More content was added to this article on 14/03/18
This is the fourth part of the series
on death; together the series covers the following topics:
There is nothing like death / only
fools desire to be immortal / there are various spiritual planes / ashes to
ashes, dust to dust---it is not as simple as that /The state of mind at the time
of death is very important / extreme quiet and self-control should be observed
in the chamber of death / why cremation is preferable to burial, as a way of
disposing of corpses / about tombs / and in spite of the warning by adepts,
tombs were opened, releasing forces upon the world which have endangered it
/controversy regarding prophet Muhammad’s tomb / Zoroastrian burial rituals and
importance of the dog in the funeral rites and the psychic power of animals /
All you wanted to know about the Manikarnika cremation Ghat at Varanasi
Varanasi also known as Banaras is
one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, it is said that
the Gods lived here; it was the capital of the kingdom of Kashi during the time
of the Buddha, who gave his first sermon nearby at Sarnath.
There are two cremation ghats at
Varanasi; Harishchandra (also referred as Adi Manikarnika) and Manikarnika ghat,
the flames of the funeral pyres at Manikarnika Ghats have been burning since
thousands of years and they forever burn meaning there was never a time when
there was no funeral pyre burning
The Manikarnika ghat is a Shakti
Peetha
Manikarnika It is the only cremation
ground which is considered as a place of pilgrimage, due to the presence of the
manikarnika kund, which is a sacred water body existing since eternity and
taking a bath here on Chandra grahan (lunar eclipse) is considered auspicious
whereas taking a dip at Brahma Sarovar and
Sannihit Sarovar at Kurukshetra in Haryana on the Surya Grahan (solar eclipse)
day is important, all these water bodies are related to Lord Vishnu
The Manikarnika kund
On the ghat itself, are the Gods
revered footprints (paduka)
It is a widely held belief that
those who are cremated at the Manikarnika ghat attend moksha that is release
from the cycle of rebirth, bodies are brought here from all over India, hence
the Varanasi airport is possibly the only
airport that has, apart from a taxi stand, a stand where a number of mortuary
vans - called the shav vahini that transport the dead are available for hire.
You could rent them like you would rent a Taxi at any other airport.
However some
pundits believe that it is not written anywhere that souls get liberated after
cremation at the Manikarnika, what is written in the scriptures as per them is
that anyone who dies in Varanasi, you attain what is popularly known as ‘Kashi
Labh’ or ‘the fruit of Kashi and the path to liberation is open for the soul,
even if the soul has to take a rebirth it would be only in Varanasi
There are even
guesthouses in Varanasi where people check in to die, where one can stay for a
few days only and if death does not occur then they have to move out, Kashi
Labh Mukti Bhawan is the most famous one the others are Mumukshu Bhawan and
Ganga Labh Bhawan
The owner
of the Manikarnika ghat is the dom raja (raja meaning king) of the dom
community, the cursed tribe, the lowest of the low, the untouchables who apart
from working at the cremation ghats, only get the manual scavenging job, it is
an irony that Shiv is considered as the lord of the cremation grounds and he is
kind, non-judgemental and ever accepting, but the doms are not allowed inside
the famous Shiv kashi vishwanath temple
In Varanasi, all
Doms have the family name—Chaudhary
Doms are the
caretakers of the cremation grounds and
the main keepers of the fire that lights the pyres; they have preserved the
sacred fire at the cremation ground since time immemorial
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The eternal fire at the manikarnika ghat
The dom raja passing on the fire to lit the pyre
The eternal fire at Harishchandra ghat,
and the fire passed on to lit the pyre
In other cremation grounds such
sacred fire is not maintained
The Dom raja
provides the first set of five logs of wood required for the funeral pyre. He
then hands over a flame from the sacred fire, on a dried
piece of grass brought especially from the hinterlands of Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh to the relative of the deceased person, who then uses it
to light the funeral pyre.
The
Dom raja (King)
Once the fire on
the funeral pyre is lit the Dom’s take over and ensure that the body is burnt
completely, after the body burns the ashes are cast unceremoniously into the
Ganges
The tax collected
to give the sacred flame is called the 'agni-kar' (agni for fire and kar for
tax)
In 1998, the
Municipal Committee of Varanasi got the Doms to charge a standard rate of 100
rupees ($1.3) for their work. But this did not last. In most cases, Doms charge
people what they seem to be able to afford. Let me put it this way the Dom raja
extorts money
By experience they
can make out the paying capacity of the people also they have a network of
informers who pass on the information regarding the net worth of the dead
persons family and then the Dom Raja charges them accordingly, It is said that
when the dead body of the recently deceased former king of Kashi (Varanasi) was
brought for cremation at Manikarnika, the dom was paid 600000 rupees and was
given the rights to acres of land in lieu of his services rendered.
They have extorted
title deeds of farm lands written in their name when the poor farmers from the
hinterlands came down to cremate their dead, if the poor could not pay in cash
they were asked to part with their jewellery
The Dom raja is
supposed to provide the first set of five logs
of wood required for the funeral pyre but they insist that all other wood and
articles required be bought from them, if the poor do not have enough money for
all the wood required the body is left half burnt and latter eaten by dogs and
scavenger birds like the crow and the remains just thrown in the Ganga---the
Doms show no mercy
Facts of the Manikarnika ghat
About
5000 people are employed directly or indirectly in this trade
The main
item is wood; Firewood chopped from different varieties of trees are stocked up
in huge quantities, the rich of course prefer sandalwood to burn their dead while
the poor are happy with any kind of wood
Here 5,
7, 9 and 11 mann of wood is sold (1 mann equals 40 kilograms) so on an average
at least 300 kilos of wood is required per body (chopped down from at least 4-5
mature trees) and with about 350 dead bodies getting cremated every day. The
narrow alleyways that lead to the ghat from the main roads are completely
unsuitable for any motored vehicle to carry the load hence everyday around 1000
quintals of chopped wood is ferried on boats across the Ganges to be stocked up
at the Manikarnika ghat by merchants inside and around the unused temples that
are close to the ghat
A survey
by the United Nations shows that 400-500 kg of wood is required to cremate one
body, and according to a report in CNN, 50 to 60 million trees are burned
during cremations every year in India. I hope and pray that alternate means
like Cow Dung Cakes, ‘pyre ovens’ on cremation sites that would help generate
enough heat to efficiently burn a human body with less wood 100 kgs only, white
coal or using agricultural waste are adopted by people as an alternate to the
traditional wood pyre
Apart
from firewood huge quantities of ghee (clarified butter) which is needed as a
fuel to keep the pyre burning (in the cities they use kerosene), turmeric,
sesame seeds, barley, sandalwood scraps, incense sticks, flowers, coconuts,
bananas and robes to cover the dead are sold, packages
on offer include a sandalwood sawdust bath for the corpse and a three-hour
chant for peace plus many more packages
There are various
places within the Manikarnika Ghat reserved for people from various strata of
society. The Brahmin caste has an enclosed space that was leased over from the
Dom’s in order to ensure that the Dead Brahmin is not burnt besides another’s from
an untouchable caste (never mind if the Dom who gives the sacred fire are
themselves untouchables and belong to the lowest ranks of the “Dalits”, at the
bottom of the Hindu caste system) Similar the Royal families and their
descendants and relatives have leased out a platform where their dead are
cremated. The commoners that include the untouchables and the poor are burnt at
the main platforms of the ghat.
But when the mighty
Ganges River overflows its banks following heavy monsoon rains, large parts of the
Manikarnika ghat are submerged by floodwaters, and then bodies have to be burnt
on the roofs of havelis [old mansions] and other old houses along the ghats and
that is the time the higher caste and the royals have to bear that their bodies
are burnt alongside the commoners
Occasionally there
are corpses that arrive but they are not to be cremated. They are just thrown into
the Ganga and left for the living creatures to be eaten up. These are the ones
who are supposed to have had an ‘akaal mrutyu’ an untimely or incomplete death.
People who have taken their own lives, pregnant women, children below two years
of age, people who have died due to a snake bite and lepers are not burnt
because of the belief that their souls have not yet been readied to free from
the liberation of birth and rebirth.
It is awful (very
bad or unpleasant) to see a dead body just floating in the Ganga
Not
all bodies are covered in the same way; the system goes as follows:
The ones that have
lived a full life which implies men who were married, borne sons and grandsons
and lived up to a reasonably ripe age are covered with colourful tinsel wrapped
cloth and garlands of marigold flowers around them.
Then there are
corpses wrapped in red and decorated with flowers and vermillion which belong
to women who have lived a full life (i.e. borne sons at the least and have
predeceased their husbands). They are called Suhaagan i.e. the fortunate ones.
Then there are ones
wrapped in white cloth and not decorated with any kind of flowers. These are
widowed women irrespective of the age they have died
Men who die
relatively young also are wrapped in white, although their corpses would be
decorated with flowers.
It is
widely believed that nobler the soul, the quicker it turns into ashes and also
the body of a person with no desires left is light in weight
Before cremation
the body is immersed and washed in the Ganga
About ten to
fifteen minutes after the funeral pyre has been lit, one hears the sound of the
skull cracking open. This signifies the escape of the consciousness from the
physical body and liberation. The Dom’s with the help of long bamboo sticks
constantly carry out stuffing the wood and the flesh into the pyre and stirring
it up later the bones and the flesh are pushed into the central part of the
funeral pyre so that all parts of the body are burned and turn into ashes in
about two to three hours, At the end of this ritual, only a small portion
remains: the trunk for men and the hips for women
The Doms say that
the smell of burning hair is the worst, their job is not an easy one so they
numb their senses by drinking copious amounts of alcohol and smoke cheap ganja
(marijuana) and chew on gutka (a mixture of tobacco and crushed nuts) to cope
up
So alcohol and
smoking becomes a part of their life and hence it is not surprising to see the
Doms performing a daily ritual where they offer alcohol and cigarettes along
with fruits and flowers as thanksgiving to Kallu Dom, the ancient chieftain of
the Dom community under whom the great king Raja Harishchandra was enslaved
(The present day Dom’s at the Manikarnika ghat are believed to be the
descendants of Kallu Dom)
During my visit to
the Manikarnika ghat I saw a Dom urinating on the wood kept to be used in the
pyre, such type of idiotic behaviour can only be done by a person who is not
under his senses
Whatever
can be reused or recycled is done in the following way:
Dom family collect
the clothes or jewels of the corpse and sell it in shops and once the ashes are
cast into the Ganges another set of Doms neck-deep in the charcoal black water
sift for any valuables that can’t be taken off the dead-- like gold teeth or
firmly embossed rings
The heat of the
funeral pyre would melt the gold and it would be bound to lose shape. However
small pieces would be found scattered in the ashes that are then thrown into
the river they are recovered by Dom workers who sieve the burnt ash immersed in
water through a fine cloth checking for pieces of gold before throwing it out
into a mound that would then be carried away and dried up to serve as coal for
other uses
An electric
crematorium has been set up at the Harishchandra ghat but first the body is brought to be immersed and
washed at Manikarnika
Apart from work at the Manikarnika ghats the doms get the job to clean
dry latrines that is the manual scavenging job,
one poor dom fellow got tired of his work and opened a sweet shop but nobody was willing to eat at
his shop so he had to come back to the ghat burning bodies
The Dom family feud and a woman locks horns with the system
to become the first Dom queen
There is
the Dom king and there are around 30 main doms and after
them come the 500-odd doms, who form the second rung of hierarchy
After centuries of
extorting money the Dom Rajas family has accumulated immense wealth; there has
even been a case of a Dom rajas son getting kidnapped for a huge ransom (there
operates a strong kidnapping mafia in Uttar Pradesh backed by the politicians)
After the last Dom
raja died he left two wife’s, one was childless and it is only natural that she
did not get along with her husband’s second wife and she was denied any claims,
so she fought many court cases to claim her right to collect the Agni kar tax,
she eventually won and took up the work of her deceased husband, now there is
more or less peace in the Dom house hold because the days are divided where
various family members including females who get to keep the collection which
is quite huge; which is collected in an iron chest and transported with an
armed guard at the end of the day, so there is no fixed Dom king or queen
It is indeed women
empowerment at its best when a female from an orthodox lineage where the moment
a girl reaches puberty she is not allowed to study and is forbidden to step out
of her home alone without a male relative had fought with the system and
continued the work of her husband otherwise it is unimaginable that there can
be a presence of a woman on the Hindu cremation ground
However she being
the head, her role is limited to collecting the Agni kar tax and she does not
handle the bodies
The Dom rajas palace on the bank of the Ganga
Some
more very interesting facts
It is a custom in the dom household that food is cooked on
burning wood which is taken out from the funeral pyre
The photo is of the dom raja who is now dead, sitting near
the cooking pot, he is badly burnt, it is a sad paradox, for a man in charge of
burning the dead to get burnt himself because of a cylinder blast at a wedding
Holi (also
known as the "festival of colours”)
celebrations start on the night before Holi with a Holika Dahan where people
gather, perform religious rituals in front of the bonfire, and pray that their
internal evil be destroyed the way Holika, the sister of the demon king
Hiranyakashipu, was killed in the fire. The next morning is celebrated as
Rangwali Holi – a free-for-all festival of colours where people smear each
other with colours and drench each other.
But at the Manikarnika ghat Holi is played with ashes from
funeral pyres and red gulal, amidst other lit pyres; before celebrating holi a puja (ceremony) is performed at
Baba Mahashmashan Nath Mandir offering bhang, ganja (marijuana), fruits and flowers to the deity
On one hand the dead body arrives for cremation at the Ghat,
while on the other hand sadhus arrive to play holi with ashes from the funeral
pyres
In the
photo above (click to enlarge) see the munda mala (skulls of humans worn around the neck); by possessing
the skull of a human the person can take charge of his soul, hence it is very
important that the skull cracks /pops open during cremation
Now
coming back to the person who is wearing such a munda mala, your thought will
be-- he must be a Aghori, I do not know who the person is, most probably he may
be a fraud, but the full world has such degraded views about the Aghor panth
Let me
just tell you this; in today’s World where we have stooped down so much; are
the politicians doing good for the society, the answer is no, they are corrupt
to the bone people who just want power and money, are the Bankers helping to
build a nation , the answer is again no, today the top bankers are ruining the
economy, so similarly people who call themselves Aghoris are not true Aghoris
of the Aghor Panth, they are just human flesh eating misguided people who engage in post-mortem rituals
The
word Aghor literary means “non-terrifying”; they are the Vedic Alchemist who
having transformed their being to be people of light and are capable of
bringing a change in energy and matter
Feel
blessed when you hear the word “Aghor”, someday you would know all about them
This ghat also witnesses a unique programme of dance and
music amid the smokes from the pyres and cracking sounds coming from the
burning bodies at the cremation ghat; annually
on the seventh night of Chaitra Navratra, when the sex workers after cleaning
the temple, offer their prayer to the deity of cremation ghat. And after
performing religious rituals, they present dance and music at the makeshift
stage amid the burning pyres in respect of the lord of cremation ground. It is
a tradition in Varanasi that the 'Nagar Vadhu' (courtesans or 'bride of the
city') perform for the deity at the seventh night of Chaitra Navaratra
Raja
Savai Man Singh of Amber, who had built Man Mandir Ghat in 1585 near
Dashshwamedh Ghat, had also renovated the Mahashamshan Nath temple at Manikarnika
Ghat. In Hindu tradition, it is common to hold music programme on special
occasions. No reputed artist wanted to perform at the cremation ghats but the
Nagar vadhus (nautch girls / sex workers) offered their services at the
inauguration of the temple and since then the tradition continues
Nautch from the word नाच (nāch), from the root
Sanskrit word Nritya meaning dance {currently I am studying how most words have
their roots in Sanskrit}
Dancers offering prayers at the Mahashamshan Nath temple at Manikarnika Ghat before performing
The dancers performing, while funeral pyres burn in the
background
Doms’
akhada-- The corpse burner's wrestling pit
Akhada
means a place of practice, the Dom’s have an akhada for body building and
wrestling
The Doms are known
for their physical prowess and every Naag Panchami (snake worship festival)
they make a public show of it, lifting impossibly heavy stone wheels and doing
various acrobatics
While Untouchability
is predominant, there was a time when the Dom akhada would overflowed with
pehelwans (Pahlavan is a title which designates
someone really strong) from different castes, for a pehelwan,
the caste did not matter, all were equal on the playing field. In fact, a
number of wrestlers, irrespective of their caste, drop their family names /surnames
for the title of “pehelwan”, indicating that their art, rather than their
birth, defines them
Today, a lot of
gyms have come up, and the young men prefer going there, hence the Dom akhada
is not so popular now
The dom raja at the dom akhara, the traditional body
building equipment in the background
You may read the
detailed article here
Now coming to the
most important point, this was the reason I wanted to put this article in the
Pilgrimage called Life series instead of the Death series
People have the
desire to die in Varanasi and get cremated at the Manikarnika for salvation
Salvation comes to
the one who has no desire left for salvation
Or no desires
remaining; not even the desire to have no desire
No doubt the
rituals as per the Vedas are of upmost importance, but people are fooled, today
religion has become an Industry
It is after all, the
Karma of the person which will be with him in his after life
The rich like to be
cremated on sandalwood; will it make a difference to the progress of the soul?
When the super-rich
and influential people visit temples; the temple committee members and priest are
all out to please them, following them like dogs wagging their tails, the
security staff of these VIP’s just push people around and they are made to sit
close to the main idols and special prayers performed for them; are the Gods
pleased with this?
Watch this short
video which shows the essence of bhakti
Cannot explain the essence of bhakti better than this
You
may also like to read (click on the link)
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