Place · winter shrine village · India
Mukhba
The 7-8 century village of Mukhba in Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand, 20 kilometres from Gangotri — the winter abode of the Gangotri goddess and the ancestral village of the Semwal Brahmin priests who serve at the Gangotri temple. The Bhagirathi (Ganga's upper course) utsava murti (processional idol) is brought from Gangotri down to Mukhba in a formal procession each winter (October-November) at the Gangotri temple's closing, where it stays at the Mukhba Mata temple through winter and is then returned to Gangotri at the summer opening (April-May). The Semwal Brahmins (an Uttarakhand Brahmin community) have served as the Gangotri hereditary priests since the 1807 Amar Singh Thapa Gorkha-era temple foundation. The village sits at 2,620m on the Bhagirathi river bank. The traditional Garhwali wood-and-stone houses of Mukhba preserve the pre-industrial Himalayan vernacular architecture. The 2013 Kedarnath floods damaged the Mukhba-Gangotri road.
- Periods
- Classical and Puranic Age, Regional Flourishing, Islamic Age and Bhakti Traditions, Early Modern Age, British Colonial Age, Republic and Living Practice
- Function
- Water & infrastructure
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.040, 78.750
Connections (1)
- Sacred transplantGangotrī / Gomukh
Gangotri at 3,100 metres marks the Ganga's descent as Bhagirathi, in an eighteenth-century temple built by the Gorkha commander Amar Singh Thapa. On Annakut after Diwali the deity is carried down to Mukhba near Harsil, the ancestral village of the Semwal priests who serve the shrine, and returns on Akshaya Tritiya. The priests live in the winter village, so the shrine's establishment is permanently there and only seasonally at Gangotri.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Mukhba”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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