The other Ayodhya

Amidst the revival of Ayodhya as the Mecca of Hindus, its multicultural history, layered with spirituality and imagination, is being overshadowed by its new champions

For most of its life, Ayodhya has lived in the shadows of its more glamorous cousin Banaras, the go-to destination for moksha-seeking spiritual travellers from all over the world. But the city that Valmiki immortalised in his epic poem Ramayana is getting a grand makeover. With the Ram temple at its centre and the credentials as the birthplace of Rama to seal its divine status, it is being reimagined as the Mecca of the Hindus. While this sets it up as a worthy challenger to Banaras’s superstar status on the pilgrim trail, the layered history and multicultural ethos of Ayodhya is getting buried under the spectacle.

As one of the oldest settlements in the region, its story is a mix of history, spirituality and imagination. One story traces its holiness to the celestial river Sarayu that runs through it. Sarayu was born out of the tears of Vishnu and was gifted to Iksvaku, son of the first man Manu and Rama’s ancestor, as a reward for being a just and compassionate ruler. (Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre by Peter Van der Veer)

Called A-yu-te by the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang and Saketa in ancient Buddhist texts, Ayodhya was a sacred and prosperous city. Its sacrality was universal, embraced by not just the followers of Hinduism, but also Buddhists, Jains and Muslims.

Several Buddhist scriptures mention Buddha dwelling in Ayodhya and when Hiuen Tsang visited the city (7th century AD), he reported that it had become an important religious centre with “1,000 monasteries and 3,000 monks” studying Buddhism. In the Jain traditions, Ayodhya is revered as the birthplace of Rishabha, the first of the Tirthankaras. Also, two Jain Tirthankaras, Parshvnath and Mahavira, preached here, creating large communities of followers who made the city their home.

Local legends locate the first human settlements, according to Hindu and Islamic traditions, in the region. According to the story of the Matsya Avatar (one of the 10 avatars of Vishnu), Manu, the progenitor of the human race, is believed to have landed up in Ayodhya after the great flood. A lake called Manu Mani Kund marks the spot where his boat was anchored.

A few minutes away from the Kund (a saucer shaped catchment area) is a shrine dedicated to the first son of the first man of Islamic traditions, Adam. Both the lake and the shrine are revered and protected by the local population. A recent book (In the Footsteps of Rama: Travels with the Ramayana by Vikrant Pande and Neelesh Kulkarni) notes that there are 6,987 temples and 356 kunds in Ayodhya, a sign of its legacy as a holy and populous city.

Networked into an intricate weave of myths and legends, Ayodhya is a city much like Atlantis and Dwarka, one that was once lost to the mortal plane and rediscovered by the legendary king Vikramaditya. The king had been separated from his companions during a deer hunt and found himself on the banks of the Sarayu where he saw a dark figure astride a black horse across the river, plunging into the water. When horse and rider emerged out on his side of the river, both had turned white. The rider was Prayagraj, the god of Prayag, who said that he turned black with the sins of all those who came to wash themselves in the river. A dip in the Sarayu restored his pristine form. Prayagraj instructed Vikramaditya to follow the holy cow, Kapila, into the dense and overgrown forest around the river; he was to rebuild Ayodhya where the cow stopped to dispel her milk. And thus, Ayodhya was reborn. (Exiled from Ayodhya: A Journey in Search of Ramayana by Shirshendu Mukhopadyay).

Like all myths, the origin story is much more than truth and historical fact. As Neil MacGregor, former curator of the British Museum writes, “The most powerful and most sustaining of any society’s stories are the work of generations.” They are so deeply absorbed into everyday life that “we are often hardly aware that we are still surrounded by the tales of distant ancestors.” (Living with the Gods) In Ayodhya, these voices are slowly being drowned out by the sharp and rising voices of its newly anointed champions.

The writer is a Mumbai-based journalist and co-founder of The Mythology Project