Place · spring goddess shrine · India
Kheer Bhawani, Tulmulla
Also known as Kheer Bhawani, Tulmulla, Ragnya Devi, Tula Mula
The shrine of Ragnya Devi at Tulmulla, built over a hexagonal spring in a grove of chinars, and the most important goddess site of the Kashmiri Pandits. Milk and kheer are offered into the spring itself, from which the name comes, and no animal sacrifice is permitted.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.217, 74.750
Worth knowing
The spring's water is said to change colour, and a blackish cast is read as a warning — a reading that attached itself hard to 1990, when almost the entire Pandit population left the valley. The annual Jyeshtha Ashtami mela is now the occasion on which displaced families return for a day, which makes the shrine a census as much as a festival.
Connections (2)
- Shared sacred geographyCharār-e-Sharīf
Kheer Bhawani at Tulmulla and the Rishi shrine at Charar-i-Sharief are the two poles of the valley's devotional life, forty kilometres apart: a spring goddess of the Kashmiri Pandits where milk is poured into the water and no animal is killed, and the tomb of Nund Rishi, whose shruks were recited by Pandits and Muslims alike. Kashmiri religion was a single idiom in two liturgies.
- Shared sacred geographyVishālākshī, Kāshī
Sharada Peeth and Kheer Bhawani are the two great goddess sites of the Kashmiri Pandits and both became inaccessible to them in the same century — one behind the Line of Control after 1947, the other after the exodus of 1990. The Jyeshtha Ashtami mela at Tulmulla is now the occasion on which displaced families return for a day, which makes it a census as much as a festival.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kheer Bhawani”. Kalhana, Rājataraṅgiṇī, and the Kashmiri Pandit ritual calendars; Jammu and Kashmir Dharmarth Trust records.
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