not assume anything will be available
• Nights are cold at any time of year

What to carry:

• Warm layers regardless of season
• Waterproofs
• Water, and food if you are trekking
• A torch
• Cash
• Anything you cannot do without, because there is nowhere to buy it

The waste problem. This needs saying plainly.

Prashar has become a popular weekend destination from the plains, and the meadow around the lake has suffered from litter, from camping without facilities and from vehicles.

• Take everything out that you bring in, including food waste
• Do not wash in the lake or leave anything in it
• Do not camp on the immediate lake shore
• Do not drive onto the meadow
• Use a toilet where one exists and bury waste properly where one does not

The lake is a small water body in a bowl with no outflow to speak of. What goes in stays.

Combining the visit

• Mandi town and its temples
• Rewalsar, about 25 km from Mandi, which is a lake town with a Hindu temple, a Sikh gurudwara and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries around one small lake, associated with Padmasambhava, and is another shared site of the kind described at Trilokinath
• Kamrunag, a demanding trek to the deity's lake
• Barot valley
• Janjehli, in the Seraj valley
• Shikari Devi, a temple with no roof, on a high ridge, where tradition holds that no roof can be built and snow does not settle inside

Shikari Devi deserves a line. It is a roofless temple at around 3,300 metres, reached by a trek, and the tradition that it cannot be roofed is one of the more interesting claims in the district.

Rewalsar deserves more than a line. A small lake with a Hindu temple, a gurudwara commemorating Guru Gobind Singh's stay, and Buddhist monasteries, all around the same water, with a large Padmasambhava statue above.

It is one of the clearest examples in India of three traditions using one place, and it is 25 km from Mandi on a good road.

A closing thought. There is a small lake in a meadow with a piece of land floating in it that nobody has fixed down, next to a wooden temple that a boy is said to have carved from one tree, in a district where two hundred deities meet in a town every February.

None of it is on any list of things to see in India. All of it is about three hours from a national highway.

This is the last of eight Himachal entries in this series, so it is worth setting out some general guidance.

The state's shape:

• Low hills in the south and west: Una, Bilaspur, Solan, parts of Kangra and Sirmaur
• Middle hills: Shimla, Mandi, Kullu, Chamba, Kangra proper. This is where most people go
• High and trans Himalayan: Lahaul, Spiti, Kinnaur, upper Chamba. Cold desert, high passes, seasonal access

Seasons:

• March to June: the main season, warm in the valleys, passes opening from May or June
• July and August: monsoon, heavy rain, landslides, road closures, leeches. Lahaul and Spiti are in the rain shadow and are actually good in this window
• September to November: the best months for most of the state, clear, stable and quiet after the monsoon
• December to February: cold, snow, many roads closed, some places inaccessible

The landslide problem. This is now the central practical issue for travel in Himachal and it should not be understated.

• The monsoon of 2023 caused catastrophic damage across the state, with roads destroyed, bridges lost and very substantial loss of life
• Landslides and flash floods have increased in frequency and severity
• Causes include heavy rainfall events, road cutting on unstable slopes, unregulated construction, deforestation and the general fragility of young mountains
• Do not travel in the monsoon without checking conditions daily
• Do not camp in or near stream beds
• Build slack into any monsoon itinerary and be prepared to change plans

Altitude. The guidance in the Manimahesh entry applies anywhere above about 2,500 metres and with real force above 3,000.

Road travel:

• Mountain roads take much longer than the distance suggests. Assume 25 to 30 km per hour on hill roads
• Do not drive at night on unfamiliar mountain roads
• Local drivers know the roads. Consider hiring one
• HRTC buses run everywhere and are the cheapest way to move
• The Kalka to Shimla and Pathankot to Joginder Nagar narrow gauge railways are both worth taking as journeys in themselves

Behaving well in the hills:

• Take your waste with you. Waste management in most of Himachal cannot handle visitor volumes
• Do not play music from vehicles or speakers in villages or at shrines
• Ask before photographing people
• Village deities and their raths have right of way, physically and socially. Stand aside
• Do not enter temple sanctums where local practice restricts it. Some Himachali shrines have restrictions and they should be respected
• Buy local. Money that stays in the valley is the only argument for tourism that villages actually experience
• Water is scarce in many places. Use it as though it were

The temples in this batch, taken together:

• Jwalamukhi, flames from the ground
• Brajeshwari, treated for her wounds each January
• Chamunda Devi, whose image is covered
• Manimahesh, an unclimbed peak
• Chaurasi, eighty four shrines and a seventh century wooden temple
• Lakshmi Narayan, stone temples wearing wooden umbrellas
• Trilokinath, one image and two religions
• Prashar, a moving island and a pagoda

None of these is Shimla or Manali, and the state's whole tourist economy runs through those two places. What is in this list is spread across four districts, most of it accessible on ordinary roads, and almost all of it is quiet.

That is the argument for planning a Himachal trip around temples rather than around hill stations, and it is a considerably better trip.