Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c12.s3: Pandharpur
Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c12.s3
- Language
- English
Pandharpur
c12.s3.1
Before leaving the Sholāpur District we may notice the celebrated temple of Vithobā at Pandharpur, on the banks of the Bhīmā. Though of little interest from an architectural point of view, this Vaishnava shrine is of vast importance in the eyes of the people of this side of India. Four times a year, congregate in thousands, arriving with their pilgrim staves and banners, and the tinkling of bells, by train, bullock cart, on foot or pony-back, weary and footsore. Some even come upon all fours, measuring their length in dots and dashes along the whole journey, among whom not a few artfully mark out the forward limit of each stretch with a short cane or stick thus gaining a foot or more upon each length. On arrival at Pandharpur they at once fall willing victims to the wily priests, who discover their family names in their respective lists, and appropriate them accordingly. These constitute themselves their spiritual and mundane ministrants for the period of their stay in the town, which is generally limited by the amount of ready cash the devotee possesses, or rather the amount he can be induced to part with. Having bathed in the river and shaved off his moustache, if he possesses one, the pilgrim is taken to make his first call upon Vithobā and Rakhamāī Devī, and the minor deities who patiently await him in the many smaller shrines surrounding the main one. Here he obtains absolution, and various other favours and privileges, according to the weight of his purse, for Vithobā is a respector of persons. The open-handed pilgrim he receives in his best clothes and jewels, and the more of the latter are piled on the more that open hand contains.
c12.s3.2
Viṭhobā is said to have come originally from Dwārkā on a visit to a certain youth Puṇḍalika who constrained the god to take up his abode at Paṇḍharpur. How he came, or the date of his coming, no man knows: these are idle questions; he came and that is enough. But though we cannot tell when he came, we can make a shrewd guess as to when he was housed in his present temple. It is a more or less recent structure, but there are remains of older temples about the town, and evidence that this particular one has been in part built from the materials of a more ancient shrine; but whether it stood on the site of the present one it is hard to say. That the present temple succeeded an older one to the same deity there can be little doubt, for an inscription upon a pilaster of a former temple, now used as an overhead beam in the present, tells us, in Kanarese and Sanskrit, that the Hoṣāḷa king Vira-Someśvara, in *Samvat* 1159 (A. D. 1237), gave a gift of gold to the god Viṭṭhala, which is an older form of the name Viṭhobā. Portions of this inscription, in its present position, are covered by the overlapping of the capitals of the pillars below it, thus shewing that it could not have been engraved in its present position. Between the present temple and the river is a portion of an old temple converted into a *chāvaḍi* or police station. The pillars are all standing in their original positions, and upon one of them is an inscription in Sanskrit verse recording the fact that a subordinate chief Kesavamaṇḍalika performed the *aptoryama* sacrifice in the temple of Paṇḍuranga Viṭṭhala on the banks of the Bhimarathī in *Samvat* 1192 (A. D. 1270). This would make it appear that this was the original temple of Viṭhobā. Between this, again, and the river, are the remains of two other small shrines. The present temple of Viṭhobā, which is shut in upon all sides with houses has been built in instalments, the *śikhara* or spine having been erected within the last sixty years; the substructure might go back two hundred years, hardly more.