Place · lake tirtha · India
Pushkar
One of very few Brahma temples anywhere, on a lake said to have formed where a lotus fell. Fifteen kilometres from Ajmer Sharif: the two largest pilgrimage draws in Rajasthan face each other across a ridge.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Puranic tirtha tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.490, 74.551
Worth knowing
One of very few temples anywhere dedicated to Brahma, in a religion whose other two members of the trimurti have thousands. Whatever the reason, it is a striking hole in the map of Indian temple dedication.
Connections (4)
- Site adjacencyAjmer Sharīf
Ajmer Sharif and the Brahma temple at Pushkar lie fifteen kilometres apart across a ridge — the two largest pilgrimage draws in Rajasthan, one a Chishti dargah that takes Hindu and Sikh pilgrims as well as Muslim, the other one of the very few Brahma temples anywhere, on a lake with its own cattle fair. Buses run between them all day and a great many visitors do both in one trip.
- Ritual transferPābūjī kī Phaḍ
A phaḍ is a consecrated object, not a picture: when the cloth is too worn to be read from, it is taken to Pushkar and immersed in the lake in a rite called thanda karna, cooling it, which releases the deity from it. The bhopa's family then commissions a new one from the Joshi painters at Shahpura. The painting is therefore a life-cycle object with a beginning and an end, which is why very few old phaḍs survive.
- AnalogueSibi
The two great livestock fairs at either end of the arid west, and both are older than the states they are in. Pushkar's fair gathers around the lake in Kārtik, with camel trading folded into a pilgrimage; Sibi's Mela is held in February at the foot of the Bolan, with horse and cattle shows, tent pegging, camel racing and Balochi performance, drawing breeders from across Balochistan and over the Afghan border. Both are markets that became festivals, and in both the animals are still the point.
- Shrine within cityPushkar Fair
The fair is at Pushkar because the pilgrims were coming anyway. Bathing in the lake on Kārtika Purnimā is the older observance — Pushkar holds one of the very few temples to Brahmā anywhere — and the livestock market grew alongside it, because a week when every Marwar household is already travelling to one place is the week to bring animals to sell. The camel trading and the temple bathing still share the same few days and the same ground.
On these journeys
Sources
Pushkar Lake and Brahma Temple
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