9—
Worshiping Epic Villains:
A Kaurava Cult in the Central Himalayas^[1]

William S. Sax

It is perhaps no surprise that India's ancient epic Mahabharata continues to thrive in the Central Himalayas of North India as a form of ritual drama. More astonishing is the fact that in one remote valley the villains of Mahabharata are major cult figures, and subjects of religious veneration. In this essay, William Sax describes that cult and analyzes current processes of social change that are rapidly transforming it.

In the Central Himalayas of North India, India's great epic Mahabharata lives on. Indeed, it is the greatest single source of folklore in this predominantly Hindu region,^[2] constantly invoked to explain everything from the nature of south Indian cross-cousin marriage to the origin of warts. While the vast majority of local persons identify with the heroes of the epic, there is one valley, high and isolated, in which the villains rather than the protagonists of the story are worshiped as divine kings. The situation, however, is complex and ambiguous: as the valley is integrated ever more closely into the contemporary world, its epic traditions are transformed. In what follows, I hope to show how Mahabharata lives on, and also how it changes in response to wider social processes. But before doing so, I must say something about the epic itself.

Mahabharata is the longest epic poem in the world, more than eight times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, a veritable encyclopedia of Indian culture.^[3] In one of its recensions, it boasts: "Whatever is here may be found elsewhere; what is not here cannot be found anywhere else" ("yadihasti tadanyatra, yannehasti na tatkvacit" ) The central narrative of Mahabharata involves a dynastic rivalry between two sets of cousins, the five Pandava brothers versus the hundred Kaurava brothers. The Pandavas are the protagonists, sons of gods, born in order to rescue Earth from her oppression by demons who have taken birth in other royal lineages. Their social father, Pandu, was cursed to die if he made love to a woman, and so the five are actually half-brothers, begotten on Pandu's wife Kunti by various deities. There is also a sixth half-brother named Karna, born before Kunti was married. Soon after birth, she set him adrift in a river, and later he was found and raised by a lower-caste couple, so that neither he nor his five half-brothers

know they are related. The irony of the situation only increases when Karna becomes a firm ally of Duryodhana, eldest of the Kauravas. Karna is one of the two "villains" who is worshiped in western Garhwal; Duryodhana is the other.

Although the Kauravas' father Dhritarashtra was eldest, his blindness made him ineligible to rule, and so the throne went to his younger brother Pandu. The two sets of cousins grew up in an atmosphere of rivalry, which intensified after Pandu died and the administration of the kingdom was taken over by the Kauravas' blind father Dhritarashtra. For a time the kingdom was divided in two, but when the Pandavas performed an elaborate royal sacrifice to lay claim to universal lordship, Duryodhana felt threatened, and he responded by inviting the Pandavas to a dice match in which the eldest brother, Yudhisthira, lost everything: his wealth, his kingdom, himself and his brothers, and finally their common wife Draupadi. Duryodhana ordered his vicious brother Duhshasana to drag her into the assembly hall and strip her naked. But this proved to be impossible because in answer to her prayer, Krishna provided Draupadi with an endless sari. Enraged by the Kauravas' cruelty, Bhima, the second Pandava brother, vowed that he would take revenge by drinking Duhshasana's blood and breaking Duryodhana's thigh.

The blind king Dhritarashtra restored to the Pandavas their weapons and their freedom, but in a subsequent gambling match Yudhisthira again lost everything, and they were exiled for thirteen years. They spent their final year in exile without being recognized, and therefore, by the terms of the wager, Duryodhana should have restored half the kingdom to them. But this he refused to do, and his intransigence led to the great Mahabharata war. It lasted for eighteen days—a vast holocaust, a bloody sacrifice that consumed the earth's great kings and champions, including Karna (dishonorably slain by Arjuna at the urging of Krishna, while attempting to free his mired chariot) and Duryodhana (also treacherously slain at Krishna's urging, by Bhima who violated the rules of fair play by breaking Duryodhana's thigh in a club fight and thus fulfilling his vow). This great slaughter brought to a close the third age of the world and ushered in kaliyuga, the final and most decadent age, in which we now live.

Both the Kaurvas and the Pandavas belonged to the Bharata lineage, from which the word Mahabharata is conventionally said to be derived, namely, "the great maha [story of the] Bharatas." But according to both popular and learned etymologies, the proper derivation is "the Great (maha ) War (bharata )," and the eighteen-day battle is undeniably the central event in the epic. This should come as no surprise since Mahabharata, like India's other great epic, Ramayana, was originally composed and performed for the warrior class of Kshatriyas in ancient India, and thus reflects their central values and concerns.^[4] Mahabharata is in fact a kind of extended meditation on the moral dilemmas arising from the fact that war is both terrible and necessary. On

the one hand, it is wrong to slay anyone, especially one's friends and kin, as Arjuna explains to Krishna immediately before the great battle (their dialogue is famous as the Bhagavadgita ) It is also wrong to gain victory through deception and trickery, but this is precisely what the Pandavas did at Krishna's urging, a fact that has generated much debate and discussion amongst Hindus. On the other hand, Earth must be defended against evil, and this responsibility lies squarely with the warrior class, men like the Pandavas, whose dharma or code for conduct may include violence. Mahabharata can of course be interpreted in many ways: many scholars in India and elsewhere have tried to discern a historical kernel beneath the sprawling epic, while some currently influential interpretations see it as a vast, transformed sacrifice,^[5] or as the first and greatest example of devotional Hinduism.^[6] But in a general sense—especially in its contemporary representations in comic books, films, television, and performance genres Mahabharata remains a powerful Indian metaphor for the struggle between good and evil.

Mahabharata in Garhwal

Traveling in India, one is continually struck by the many ways in which both Ramayana and Mahabharata are popularly invoked. This boulder is said to have been placed by Bhima; that cave is said to have been a resting place for Rama and Lakshmana, heroes of the Ramayana, as they searched the forest for the kidnapped Sita; here is the site where Arjuna the Pandava performed asceticism in order to gain his magical weapons; there is the place where Rama left his footprint in the rock. Through such localizations, the epics are made immediate on both the local and the national scale: many of India's holiest places derive their importance from their association with the epics. Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita spent the first and most idyllic part of their forest exile in a place called Chitrakut, which is today identified as a pilgrimage place in the North Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Before attacking his enemy Ravana's island fortress of Lanka, Rama prayed to the god Shiva, and the place where he did so is known today as Rameshvaram, one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage places in the world. Rama's supposed birthplace of Ayodhya is not only a famous pilgrimage place but also a politically contested site.^[7]

Places throughout peninsular India are mentioned in the Mahabharata, but the main action of the story takes place in the north, roughly between present-day Delhi and the Himalayan foothills. It is widely believed that Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas, was located on the present site of Delhi's Old Fort, while Kurukshetra, scene of the Mahabharata's climactic battle, is still a famous place of pilgrimage. But nowhere does Mahabharata have such tremendous social and religious importance as in the former Hi-

malayan kingdom of Garhwal, in the Himalayan districts of the state of Uttar Pradesh, where it is invoked to account for the origins, not only of social customs and features of the landscape, but also of the local people, who consider themselves descendants of the Pandavas. Sanskrit versions of the epic mention Badarinath, the foremost local pilgrimage place, and one that was intimately associated with the kings of Garhwal.^[8] Garhwalis believe that the Pandavas were born at the local temple town of Pandukeshvara below Badarinath, that the attempted assassination of the Pandavas by burning them in the palace made of lac took place at Lakha Mandal in the Yamuna River valley, that the kingdom of Virat where the Pandavas spent their final year of exile was in the Jaunsar region of Garhwal, and that the Pandavas made their final ascent to heaven through the Garhwal Himalayas.

The major vehicle by which Garhwalis express and explore their understandings of Mahabharata is pandav lila, a local tradition of ritual performance. The word pandav refers of course to the five Pandava brothers, but what about lila? The word means "play" in both the nominal and verbal senses of the English word.^[9] In the first place it means free, spontaneous play, like the play of a child, and this concept is, in effect, the Hindu answer to certain theological problems. If god is self-fulfilled and complete, then what could motivate him (or her or it) to create the world? In some strands of Hindu philosophy this question is answered in terms of lila, so that God's creative activity is likened to the playfulness of a child. The term is also used in this sense to address questions of theodicy, so that when confronted with death and suffering, Hindus are more apt to say "It is God's lila" than "It is God's will."

But lila- also means "play" in the sense of drama and theater. A lila is a play about religious themes, so that pandav lila is the "play of/about the Pandavas." At this point, the reader might suppose that pandav lila is a kind of folk drama, but it is more precisely described as a "ritual drama." It is a ritual because, like religious ceremonies but unlike secular theater, it is believed to be efficacious; that is, it is performed for specific ends, such as helping the crops grow, keeping disease and misfortune at bay, and promoting health and well-being by pleasing the gods, who are physically present upon the stage. During performances the five Pandava brothers, their common wife Draupadi, and other gods and goddesses enter the bodies of the men and women playing their parts. There is no "fourth wall" here: participants are constantly slipping back and forth between the roles of spectator, bard, character, and dancer, and as character or dancer they are normally considered to be the incarnations of those epic characters whom they represent. Such divine incarnation is frequent in Hinduism, where there is no ontological gulf separating humans and gods.^[10]

In performing pandav lila, Garhwali society collectively represents itself to itself by means of a public ritual performance. But this representation

clearly favors the Rajputs, who identify themselves as members of the class of Kshatriyas or warriors. Performances of pandav lila make implicit claims about who and what these Rajputs are.^[11] There are several reasons for saying this, the most important having to do with blood and ancestry. Most local Rajputs claim to be descended from the Pandavas, and thus pandav lila is understood as a form of ancestor worship. Such an understanding is also revealed by the generic term for pandav lila in western Garhwal: saraddh, from Sanskrit sraddha, the annual rite of ancestor worship that is obligatory for all Hindus. Rajputs are thus doubly linked to the Pandavas: not only do they perform a metaphorical sraddha for them by sponsoring a pandav lila performance, but in addition a central part of that lila involves a dramatic search by the Pandavas for the necessary materials to perform a sraddha for their dead father, king Pandu.

Pandav lila is also self-definitional for Garhwalis because Garhwal is prominently mentioned in Sanskrit versions of the epic, lending plausibility to the local belief that much of the story happened there. After all, the Indian literary tradition refers to the Mahabharata as "history" (itihasa ) as opposed to the more purely literary "poetry" (kavya ) exemplified by India's other great "epic," the Ramayana.

A third reason that pandav lila is self-referential has to do with the importance of the weapons that are carried by the dancers: a scythe for Draupadi, a staff for Yudhisthira, clubs for Bhima and his son Babarik, bows and arrows for Arjuna and his son Nagarjuna, a scythe for Nakula, and a slate for Sahadeva. The iron arrowheads of Arjuna and Nagarjuna are clearly the most powerful objects in a performance.^[12] They must be held in the right and not in the unclean left hand. They must never be allowed to touch the ground lest their "power" or "energy" (sakti ) escape. Large penalties (usually a goat or its cash equivalent) are levied on those who accidentally drop them, and women, low-caste people, and those in a state of pollution are not allowed to handle them. In Jakh village in 1991 my assistant Dabar Singh and I were invited to dance, then later told that I would have to do so with a headless shaft. We politely declined. In the next lila we attended, in Kaphalori village, I was allowed to dance with an "empowered" shaft complete with arrowhead. I found the experience exhilarating.^[13] At the beginning of a pandav lila, the old weapons that were used by the fathers of the present generation in the previous pandav lila, perhaps twenty or thirty years ago, are taken down from a secret and honored place (often under the eaves of a house) where they have been kept free from pollution and negative influences. They are placed on the altar in the dancing square, and kept there for the remainder of the performance. Meanwhile a new set of weapons is fashioned—sometimes on the spot by the local blacksmith—and used in the current performance. After the lila is over, these new weapons are placed under the eaves, and the old weapons of the previous generation are ritually disposed of at some holy

place, often a water source. In this way the Rajputs' martial energy—the ksatra of the Kshatriyas—is embodied in the weapons of the pandav lila and passed from generation to generation.

Finally, pandav lila may be considered a form of self-representation, because of the kinds of episodes that are selected for dramatic representation. Because of Mahabharata's great length, some principles of selection must be employed in choosing these, and martial episodes are clearly favored. This is in keeping with Garhwali Rajputs' self-image as warriors, an image that was strengthened when they were defined by the British as one of the "martial races" of India and were actively recruited for the colonial army. Even today, military service is a highly prestigious career, sought after by many local youths. The theme of martial prowess runs right through pandav lila, and the fight to the death between Arjuna and his son Nagarjuna is of particular importance. East of the Alakananda River, this event is represented far more often than any other. Not only is it sung of by bards and enacted by possessed players, but it is danced literally hundreds of times over the course of a nine-day lila. Every night, each surrounding village is given the opportunity for its two best dancers to display their skill, which they do by dancing the Arjuna-Nagarjuna dance. This lasts until the wee hours of the night, with anywhere from fifteen to thirty pairs of dancers performing the same episode. In terms of sheer quantity, this father-son battle is represented more than any other episode. But it is also enacted (in a less complex fashion) in the Mandakini River basin and in the far west in the Tons River basin, making it one of the few features that is common to pandav lilas throughout Garhwal. The details of the episode are much too complex to be recited here; ^[14] suffice it to say that one of its messages seems to be that a Kshatriya must always accept a challenge, even when it comes from a kinsman, a brother or even a father. To refuse a challenge is to lose one's most precious possession—one's honor—and so the fight between father and son once again points to war's dual nature, its necessity as well as its tragedy.

It should be clear by now that for the people of Garhwal, Mahabharata is much more than just a book. This seems an obvious enough statement, but I find that it needs to be made—repeatedly—to my academic friends and colleagues. As members of a bibliocentric profession, many us have bound copies of Mahabharata on our shelves, and it is only natural for us to think of it as a book. But it would be well to remember that even the critical edition of Mahabharata is only one version among many; that the story has been translated into many languages of many nations; that it traveled throughout Asia as far as Vietnam and Indonesia;^[15] that to begin with it was not a book at all, but rather an oral epic; and that the problems associated with establishing a critical edition proved intractable. Over thirty years ago the editor of the critical edition wrote that the "essential fact in Mahabharata textual criticism is that the Mahabharata is not and never was a fixed rigid text, but

is fluctuating epic tradition. . . . To put it in other words, the Mahabharata is the whole of the epic tradition: the entire Critical Apparatus."^[16] There are many Mahabharatas, not just one, and that is why I refer to "Mahabharata" and not to "the Mahabharata." I want to insist that books are just one part of this tradition; that they have no ontological or epistemological precedence; that Mahabharata is not only a book but also a political model, a bedtime story, a tradition of dance, a dramatic spectacle, and much more. In Garhwal, it is an ancestral tale, one that is periodically enacted as a form of ancestor worship, and one that provides a basic—probably the basic—paradigm for what it is to be a Rajput.

A Cult of the Kauravas in Western Garhwal

In the far west of Garhwal, near the Himachal Pradesh border, is the Tons River basin, an area that has long been associated with unorthodox social and religious customs such as bride-price, intercaste marriage, and especially fraternal polyandry of the sort exemplified by the marriage between Draupadi and the five Pandava brothers. When my village friends in district Chamoli, in the eastern part of Garhwal, heard that I was planning to travel to this area, they did their best to dissuade me. I was warned that men did not return from the valleys of the Rupin and Supin rivers (tributaries of the Tons): the women there enslaved them, turning them into goats or frogs by day, and back into men at night "for their pleasure." Rumors of poison cults abound: the women of the area are said to worship supernatural beings who demand one human sacrifice per year. A friend of mine, a traditional healer, went so far as to empower some salt with special magical spells, telling me that if any local woman were to offer me food, I should sprinkle this salt on it, and if it turned blood red, then I shouldn't eat it. A retired government officer said that several decades ago when he toured through the area, whenever he was offered food by the local people it would first be tasted by a prepubescent girl, in order to demonstrate that it was not poisoned.

I had long been aware of rumors of a Kaurava cult in this region,^[17] but had dismissed them as fantasies. I reasoned that because some of the customs of the area were very unusual, people in other parts of Garhwal assumed that the entire culture was inverted and strange, and this was why Garhwalis elsewhere were so willing to believe the most outlandish tales about the local people. The idea that there might actually be a group of people who worshipped the Kauravas struck me the way it strikes most most Hindus—as utterly implausible.

But I was wrong. Soon after arriving in the area for the first time in the winter of 1991, I was directed to the large and imposing temple of Raja Karan ("King Karna"), the presiding deity of Singtur, a traditional land division or patti whose social and religious life centers on the god. Karna's main tem-

ple is in Dyora village, but there are others scattered throughout Singtur, including a temple of his putative son Vikhasan.^[18] Raja Karan is regarded by the population of Singtur as their king: he is served by numerous lineages of priests, musicians, carpenters, and watchmen; he is often called upon to settle local disputes, which he does through his oracle (mali ) he is the subject of a rich devotional folklore; and like other kings he travels frequently, sometimes in royal processions to the villages under his rule, sometimes to drive away other gods encroaching on his domains, and sometimes as a pilgrim to local sacred places.

In many respects, Raja Karan and his priests are social and religious reformers. For example, they are fierce prohibitionists, opposed to drinking in general and especially on religious occasions. They are opposed to animal sacrifice within the temple compound, even though it is practiced in other nearby temples, and they seek to reform local marriage customs. Despite the stereotypes noted earlier, polyandry is not generally practiced in Singtur or the neighboring areas.^[19] However, the prevalent form of marriage, by bride-price, is still unorthodox, and Raja Karan's priests refuse to accept money in exchange for their daughters.^[20] The reason, they say, is that Raja Karan was famed for his generosity (one of their most popular epithets for him is dani raja or "the giving king"), and so they, like him, are keen to give their daughters as a pure gift. In doing so, they conform to the normative type of marriage among North Indian Hindus, the kanyadana or "gift of a virgin." In these and other respects they self-consciously distinguish themselves from Duryodhana and his subjects higher up the valley, where such reforms are only just beginning. How appropriate that Raja Karan's divine kingdom should lie midway between the more conventional cult of the Pandavas in the lower end of the valley and the cult of Duryodhana in the high mountains. The tragic figure of Karna, unknown brother of the Pandavas and devoted ally of the Kauravas, still mediates between the two sides, just as he did in the epic.

The people of Singtur assured me that there were indeed several temples of Duryodhana higher up the valley, the chief ones being located in the villages of Jakhol and Osla. Some of them also told me that there was a Duhshasana temple nearby.^[21] They said that the oracle of Duryodhana, whenever he was possessed, had to lean on a crutch for support, since Duryodhana's thighs were broken in his final combat with Bhima.^[22] I was told that Duryodhana used to go on royal tours throughout the region, and that wherever he halted, the people of that village were obliged to offer their finest animals, grain, milk, and butter to the god and his priests. So frightened were they of his curse that they would do so without demur. The people of Singtur asssured me that they had suffered a great deal at the hands of Duryodhana and his minions. For years their high-altitude herdsmen were forced to offer the finest of their flocks as annual tribute, until one year five brothers

defeated Duryodhana's followers, even though they were vastly outnumbered, thereby ending the custom.^[23] When I asked why it was that Duryodhana and Karna were now rivals when once they had been allies, people usually answered that the quarrel was not between the gods, but between their human devotees.

Why would anyone wish to worship the Kauravas? Duryodhana and his brothers are symbols of evil, of adharma, and Karna is a tragic figure strongly associated with death and defeat. Duryodhana makes only the briefest appearance in pandav lilas elsewhere in Garhwal, and Karna is considered as so inauspicious that people in that area do not even read the karnaparva or "Book of Karna" from the Mahabharata without first performing a goat sacrifice: they believe that if they do so, catastrophe will strike.

The short answer is that people do not worship Duryodhana because he is evil, but rather because he is powerful. Specifically, he is thought to have the power to bring rain or to withhold it, something that is obviously of crucial importance to local farmers. There are other reasons too for worshipping the Kauravas, and these are really no different from the reasons people elsewhere in Garhwal give for worshipping the Pandavas: in both cases they have to do with people's ideas about who they are, and how they became that way. The belligerence of the Kauravas, their eagerness to do battle, fit in well with local Rajputs' images of themselves as courageous and warlike. People sometimes say that Duryodhayana did not really die, but rather fled to the Tons Basin after he was injured in the Mahabharata war. It has been claimed that people from this area fought on the side of the Kauravas, and that the present inhabitants are their descendants^[24] —in other words, that Duryodhana is king of his subjects in the Rupin and Supin valleys, just as he was king of their ancestors. In worshipping him they are remaining loyal to their ancestral traditions; to do otherwise would be dishonorable.

Neither the kings of Garhwal nor the British ever had much authority in this area, and its people were notoriously "turbulent and refractory,"^[25] a reputation that persists to the present day. Political and religious authority is vested in deities like Duryodhana and King Karna, who are regarded as divine kings. Gods in this region have for a long time been among the most prominent political actors, and the boundaries of their domains are the subjects of continual and lively dispute.^[26] Devotion to the ancestral god is, therefore, a kind of protonationalism, in which loyalty to one's lineage, caste, and region are all mutually reinforced in the cult of the deity. To its neighbors, Duryodhana's domain might look like an "evil empire," but to those within it, loyalty to the cult is an appropriate and honorable attitude.

So perhaps my earlier skepticism was wrong, and this exotic Himalayan valley harbored an equally exotic religious cult, in which the most notorious villains of Hindu mythology were adored by the local population. This was, after all, explicitly stated by Garhwali scholars and journalists, and by peo-

ple living in the area. There have always been those who insist that only indigenous interpretations are valid, so perhaps this interpretation, clearly indigenous, was correct. The problem, of course, is that there is always more than one interpretation: "natives" have different points of view just as anthropologists do, and neither perspective is monolithic. This was implied by my friends in Singtur, who told me that in the upper valleys, the old ways were dying. Villages outside of Duryodhana's core territory were reluctant to invite him to visit, and so his annual tours were growing fewer, his domain shrinking, his influence diminishing. Inspired by Raja Karan's example, people were beginning to question the old ways, and now there were two factions in Duryodhana's main village, divided over animal sacrifice and the use of intoxicants. Young men had returned with university degrees from as far away as Delhi, and Duryodhana's followers were beginning to claim that he was actually Someshvara, a form of the great Hindu god Shiva. But I was told that despite these changes, there could be no doubt that that the god worshipped in the upper valleys was Duryodhana.

I pondered this information while trying to arrange a visit to the god's chief cult center, in the village of Jakhol. This was not easy to do, as it was winter and the mountain trails were buried in snow and often impassable. One evening I was explaining my interest in Duryodhana to a fellow patron of the tiny inn where I took my meals, when a small group of men sitting next to us fell silent. One of them angrily called out: "Who says our god is Duryodhana? His name is Someshvara!" I realized that my opportunity had arrived. The situation was very delicate, so I asked the man, Kula Singh from Jakhol village, to come outside with me where we would not be overheard. I apologized to him for causing offense, and said that I was only repeating what I had been told by the local people. Perhaps he would be willing to take me to Jakhol and show me the truth. He said that he would indeed be willing to take me there, but not now—it was midwinter, and the paths were too dangerous. But if I would come for the god's spring festival, I could stay with him, and he would help me with my research.

Later that spring I spent several days in Kula Singh's house, observing and participating in the god's festival, and three years later, in 1994, I returned again. During these two trips I discovered that, just as my friends had said, there were two factions in Jakhol. The "traditionalists" supported old customs such as demanding sheep and goats as tribute and sacrificing them in front of the deity, while the reformers regarded this as a form of theft inappropriate for a religious institution. There was also a dispute over the way in which the god makes his appearance during festivals. Traditionally, he is carried outside on a "chariot," actually a kind of palanquin, made of freshly cut pine saplings, and the young men of the village have great fun leaping on the saplings, jumping up and down on them and trying to break them. (The practice hearkens back to an incident in the god's biography when, according

to local folk songs, he had been forgotten by everyone except a group of children, who began a festival in which his image was worshipped in childish ways.) The reformers felt that this custom demeaned the deity by showing him disrespect; moreover, people were allowed to wear shoes when they approached the "chariot," and it was quite possible for low-caste persons to pollute the deity by coming in contact with him during the melee. Raja Karan's temple had abolished similar customs, animals were no longer sacrificed in front of the god, and when he left the inner sanctum he was placed on a tiger skin, symbol of royalty, rather than on a wooden palanquin. Reformers in Jakhol wished to follow suit, and to that end they convinced the rival faction to take the god on a pilgrimage to the famous nearby temple of Kedarnath. They felt that after completing such a virtuous act, he would certainly adopt a vegetarian diet and be more circumspect about ritual pollution. Sometimes the rivalry between these two factions from the same village got rather nasty. During my visit for the spring festival in 1991, there was an altercation between the reformers and the traditionalists, and that evening the reformers sought me out and earnestly requested that I bring my camera the next day. They were certain that their rivals were going to shoot them, and they wanted me to document the massacre for posterity.

But despite the depth of feeling on these issues, the fact remains that both sides are committed, at least publicly, to the view that the god is Someshvara and not Duryodhana. In my two visits to Jakhol I have recorded several of the god's songs, including his "history" as sung by temple musicians; spoken at length with two of his priests; recorded a number of brief, quasi-historical songs from lay villagers; and conducted a lengthy interview with Sundar Singh, who, as both village elder and chief administrative officer of the deity, probably knows more about Someshvar and his history than any other person. Everyone I talked to in Jakhol-priests, Rajputs, and musicians—was unanimous that the god was not Duryodhana. The most common argument in support of this position was based on iconography: the image was held to be that of Shiva, with the river Ganges emerging from his head, a half-moon in his hair, a garland of serpents on his throat, and earrings, though this was impossible to confirm, as outsiders (including local officials) are not allowed to view the image. Others claimed that the traditional form of worship was of the sort that is directed only to Shiva. Probably the most articulate spokesperson for this point of view was Sundar Singh, who told me in 1994 that the reason the old men used to call the god "Duryodhana" is that in their day no one had taught them any better. But, he said, when educated persons began coming from outside and looked closely at the image, they realized that it was not Duryodhana. I have also been told that it is not the main image that is called Duryodhana, but rather a smaller image that is visible on the upper part of the palanquin when the god emerges during his festivals. According to this story, the image was made by a famous blacksmith

named Bisar Katha, from across the border in Himachal Pradesh. He made this second image in order to add to the splendor of the main one, but when he made a third image, the local people saw that it was a replica of the first, and they went to kill him. With his dying breath he said: "I served you, and yet you're killing me, just like the Kauravas and the Pandavas, so I name this image Duryodhana."^[27] Although some of these denials are inconsistent or demonstrably inaccurate, nevertheless the god's subjects agreed that he was Someshvara and not Duryodhana.

Yet it still seemed to me (and to Raja Karan's subjects from Singtur) that the temple up the valley belonged to Duryodhana. Perhaps I accepted the Singtur people's version because they were my friends. Maybe I believed them because my anthropological fascination with cultural difference encouraged me to see a Duryodhana cult that wasn't really there. In the welter of inconsistent and mutually exclusive interpretations, one thing that emerged quite clearly was that each interpretation was related to some specific interest, not least my own. But self-interest often requires self-deception: just because there are multiple perspectives on some issue does not mean that they are all equally true. In the end, I persisted in believing that there was a Duryodhana cult because of the evidence. There is, for example, the matter of the god's songs. In 1991, one of the village musicians had referred to the deity both as Duryodhana and as Someshvara,^[28] but by 1994 all references to Duryodhana had disappeared from his song. Similarly, while attending a pandav lila in Singtur in 1991, I recorded some folk songs from two men from Jakhol in which they referred to the god both as Duryodhana and as Someshvara. In informal conversation in Jakhol, many people called the god "Duryodhana," which the reformers found rather embarrassing. One of the god's priests admitted to me that they used to worship the god as Duryodhana, and only recently began worshiping him as Shiva. Along the top of the exterior walls of the temple in Jakhol are a number of carvings, prominent among which is one of two men facing each other, each flanked by their supporters: underneath are carved the names "Duryodhana" and "Arjuna."

But the most persuasive evidence of all was provided by the god himself. Surely his testimony is authoritative, since villagers in the upper valleys respect and fear him as their ruler. In 1994, he returned from a brief tour to some nearby villages and was ritually welcomed home to Jakhol, at which time he possessed his oracle, as is customary. It was the beginning of winter, and there had been a prolonged dry spell, but as we stood in the flagstone square before the temple, dark storm clouds whirled around us, and we were briefly pelted with hail, while the slopes above the village were blanketed with fresh snow. The god's speech exemplifies many of the issues already discussed, such as the tension between the two village factions, the god as a divine king, and the difficulties that arise when ancestral traditions undergo change and transformation:

Oracle: Education (sikhi ) is happening! I will accept whatever you do and say. Keep your old traditions, keep them! But times are changing, and I'll change with them.

Sundar Singh: We are only children. Our ancestors' ancestor—Dhangkato and the others—came with you, but when they challenged you, you destroyed them. We will do as you say.

Oracle: It would be best for you to unite with the others.

Sundar Singh: I also want this. But things happen.

Oracle: You should unite, yes, but the two sides are always quarreling; you won't listen to each other. This new generation has also dishonored me. Everyone has his own opinion.

Sundar Singh: We are not acting for ourselves; we do whatever you tell us. Please protect my family.

Oracle: I'll protect all my subjects (janata ) not just your family. Everyone knows how my rituals are conducted, and they should act accordingly. They say that even the musicians have their freedom, but we'll see how free they are!

Sundar Singh: Musicians, messengers, watchmen, priests, subjects—if we are separate from you, then where is our place? We follow you.

Oracle: Stay within your limits, follow my orders, and all will be well. Maintain your dignity (maryada ) don't slip from your old traditions. Let the others slip instead.

Sundar Singh: You have the power and the virtue (gun ), not us. The rain has fallen.

Oracle: Yes. I'll take care of the rain.

Sundar Singh: Let the domain (mulk ) be united.

Oracle: Wait four days, then see. I'll provide rain; don't worry.

During this speech, the oracle supported himself by leaning on what looked rather like a long metal sword with an unusually short handle. Was it not the crutch about which I had already been told, required by Duryodhana because his thighs had been dishonorably broken by Bhima in combat? His speech was punctuated by frequent interjections—"Ak! Ak!"—was this not, as one man from Singtur suggested when he heard my tape recording, an expression of pain from his broken thighs? After the possession was over, the oracle leaped up to a standing position, obviously relieved that the trance was complete—was he also relieved of Duryodhana's pain?

Conclusions

Who is the god worshipped in the upper valleys of the Tons River basin? It seems likely that formerly he was widely recognized as Duryodhana, but nowadays his identity is less certain. Perhaps, by the time this essay is published, he will have completely metamorphosed into Someshvara. Duryodhana's followers are clearly aware that other Hindus regard them as perverse and back-

ward because they worship a notorious villain; therefore they are in the process of "reinventing" their deity. That this process should now be gathering momentum is hardly surprising, given the fact that these formerly isolated valleys are being integrated with the rest of India with unprecedented speed. A generation ago, there were no roads into the area, few visitors from outside, and virtually no public education. Today the transportation network is burgeoning,^[29] domestic and international tourism is rapidly expanding, and government or private schools are found everywhere. One local youth obtained a law degree in Delhi several years ago and returned to become a very influential proponent of the view that the god is Someshvara and not Duryodhana.

The problem with trying to determine, once and for all, such an abstract matter as the identity of a god is that it is a matter of beliefs and meanings, which are notoriously unstable. The god means different things to different people and even to the same people—in different contexts. Moreover, collective ideas about his identity change over time. There are relatively stable periods when such ideas are fairly consistent, as seems now to be the case in the cult of Raja Karan, and there are times of rapid change, as seems now to be the case in the cult of Someshvara. To assume that the god has a permanent, stable personality is as mistaken as assuming that a person has one. Cultural representations of gods, like representations of selves, are neither monolithic nor unchanging, but rather are related to the ever-changing contexts of culture and history.

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