Sukreswar Temple: A Shiva Linga on the Brahmaputra Bank

The sage the temple is named for is one of the more interesting figures in the tradition, and his story is worth telling properly.

Who he is:

• Son of Bhrigu, one of the great rishis
• Guru of the asuras, the preceptor of the daityas and danavas
• Author of the Shukra Niti, a treatise on statecraft and ethics
• Identified with Shukra, the graha Venus
• Possessor of the sanjivani vidya, the knowledge of reviving the dead

The sanjivani. This is the central fact about him.

The devas had Brihaspati as their guru. The asuras had Shukracharya. When they fought, the devas killed asuras and the asuras killed devas.

But Shukracharya could revive the asura dead, and Brihaspati could not revive the deva dead.

That asymmetry meant the devas were losing, and the story of how they addressed it is the substance of the episode.

Kacha and Devayani. The story, which is one of the better ones in the Mahabharata.

• The devas sent Kacha, son of Brihaspati, to Shukracharya as a student, to learn the sanjivani
• Shukracharya accepted him, since a teacher does not refuse a student
• The asuras, understanding what was happening, killed Kacha
• Shukracharya's daughter Devayani had grown fond of Kacha and asked her father to bring him back
• Shukracharya used the sanjivani and revived him
• The asuras killed him again, burned the body and mixed the ashes into wine, which they gave Shukracharya to drink
• Devayani again asked for Kacha
• Shukracharya found Kacha was inside him, and that reviving him would kill himself
• So he taught Kacha the sanjivani while Kacha was inside him, then let him emerge, killing Shukracharya, and Kacha then used the newly learned vidya to revive his teacher
• Kacha then returned to the devas with the knowledge

Devayani's part. She then asked Kacha to marry her.

He refused, saying that having emerged from her father's body he was in a sense her brother.

She cursed him that the vidya would not work when he used it himself, only when he taught it to others. He accepted, and cursed her in return that no brahmana's son would marry her.

Which is how she later married Yayati, a kshatriya, and that marriage produces its own long story.

What the episode is about. It is a story about knowledge and how it moves.

Knowledge held by one side is an advantage. Knowledge cannot be withheld from a genuine student without violating the teacher's dharma. So the advantage cannot be kept.

And the sanjivani, once taught, works for the person taught but not for the teacher's own use, which is the curse's substance and is a fairly exact description of what happens to knowledge once it is transmitted.

The wine detail. There is a second consequence often noted.

Shukracharya drank without knowing what was in the cup, and that is what allowed the asuras to trick him. After the episode he is said to have prohibited the drinking of intoxicants for brahmanas, on the reasoning that a person who cannot know what he is consuming cannot exercise judgment.

Which is a fairly grounded reason, arrived at by experience, and it is one of the tradition's own accounts of where that prohibition comes from.

Shukracharya and Bali. He appears again, significantly, in the Vamana story.

• The asura king Bali had conquered the three worlds
• Vishnu came as Vamana, a dwarf brahmana, and asked Bali for three paces of ground
• Shukracharya, being his guru, recognised Vishnu and warned Bali not to grant it
• Bali granted it anyway, because he had been asked and would not refuse
• Shukracharya attempted to block the water of the sankalpa by entering the spout of the vessel, and Vishnu pierced it with a blade of grass and blinded him in one eye
• Vamana grew, covered the worlds in two paces, and Bali offered his head for the third

So the guru of the asuras is, in that story, the one who saw clearly and was ignored, and Bali is remembered as one of the great dana figures precisely for ignoring him.

Which is the tradition being honest about the fact that the wise advisor is sometimes right and is still not the one who should be followed.

The temple's function is inseparable from the river below it, and the Brahmaputra's place in the tradition deserves its own account.

The name. Brahmaputra means the son of Brahma, and it is one of very few major Indian rivers treated as masculine.

The others are almost all goddesses: Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada, Godavari, Kaveri, Saraswati.

The story of its origin:

• Brahma had a son by Amogha, the wife of the sage Shantanu, in some tellings, and that son took the form of water
• The child was placed among four mountains
• Parashurama cut a channel from the lake to release the waters, creating the river
• The place where he did so is Parashuram Kund, in Arunachal Pradesh, where the river enters the plains

Parashuram Kund. Since the story leads there, the site is worth noting.

• In Lohit district, Arunachal Pradesh
• Where Parashurama is said to have washed away the sin of killing his mother, on his father's instruction, the axe falling from his hand as the sin left him
• A major bathing site at Makar Sankranti, drawing very large numbers
• The kund was altered by the 1950 Assam earthquake, which was one of the largest ever recorded

The 1950 earthquake. It is worth knowing about, because it shaped the modern river.

• 15 August 1950, magnitude around 8.6, centred in the Assam Tibet border region
• Among the largest earthquakes ever instrumentally recorded
• It caused enormous landslides, which dammed rivers, which then burst
• It raised and lowered parts of the riverbed, changing the Brahmaputra's course and depth
• Guwahati's river frontage and the whole valley's flood behaviour changed afterward

So the river you look at from Sukreswar is measurably not the river that was there a century ago.

The annual flood. Assam's floods are a defining feature of life in the valley.

• The Brahmaputra carries an immense sediment load and a very large discharge
• It braids, splitting into many channels across a wide bed
• Each monsoon it floods, and in serious years the flooding is catastrophic
• Erosion removes land permanently, and villages and even parts of Majuli have been lost
• Embankments provide partial protection and sometimes fail

That is the context in which a riverside temple sits. The river is worshipped and the river also takes.

Observance at the river:

• Bathing at Sankranti, particularly Makar Sankranti and the Sankranti of each month
• Tarpana for the ancestors
• Asthi visarjan, the immersion of ashes
• Amavasya bathing, particularly the amavasya of Bhadrapada and the Mahalaya amavasya
• The eclipse bathing described in the Navagraha entry

Pushkaram. The Brahmaputra has a pushkaram, the twelve yearly river festival described in the Godavari and Krishna contexts, when the river's turn comes in the cycle.

During the pushkaram, bathing at the river is held to carry particular merit and very large numbers gather.

A practical safety point, since this guide is about a ghat.

The Brahmaputra is a very large and fast river with strong currents, deep channels close to the bank in places, and a bed that shifts.

• Bathe only at the steps, in shallow water, where others are bathing
• Do not swim out
• Do not let children into the water unsupervised
• Do not enter during or after heavy rain, when the flow rises
• The current is stronger than it looks from the bank, which is true of most large rivers and is the reason people drown in them

Ritual bathing means stepping in, immersing, and coming out. It does not mean going into a river of that size.

Three of Guwahati's temples in this series, Navagraha, Sukreswar and Asvakranta, were built or rebuilt by Ahom kings within a few decades of each other. The Ahom kingdom deserves an account.

Who the Ahoms were:

• A Tai people who entered the Brahmaputra valley from the east, from present day Myanmar, in the thirteenth century
• Their first king, Sukaphaa, is traditionally dated to 1228
• They established a kingdom in upper Assam and expanded across the valley
• They ruled for around six hundred years, until the Burmese invasions and the British annexation in the 1820s

Six hundred years. That is the striking figure and it is worth stating plainly.

The Ahom kingdom lasted from 1228 to 1826. Very few Indian dynasties approach that, and the Ahoms did it in a region that faced repeated invasion.

The Mughal wars. The Ahoms fought the Mughals repeatedly and, unusually, held.

• Multiple Mughal campaigns into Assam through the seventeenth century
• The decisive engagement was the Battle of Saraighat, in 1671, fought on the Brahmaputra at Guwahati
• The Ahom commander was Lachit Borphukan
• The Ahom navy, using the river and the terrain, defeated a much larger Mughal force
• After Saraighat, Mughal expansion into the Brahmaputra valley effectively ended

Saraighat happened here. The battle was fought on the river you can see from the Sukreswar ghat, at the narrows near Guwahati.

Lachit Borphukan:

• The Ahom general who commanded at Saraighat
• Ill during the battle, and is said to have risen from his sickbed to lead when his troops wavered
• The story most told about him concerns his uncle, who was in charge of building a defensive embankment and did it badly. Lachit had him executed, with the words that his uncle was not greater than his country
• He died shortly after the battle
• The Lachit Borphukan gold medal is awarded to the best cadet at the National Defence Academy
• A very large statue of him stands on the Brahmaputra at Guwahati

Ahom institutions. Two are worth noting because they are distinctive.

• The paik system, under which the population was organised into units obliged to provide labour and military service in rotation, which is how the kingdom fielded armies and built infrastructure without a standing paid force
• The Buranji, the Ahom chronicles, written first in the Tai Ahom language and later in Assamese, which are among the most substantial indigenous historical records in India and which give the Ahom period an unusually good documentary base

The Buranjis deserve emphasis. Most Indian dynasties are reconstructed from inscriptions, coins and literary references.

The Ahoms kept chronicles, systematically, as a state function, recording events year by year. That makes Assam's medieval history documented in a way much of India's is not, and historians rely on them heavily.

Ahom religion. They arrived with their own Tai religion and progressively adopted Hinduism.

• Original practice involved ancestor worship and their own priesthood, the Deodhai, Bailung and Mohan
• From the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the kings adopted Hinduism, both Shakta and Vaishnava
• Kings took Hindu names alongside their Ahom ones, so Rajeswar Singha is also Suremphaa
• They built and endowed temples extensively, which is why the Guwahati hills carry eighteenth century structures
• Some kings patronised Shakta practice at Kamakhya, others the Vaishnava sattras, and the relations between the state and the sattras were sometimes tense

The Moamoria rebellion. Worth noting because it explains the kingdom's decline.

A prolonged rebellion from the 1760s by the Moamoria, followers of the Mayamara sattra, against the Ahom state, which the kingdom eventually suppressed but which left it severely weakened.

That weakness allowed the Burmese invasions of the 1810s and 1820s, which were extremely destructive, and which brought in the British, who annexed Assam by the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826.

So six hundred years ended, and the temples on these hills were built in the last century of it.

What is actually done at Sukreswar, in the ordinary course.

The daily worship:

• Abhisheka of the linga with water, milk and other substances
• Bel patra, the leaf of the bilva tree, which is Shiva's leaf
• Dhatura and aak, which are also traditionally offered to Shiva and which are poisonous plants, and which are offered rather than consumed
• Bhasma, ash
• Lamps and incense
• Om Namah Shivaya

Why bel patra. The bilva leaf is trifoliate, three leaflets on one stalk, and is read as the three of Shiva: three eyes, three gunas, trishula.

It is the standard Shiva offering across India and it is offered with the smooth side down.

Why dhatura. Because Shiva accepts what others reject.

The substances offered to Shiva include the poisonous and the inauspicious: dhatura, aak, ash from the cremation ground. That is the theological point, not an accident.

He drank the halahala poison at the churning of the ocean so the worlds would not be destroyed, and Parvati held his throat so it would not descend, which is why he is Nilakantha, blue throated.

The deity who takes the poison is offered the poisonous plants. It is consistent.

Shivaratri:

• Maha Shivaratri, in Phalguna, is the principal festival here as at every Shiva temple
• The night is kept awake
• Four watches of the night, each with its own abhisheka
• Fasting through the day and night
• Very large numbers come

Sawan:

• The month of Shravana, roughly July to August, is Shiva's month
• Mondays in Shravana are the principal days
• Kanwar practice, carrying water from a river to a Shiva temple, is northern in origin but is now practised widely
• The Brahmaputra water and this temple make the pairing natural here

Somvar. Every Monday is Shiva's day and Sukreswar sees a weekly increase.

Sixteen Somvar. The Solah Somvar vrat, sixteen consecutive Mondays, is a widely observed Shiva observance, and it is worth stating what it involves.

• Fasting on Monday, generally one meal
• Bathing and worship of the linga
• Reciting or hearing the Solah Somvar katha
• Completed with an udyapan after the sixteenth

A note on fasting. Since fasting is a substantial part of Shiva observance, the practical caution is worth including.

• Anybody who is diabetic, pregnant, breastfeeding, elderly, ill, on medication that requires food, or recovering from illness should modify or skip the fast
• The tradition has always allowed this. Phalahar, fruit and milk, is a recognised form, and the shastras themselves permit substitution and exemption
• A fast that damages your health is not a better fast
• If you take medication for any condition, do not stop it because you are fasting. Speak to a doctor about how to time it

The evening at Sukreswar. It is worth mentioning what the place is like at the hour it is best.

The temple faces the Brahmaputra. In the late afternoon the sun goes down over the river, which at Guwahati is extremely wide, with Peacock Island and the Umananda temple in the middle of it.

People sit on the ghat steps. The ferries cross. The light goes off the water.

It is not a dramatic temple. It is a very old site with a large stone in a pit and a set of steps into a river, and the reason to go is that it has been used continuously for a very long time and it is still used, in the evening, by people from the city who walk down and sit.

Getting there

• Sukreswar temple, Sandhyachal hill, Panbazar, Guwahati, Assam
• On the south bank of the Brahmaputra, in the city, near the Guwahati riverfront
• Walking distance from Panbazar and the city centre
• Guwahati railway station is a few kilometres
• Guwahati airport is around 25 kilometres

Timings

• Generally early morning to evening. Check locally

When to go

• Maha Shivaratri, in Phalguna, for the principal festival
• Shravana Mondays
• Any Monday
• Late afternoon for the light on the river, which is the best time to be there on an ordinary day
• October to March for weather

At the temple

• Footwear left outside
• Modest dress
• The linga is below floor level, so look down into the chamber
• Bel patra and flowers available outside

At the ghat

• The steps are used for bathing and for shraddha
• They can be slippery, particularly the lower ones and particularly after rain
• Watch your footing
• Do not go beyond the shallow steps into the river. The Brahmaputra current is strong

Combining the visit. Sukreswar sits in the middle of the Guwahati riverfront and everything is close.

• Umananda on Peacock Island, by ferry from the nearby ghat, for the Shiva temple and the golden langurs
• Kamakhya on Nilachal hill
• Navagraha on Chitrachal hill
• Asvakranta on the north bank
• Assam State Museum, at Panbazar, close by
• Guwahati Planetarium
• Brahmaputra river cruise, which leaves from near here
• Fancy Bazaar and the old city
• The Lachit Borphukan statue on the river

Umananda is the natural pairing. The ferry runs from the ghat area, the crossing is short, and the island temple is small and pleasant.

The golden langur is worth the trip in itself. It is one of the most endangered primates in India, found only in a small area of western Assam and Bhutan, and the Peacock Island population is a translocated group. They are habituated and visible.

Do not feed them. Feeding wild primates makes them aggressive and dependent and is bad for the animals.

A closing thought. The temple is named for a teacher who knew how to bring the dead back and who could not keep that knowledge, because a teacher who refuses a student stops being a teacher.

Below it runs a river named for a son of Brahma, which floods every year and takes land, and on which a battle was fought in 1671 that decided whether the valley would be conquered.

And on an ordinary evening people from Panbazar walk down, sit on the steps, and watch the ferries.

All three of those are the same place.