Motorcycling

Travels

Alien Words

Window

Links

Contact

Home
 
 
 
 
 

The village was suddenly abandoned  and shifted downstream..
the Gorsam Stupa
 
 

.a section of Bhutanese Buddhists belive that Assam is where Buddha died..
A Search In Hajo
 
 

For the dwellers of Ancient India, both Assam and the Brahmaputra denoted fear and divinity..
The river of faith
 
 

Bull, bull and more bulls, but would someone clarify..
Nandis of Assam
 

The Grotesque
 Lion Man

The widely contrasting philosophical tenets in Hinduism had always been a subject of perplexity, to both its own practitioners as well as the followers of other creeds. A situation further intensified by an iconography delineating a host of strange, fierce and often gory divine forms, rivalling only  only of Tibet. 

From simple multi-handed forms, to those with animal bodies and faces, the Tantric stream of Hinduism takes the cake with deities that sit on corpses, wear skull garlands, drink blood and armed with choppers, axes and spears. 
Oblivious to the metaphors involved, all so often people especially of the Judeo Christian fold find the Hindu gods and goddesses demonesque, the religion wild and pagan. 

Today, as Hinduism has transcended the borders of the subcontinent and reached the west, people there are more accustomed to the strange attributes of the religion. However, most still can't help expressing a shudder upon seeing a frightening image of Chinamasta Kali (headless Kali), more so when they hear the associated myths and philosophy. 

Traditionally a pocket of Hinduism, the length and breath of Assam in north-eastern India, is covered with ancient shrines, rock sculptures and carvings of different Hindu deities. And a section of these are from the scary realm of Tantric imagery. The male figurines being mostly deviations of the Bhairava Shiva theme, the female icons, usually representations of forms of Kali like Chamunda, Tara and Maheshamardini Durga. 

As fearful as they may appear, this multitude of skull donning and machete totting pantheon of Tantric gods are still a far cry from fiercest divinity of Assam. Not even a member of their fold, this unlikely deity pertains to Vaishnavism. 
A gargoyle's face with bulging eyes and fangs, two hands ripping a child's belly, the other two lifting out the entrails; it is the icon of NaraSimha the man-lion avatar of Vishnu which is by far the most grotesque image of the land. 

The fourth avatar of Vishnu, half man and half lion, the god had supposedly taken this form to kill the demon Hiranyakashipu, for the insolence of not worshipping him, whereas his son Prahlad did. 
Ancient rock sculptures and carvings of the lion-man deity are relatively common here, and next to the stanka (standing) and asana (sitting) murtis (statues) of Vishnu, comprises the most widely found sculptured image of the Vaishnav tradition. Found both as individual statues and rock carvings, as well as in temple panels, the figure of NaraSimha is portrayed in widely disparate forms. At times their only common feature is the cradled childlike figure, which is to be assumed to be that of Hiranyakashipu. 

Most Hindus are familiar with the "Vishnu" and the "Vayu Purana's" story of how the demon king Hiranyakashipu, received a boon from Brahma gaining immunity from any man or beast, day and night, both indoors and outdoors. So Vishnu turns into half-man and half-lion, breaks out of a pillar one evening and rips apart the heretical demon. 
According to the legend, Hiranyakashipu's supreme faults were his vanity, and Shaivism his sublime imperfection. Moreover, he used met out all sorts of unspeakable punishments on his son Prahlad, a staunch devotee of Vishnu, who every time walk away unscathed. 
The texts offer a very conflicting view of the father-son relationship, as they alternately mention that Hiranyakashipu both loved and hated Prahlad. 

Though both the Puranas provide vivid descriptions of all the ordeals Prahlad was forced to undergo, they paradoxically extend only a very sketchy report about the actual NaraSimha episode. It is in fact the Bhagavat, which narrates this episode in all of its glory. 
Needless to say, the tale contains strong undercurrents of sectarian rivalry, and was probably the Vaishnav way of telling the Shaivaite "our god is superior". 

A fair deal of imagination is required on the part of the beholder to identify the NaraSimha statues of Assam. Firstly, their faces hardly resemble anything even close to that of a lion's, which is quite explicable as the nearest live over three thousand kilometres away in Gujarat. Secondly, the form of Hiranyakashipu which was supposed to be ugly and huge as any self-respecting Asura ought to be, had been reduced to the size of a small child. Not merely in dimensions but in figure as well. 
Initially the object of this reduction was probably adopted to project NaraSimha as the larger and mightier entity, and later became a stylistic norm. 
Again NaraSimha was supposed to have caught hold of the demon, sat down, placed him on his lap and then continued with the stomach ripping business. But only a few statues depicted the Lion-man deity in the original sitting pose, most are delineated standing, others in out of the world yogic stances (possible only by divinities). 

Images of NaraSimha cut in rock can be seen with the other nine avatars on the walls of shrines like Haya-Griva Madhav in Hajo, Ashwakranta in N.Guwahati, the Urvasi Island in the Brahmaputra at Guwahati and in the various Tezpur sites. The first two are late medieval carvings, while the latter ones belong to much earlier traditions. 
The sizeable NaraSimha statue of the Bamuni hills near Tezpur, is one of the best examples of sculptures of  such kind in this region. Bearing influences of the Orissa School of sculpturing, the image is carved out of granite and is about 4 ft. tall and 2 ft. wide. A much smaller image of the deity can also be seen carved on the remains of a giant door sill lying nearby. 
Similar statues of the man-lion deity dating to early medieval periods have been found in many places of the state and a number of them are now displayed in the State Museum of Assam. 

In Guwahati, a number of singular rock carvings of NaraSimha are scattered all over the Nilachal hill, the abode of the mother goddess Kamakhya, which is in fact quite strange given the Shaktic nature of the area. 
Two such images are also located right next to the old pump house in the Uzanbazar area of the city. Cut out of a huge bolder on the bank of the Brahmaputra, the larger one is carved independently, while the smaller figure has the images of Durga and Ganesha alongside. 
This is a very interesting aspect of the NaraSimha statues in Assam, as sparing the inset images of the Dasa Avatars in temple bodies, many of these are found in the company of deities of rival sects. 

 This leads to the most perplexing point about the incidence of these statues. Firstly the documented history of Assam does not mention any specific cult of NaraSimha and nor do any of the ancient religious texts offering an overview of region, speak of the deity with any special regard. 
 In short, there are simply no reasons why only NaraSimha and not any of the other nine avatars were portrayed individually. 
One possibility could be rooted in the fact, that NaraSimha is a violent deity, possibly the fiercest in the Vaishnav pantheon. With the identity of Parsurama having strong casteist overtones (Brahmins stronger then Kshatriyas) and Sri.Krishna being a relatively new import (4-6th CE) into the stream, more so in Assam (16th CE) it was probably only NaraSimha which could appease the people attuned to the militant spirituality of Shaktism. 
It might be also be for this reason, the deity is often found alongside other violent or Ugra (angry) deities like Durga. Could it have been competition, or was it potential comradeship? 

Whatever was the motive of the people who commissioned and carved these statues, one thing is for sure; faithfully to the parable about Hiranyakashipu, the NaraSimha images of Assam have proved superior to the Shaivaite ones at least in one respect. "They are a whole lot scarier!!"