Bihar(Vihara)

Bihar’s long and complex history is implied in its very name, which is derived from Sanskrit vihāra, or monastery, a name endowed by 13th-century Muslim invaders, who were impressed by all the Buddhist monasteries they came upon. Today the Buddhist heritage survives largely in archaeological ruins and a few important pilgrimage sites patronized by devotees from beyond India. Approximately 16.5% of the population are Muslim, while Bihar’s nearly 83 million people are predominantly Hindu (82%), as defined by the 2001 census of India.

Until the year 2000, Bihar consisted of the Gaṅgā basin and the Chhotanagpur Plateau. Removal of the latter to form the new state of Jharkhand left Bihar consisting of roughly equal halves bisected by the Gaṅgā River. Patna, the capital of Bihar on the southern bank, is the site of ancient Pāṭaliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire (324–185 BCE). The regional divisions of Bihar identified in the most ancient texts still have relevance today in terms of language, culture, and caste, and they transcend the present bureaucratic divisions of administrative districts. The south-central section of the state containing the capital Patna was known as Magadha, whose present-day inhabitants speak a dialect of Bihari known as Magahi. To the north lying between the Gandakī and the Kośī Rivers is the Maithili-speaking region known as Mithila (in ancient times, Videha, and later, Tirhut). In the west, speakers of Bhojpuri share cultural traits with those of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Varanasi, while the eastern districts share affinities with Bengal. Whether Magahi, Maithili, and Bhojpuri are dialects of Hindi or of “Bihari” or have some other status vis-à-vis each other has been the subject of debate among linguists since Grierson (1883; Burghart, 1993), as well as among language nationalists, particularly pertaining to Maithili. Of these three, only Maithili has an extensive literature (J. Misra, 1976), older even than Hindi, with a script of its own known as Tirhuta and a strong literary history, whose most outstanding figure was the 14th-century poet Vidyāpati. Bhojpuri has a considerable oral folk tradition, but hardly any written literature (Henry, 1988).

Another way of thinking about Bihar’s cultural divisions is to point out two longstanding centers of influence: one of high Brahmanic culture in the north, and a second of flexible political power in the south. The former, Mithila, has maintained itself as a center of Sanskritic learning and Brahmanic lifestyle since its earliest Aryan settlement; the latter, the area around Patna, has adapted readily to reformist movements in the early centuries and imperial incursions in more recent ones.

The complexities in defining “Hinduism” have long been noted (von Stietencron, 1989; Sharma, 2003). The three-millennia-long process of overlay, transformation, displacement, and absorption might be the focus of explanation. Or, if Hinduism is less a distinct “religion” and more a way of life that underwrites caste, sectarian, and regional identities, then an anthropological focus on kinship and caste-specific practices (e.g. lineage deities [see kuladevīs], caste-based cult practices), regional traditions (e.g. temple festivals and pilgrimages), and social movements (the Arya Samaj, the right-wing, nationalistic hindutva movement [see nationalism]) may be more enlightening. An acknowledgment of the relationship between political power and religious practice is an essential component of any adequate analysis. Scholars have tended to tack back and forth between diachronic and synchronic views, textual and contextual approaches. The present essay will do the same.

Understanding of Bihar’s caste configuration is central to comprehension of much else in Bihar social life: religion, politics, economics, and culture in general. Bihar is among India’s most caste-conscious states. It is also the poorest state, ranking last in per capita income, with half its population below India’s poverty line. The 1931 census was the last to provide a demographic profile of Bihar’s castes. The upper castes consisted of Brahmans (4.6%), Bhumihars (2.8%), Rajputs (4.1%), and Kayasthas (1.2%), together constituting 12.7% of the of the total population. The principal group of Brahmans comprises the Maithils of north Bihar, the unquestioned elite among the upper castes, though there are groups of Sarjupari Brahmans in the Bhojpuri region and Bengali Brahmans in the east. Bhumihars or Bhabans are a land-owning agricultural caste in the south who have been engaged in a long Sanskritizing process, their caste organization claiming Rajput identity in the 19th century and Brahmans identity in the 20th, though other Brahman groups do not accept this claim. Rajputs migrated across North India from Rajputana (Rajasthan) over a number of centuries and are found mostly in Bhojpuri areas. Kayasthas were scribes whose literacy and accounting skills made it possible for them to move into bureaucratic roles with all overlords – Hindu, Muslim, and British. These four groups have long composed the main landowning and political elite of Bihar.

The lower or “backward” castes of Bihar constitute another 50% of the population. Of the 23 Scheduled Castes in Bihar, Yadavas or Goalas at 10.7% are the single most populous caste. The other principal groups of the Scheduled Castes are the Dusadh, Chamar, Pasi, Dhobi, Musahar, Kurmi, Koeri, and Teli. Most of the Scheduled Tribes (93%) of Bihar were removed to the new state of Jharkhand in 2000. Important tribes like the Santals, Hos, Mundas, Oraons, Bhumij Kols, Cheros, Kharias, and Pahariyas, clustered in the Santal Parganas and the Chhotanagpur Plateau, have little remaining representation in what remains of Bihar.

Since the 1920s, lower-caste peasant resistance has been a feature of Bihar social life, with violent encounters between landlords and peasants marring the last few decades of the 20th century, particularly in the rural districts south of the Gaṅgā. These conflicts have sometimes been coded in religious action, for instance in the form of counternarratives in resistance to upper-caste dominance. Studies of Hinduism have long emphasized the great tradition and Brahmanic forms with far less attention given to religious practices of Dalits, an imbalance only beginning to be corrected. The ways in which communal conflict makes use of Hindu symbols will be addressed in the final sections of this essay.

History

Bihar’s earliest configurations are known from four main sources: vedic literature (Vedas), Buddhist literature, inscriptions on stone and copper plates, and later on from the writings of Chinese and Tibetan travelers such as Faxian (399–412 CE), Xuanzang (627–643 CE), and Dharmasvāmin (1234 CE). Vedic literature attests to a gradual eastward expansion of vedic culture from the upper Indus region along the Gaṅgā Valley and Himalayan foothills. Early texts imagine the heartland of vedic religion as Madhyadeśa, the “Middle Country,” in what is now western Uttar Pradesh, while Bihar was far out on the eastern fringe, a barbarian backwater that included Videha and Vaiśali north of the Gaṅgā and Aṅga and Magadha in the south. In these outlying regions resided non-Aryan peoples who were looked down upon by the centers of orthodoxy in Madhyadeśa (Upadhyay, 1978). The momentum of vedic settlement was described in the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa as king and priest following the sacred fire (personified by Agni) burning eastward, “tasting the land” through sacrifice. The first part of Bihar to be brought under Aryan cultural influence was the region known as Videha in north Bihar. The court of King Janaka at Mithila became a magnet for ṛṣis from all over north India, and important texts such as the Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (c. 10th–5th cents. BCE) are sited in north Bihar. There, for example, Janaka performs a great sacrifice in which gifts will be distributed to Brahmans, though first he wishes to know which of the Brahmans is the most brilliant vedic scholar. The sage Yājñavalkya comes forward to win the thousand cattle with gold-covered horns by expounding on the true nature of the self ( ātman ) and its identity with brahman (see also Gārgī). These upanishadic figures reappear in later texts, King Janaka as the father of Sītā and father-in-law to Rāma in the Rāmāyaṇa , and Yājñavalkya as the author of a law book second only to Manu in authority, written in Bihar sometime after the 2nd century CE (see dharmaśāstra ).

Map Bihar

Brahmanic culture and its rites were this-worldly in emphasizing a long and contented life, wealth, power, and a good rebirth accomplished by a regimen of ritual observances prescribed by the Vedas and presided over by a class of householder-priests, the Brahmans. But in these eastern areas, vedic culture encountered tribal populations with their nonvedic religions. The outlines of their practices are known mainly by inference from unsympathetic descriptions in vedic texts. There was widespread worship of the troublesome nāgas (snake-gods; see sacred  animals), with temples at Rajgir and Gaya, whose proper appeasement insured plentiful rainfall, but who had to be prevented from disturbing vedic sacrifices ( yajña ). Śiva was worshipped by non-Aryan people, including, according to the Mahābhārata , ancestors of King Janaka, which perhaps is why Śiva’s bow was kept at King Janaka’s court. There were the powerful spirits, yakṣas, both benevolent and malevolent, whose shrines were built on the outskirts of villages or near the city gate. Trees, funeral mounds, and even the black śāligrāma stone (black stones in which fossil ammonites are embedded) later associated with Viṣṇu were worshipped by early non-Aryan peoples. All of these features were gradually assimilated to popular Hinduism (Diwakar, 1958).

Around 800 BC there began new destabilizing forms of renunciation practiced by “freelance wanderers” who rejected vedic sacrifice and advocated a life of withdrawn contemplation. The Atharvaveda refers to these first saṃnyāsins (renunciants) as easterners, suggesting that the movement of ascetic renunciation began in Bihar. Out of this cultural conflict came the 6th-century-BCE Jain and Buddhist protest movements.

Gautama Buddha was one of these renouncers, a Kṣatriya prince who, in the mid-5th century, abandoned his privileged life with its limited option of obtaining existential satisfaction through the mediation of Brahmanic sacrifice to join a group of wandering ascetics. This took him to Magadha, where his historic enlightenment occurred under a pippala (bot. Ficus religiosa) tree in Bodh Gaya. Over a 40-year career, the Buddha traveled throughout Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh teaching his new philosophy and gathering followers, beginning a process of upsetting the social order in which the sangha (brotherhood of monks) replaced Brahmans in their close relationship with princes, most importantly with the conversion of Aśoka in the 3rd century BCE. Asceticism ( tapas ) was institutionalized in residential monasteries, which expanded to house thousands of monks (as observed by the Chinese monk Faxian at the beginning of the 5th cent. CE), and Buddhist thought was enriched through expansive literature produced in monasteries and universities like Nālandā (Nalanda), said to have contained nine million books, Rājagṛha (Rajgir), and Vikramaśīla (Vikramshila). All of these locations have been sites for Buddhist pilgrims since ancient times, even after the Brahmanic revival incorporated them into Hinduism. The vajrāsana (diamond seat) beneath the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya is the symbolic center of the Buddhist world, and leaves from that tree are the most prized of pilgrim souvenirs.

The decline of vedic influence in society under these heterodox pressures came to be viewed as a kaliyuga (see cosmic cycles), a period of cultural degeneration, by the Brahmanic elite who resisted conversion to Buddhism. The Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas describe dire times when tombs (stūpas) polluted sacrificial grounds and sacred tanks, Brahmans forsook study of the Vedas and performance of the sacrifices, kings no longer supported Brahmans, people of low caste presumed to interpret dharma (order and duty) and set themselves up as spiritual experts, women forsook virtue for pleasure, and everyone sought wealth.

However, within a few hundred years of the Aśokan zenith, the Maurya dynasty faltered, and with the imperial Gupta, another period of cultural creativity ensued. There was a renewal of Brahman influence, and rulers legitimated their reigns by resurrecting the ancient and costly aśvamedha, or horse sacrifice (see yajña ). New texts, especially the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa and Purāṇas, prescribed new religious practices such as vratas (vows) and pilgrimages (tīrthayātras). There emerged new forms of devotional theism revering Viṣṇu, Śiva, Sūrya, Gaṇeśa, and Lakṣmī. The Śakti cult brought Durgā into prominence. These changes were not a uniquely Bihari development, but were occurring throughout North India. With these new developments, many scholars are willing to speak of a “Hinduism” for the first time.

During the heterodox era of Buddhist dominance, Mithila preserved and even enhanced Brahmanic orthodoxy. Between the 8th and 10th centuries, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā philosophies were developed and defended against Buddhist philosophers. The Mīmāṃsā school was a vigorous philosophical defense of the Vedas and of karmakāṇḍa, the ritual life lived in accordance with vedic injunctions that still define Brahman life. Brahmans such as Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Maṇḍanamiśra attempted to establish the existence of ātman (the self) against the anātmavāda (doctrine that denies the self) of the Buddhists and to prove the existence of a God with a long series of treatises and countertreatises.

With the Islamic incursions beginning in the 13th century, the Hindu state underwent marked transformation. The elevation of a Hindu prince to the position of a god-king that had been the point of Hindu rites of royal consecration, creating a sacred social order with a divine king at the pinnacle, was replaced with a new model of statecraft. Muslim rulers were not gods, but men favored by Allah to rule. Kinship and loyal friendship, not divinity, became the model for the state, which could no longer be a Hindu state. The response of Hindu subordinates to the new political order varied from place to place. In north Bihar, after Sulṭān Quṭb al-Dīn Aibak conquered the region in 1313, the Hindu king Harisiṃha Deva of the Karnata dynasty refused the ritual of subordination and acceptance of robes of honor and turbans that appropriate subordination to a Muslim ruler would have entailed. Others were willing to accept the sulṭān’s farmāns (decrees) as their “necklace and earrings” in return for “more wealth and honor than they had before” (the carpet of Quṭb al-Dīn Aibak became the “kissing place of the rais* of Hind,” where they expressed their new loyalty to the Islamic sovereign through intimate bodily gestures; see Hardy, 1978; *rais = rājās, kings).

The response to the new political order among many subordinate Hindu castes was elaboration of rules to preserve and enhance caste boundaries. This was especially true among Brahmans in north Bihar, who were ironically the major beneficiaries of the new political order. Much of the ultra-orthodoxy of the Maithil Brahmans can be traced to continuous efforts to maintain Brahmanic dharma while accepting local political power from non-Hindu imperial powers. Extensive genealogical record keeping (Jha, 1980) was said to have been instituted by Harisiṃha Deva as his final act before fleeing to the hills, in effect replacing the role of the rājā (king) in ensuring the quality of Brahmans. The genealogies are a system of policing the boundaries of the caste and compelling ever more total adherence to the rules of Yājñavalkya, even as one Brahman family, the Oinivaras, established a Brahman dynasty within the new Islamic empire.

Between the 13th and 16th centuries, Mithila under the Oinivaras reached its peak of intellectual creativity (Thakur, 1956; Choudhary, 1976). A number of Hinduism’s greatest philosophers were born in Mithila villages and wrote important treatises still considered central philosophical works, and scholars came from all over India to study the philosophies emerging here. Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya founded the school of Navyanyāya with Tattvacintāmaṇi, a work that redirected Nyāya philosophy from ontology to epistemology. His son, Vardhamāna Upādhyāya, extended his father’s work with half a dozen additional treatises on Nyāya, and there followed a long line of eminent Naiyāyikas, followers of Nyāya: Pakṣadhara, Vāsudevamiśra, Rucidattamiśra, Śaṅkaramiśra, and Vācaspatimiśra.

Popular Hinduism: Sacred Geography, Pilgrimage, and Melās

Over more than three thousand years, gods, goddesses, ṛṣis, and nāgas (snake-gods/demons) have marked the land of Bihar. Divine body parts fall from the sky, thrust up from the earth, and emerge from waters. Kings, Brahmans, and merchants endow temples, tanks, and shrines to contain these concentrations of power (vibhūti) for the well-being of human worshippers. The divinities may be embodied in beautiful black stone, sculpted by human hands, or in plaster images – or, just as often, in irregular chunks of stone, which may be particularly powerful because they are self-revealing (svayambhū) and autochthonous. Castes, clans, and families align themselves with particular divine personalities in order to prosper under their protection. Most of these divinely marked locations become centers of pilgrimage with distinctive cult traditions. Many have an ecumenical appeal and are visited by Jains, Muslims, and Sikhs, as well as Hindus.

These sacred sites and the melās (festivals) associated with them were of considerable interest to British administrators and ethnographers, in part because the gathering of hundreds of thousands of persons of many castes and regions presented problems for law and order (Yang, 1998). There was also a scholarly interest in these events. In the numerous digests of pilgrimage sites (e.g. Choudhury, 1988), melās tended to focus on Sanskritic ones such as gaṇeśapūjā, daśaharāmelā, rathayātrā, and śivarātrimelā, while those patronized by the lower castes were underreported. These would include salheśmelā every year at Jayanagar, attended by Dusadhs, and vasumelā patronized by Dhanuk and other lower castes (Narayan, 2003).

Two of Hinduism’s most sacred rivers flow through Bihar. The Gaṅgā reaches a wide, slow-moving flow from its origins in the western Himalayas to which it descended, the goddess Gaṅgā falling from heaven into Śiva’s matted locks to preserve earth from its destructive potential. By the time it reaches Bihar, it has widened through many sacred confluences, from Haridwar to Allahabad to Kāśī (Varanasi), but there is one final great confluence in Bihar, where the Gandakī joins it above Patna. This confluence is the place where Viṣṇu became incarnated as a fish and rescued an elephant from a crocodile. The Gandakī is thus associated with Viṣnu and his worship and is said to be the sole source of the śālagrāma stones that represent Viṣṇu, much as the liṅga (aniconic phallic symbol) represents Śiva.

A great Vaiṣṇava melā is held every year at Sonpur at the confluence of Gandakī and Gaṅgā, the hariharkṣetramelā, also called sonepurmelā. A ritual bath at this spot on pūrṇimā (the full-moon night) in kārttik (Oct–Nov) is as good as giving away a thousand cows as dān (gift). The sonepurmelā is a major destination for ascetics of the Rāmānandī sect, a powerful Vaiṣṇava group who travel eight months of every year visiting the major Vaiṣṇava pilgrimage centers (Burghart, 1983). It is likely that this tīrth (holy place) has been a pilgrimage center since the late vedic age. The Maithil poet Vidyāpati wrote of bathing there in the 14th century, and an English observer, John Marshall, attending in the 17th century, estimated the crowd at 40 to 50 thousand. These days, three million pilgrims attend the hariharkṣetramelā at Sonpur every year.

North Bihar is rich in sites associated with the Rāmāyaṇa. This was once King Janaka’s kingdom, the place to which Lord Rāma came and took a wife (and three more for his brothers), making the people of Mithila wife givers to Ayodhyā. Sītā herself is, notably, a Mithila girl (Heinz, 2000). Janakpur, just over the border in Nepal now, is said to have been Janaka’s capital, but many of the events recorded in the Balakhaṇḍa section of the Rāmāyaṇa are associated with additional locations in Mithila. Sītā emerged from the earth as Janaka plowed a field (or else from an earthen pot or from a tank he had dug), and the tank known as Janaki Kund in Sitamarhi is said to be the very one (though there are others with the same claim). It is still a common and auspicious development for the goddess to disclose herself in the form of a vaguely triangular stone at the time of excavating the numerous ponds that dot the north Bihar landscape. These are enshrined near the tank, and a local Brahman takes responsibility for regular veneration of the deity.

Viśvamitra, the guru of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, had his āśrama at Besaul near Phulher village where there is a major temple complex. Rāma’s birthday is celebrated at a large fair held annually during rāmnavamī. During the month of phālgun (Feb–Mar), thousands of pilgrims walk a ten-mile route visiting principal Rāma-Sītā sites.

In the southwest district of Bhabua in the village of Arampur is a pilgrimage site whose focus is a powerful dead Brahman known as Shastri Brahm (Śāstrī Brahm). This Brahman committed suicide after being insulted by the wife of the local rājā. As a ghost he went to Delhi and led the sulṭān’s army back to destroy this rājā. This narrative is one of many in Bihar to account for the triumph of Muslim rulers over Hindu kings, but the current significance of Shastri Brahm is as healer and oracle. Gottschalk (2000) has studied the narratives of Hindus and Muslims regarding the significance of Shastri Brahm and the practices of pilgrims who come from as far as Varanasi for consultation and healing.

Another annual pilgrimage takes place during śravan (Jul–Aug) at the beginning of the monsoons as five to six million pilgrims bathe in the Gaṅgā at Sultanganj and then trek 100 miles carrying gaṅgājal (Gaṅgā water) to the Śiva temple in Deogarh.

Bihar’s most important and best-studied pilgrimage site, however, is certainly the Gaya/Bodh Gaya complex (Vidyarthi, 1961; Marshall, Singh & Malville, 2004; Guy, 1991; Trevithick, 1999). Although Gaya is best known to the outside world as the site of Gautama Buddha’s enlightenment, the Buddha was probably drawn to Gaya because already in his time it was an important pilgrimage site, perhaps a legacy from pre-Aryan times when the site was a center of snake worship. References to Gaya are found in some of the earliest vedic texts; Gaya is a sage and writer in Ṛgveda (10.63, 64) and a mystic and magician in Atharvaveda (1.14.4). The topography of Gaya is overlaid with a mythology that transforms landscape to ritualscape (Marshall et al., 2004), a symbol system laid out in the Gayāmāhātmya (8th–9th cents. CE). Seven hills surround Gaya, all holy sites of pilgrimage. Gaya, Kāśī (Varanasi), and Prayag are the three places where the worlds of humans and of the ancestors are bridged; the hills are described as ladders from earth to the celestial world, which souls of the dead traverse. Flowing through the Gaya region is the river Phalgū (“Wish-Giving Cow of Merit”), whose ghāṭs (steps to the river) are used for cremations, bathing, and ancestral rites. The Phalgū is superior even to Gaṅgā because it is Viṣṇu in liquid form (ViP. 111.16). Gaya is the place where Viṣṇu stepped to earth (ṚV. 1:22.17), and in Viṣṇudharmasūtra (85.4) it is an altar. As a result, this setting is the most sacred place for the performance of śrāddha (the ancestor ritual; see death and afterlife). During pitṛpaksa, the dark half of the month of āśvin (Sep–Oct), hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converge on Gaya to perform the rites that will speed their ancestors to heaven. Here, particularly on amāvāsya, the moonless night, piṇḍadān (the giving of piṇḍas) is performed. Mourners prepare piṇḍas, balls of rice representing the dissolved body of the deceased in incipient form ready for rebirth, to offer to the three male ancestors on both the paternal and maternal side.

Viṣṇu’s footprint (viṣṇupada) is the mythological center of the entire region, the axis mundi where divinity stepped into the human realm. The logical neatness of this symbolism is complicated by the fact that there are dozens of footprints in and around Gaya and by the fact the same footprints are considered by Buddhists to belong to the Buddha. They are, as Kinnard (2000) has observed, complex polyvalent symbols, a kind of empty signifier, which requires the observer to imagine an absent deity rather than see one present in sculptural representation. For Buddhists, the footprints declare the anitya (impermanence) of the Buddha’s body along with a sense of his continuing physical presence in the relic. For Hindus, who never consider the pada to be anything but Viṣṇu’s footprint, it is the abode of Viṣṇu in both unmanifest and self-revealed (svayambhū) form.

Hinduism in Domestic Life

The forms of public worship involving yātrās (pilgrimage) and melās (festivals) discussed previously bring persons of diverse areas and castes together in collective religious action. This contrasts with those Hindu practices that have their center in the private sphere of family life, where they sanction kinship groupings and protect the household throughout the year and the life cycle (see also domestic rituals). Here, in addition to regional subcultures, the castes also form religious subcultures, with so much variation from caste to caste that little generalization is possible. So, authors sometimes speak, for example, of the religious traditions of Mithila or of the Patna-Mokama-Gaya districts, but on closer look, it is obvious that it is only one or two local castes under discussion, while the rest are silently passed over. Moreover, religious practices are often forms of contestation between upper and lower castes so that discussion of differing religious practice quickly leads into contesting religious practice. When values and identities are contested in the public arenas of melās and yātrās, they lead not infrequently to violence.

One example of Hinduism at home is provided by the Brahmans and Kayasthas of Mithila. Brahmans, who are unenthusiastic melā goers (where there is distasteful mixing and insufficiently meticulous ritual regimens), tend to live their Hinduism at home, in a life of daily rites, weekly vrats, and annual pūjās.

In Mithila, the Brahmans and Kayasthas share a common cultural tradition that sets them somewhat apart and above in the hierarchy of castes. The Kayasthas are technically Śūdras, but their socioeconomic status much resembled that of the Brahmans because their high rates of literacy enabled them to fill a niche as scribes and record keepers to zamīndārs (tax collectors). The Maithil Brahmans are one of the five major Brahman groups of North India, famous for their unflagging orthodoxy throughout the 20th century. Their social dominance in the region in recent centuries was underwritten by the vast wealth of Darbhanga Raj, whose ruling family was always a Śrotriya, a Maithil Brahman of the highest rank. But their cultural dominance in the region has a much deeper history, as we have seen, probably traceable back to earliest vedic settlement. Yājñavalkya, “that best of the yogins seated in Mithilā,” is claimed by Maithil Brahmans to be one of them. His Yajñavālkyasmṛti, probably written in the 1st century and second only to Manu in importance, is central to Maithil Brahman life.

Household Compound as Temple

Unless a Brahman is a temple priest, most Brahman worship is done in the home as part of daily, calendrical, or life-cycle rites. Therefore, Brahman domestic compounds in rural villages are structured as a ritual space in which no activity is entirely mundane. The four houses of the compound are laid out on the cardinal points, with a central covered space, the maṇḍap, functioning as the ancient altar, or vedi. The room in the west, opening to the east, is the gosāuni ghar, the household shrine containing representations of all the deities worshipped by the family, especially of kuladevī, the lineage goddess. The room in the east, opening both outward to the world and inward to intimate family life, is the house where men of the household greet guests and sleep. The southern house is the kōhbarā ghar, the nuptial house, where bride and groom meet and consummate the marriage. The ritually unmarked northern house is used for storage or extra sleeping space. Cooking, always a heavily marked activity because of the purity and exclusivity requirements of Brahman eating, is done in a casual way wherever convenient, often in the maṇḍap or on the inner verandah of the gosāuni ghar. These interior spaces of the Brahman and Kayastha compounds are the site of elaborate paintings of gods, goddesses, and natural symbols at the time of important life-cycle rites (saṃskāras), especially marriage (Heinz, 1996; 2006).

Śākta and Śaiva

Maithil Brahmans consider themselves Śākta and Śaiva, though not quite in the sectarian way found in South India. They also worship Viṣṇu, but do not generally refer to themselves as Vaiṣṇavas. The deity most intimately associated with family life is the kuladevī, lineage goddess, always one of the ten mahāvidyās (Kālī, Tārā, Cinnamastā, Bhuvaneśvarī, etc.; see Kālī) or forms of the goddess Kālī. Each of the named patrilineages of the Brahmans has its own kuladevī, who is physically located in a pot of soil buried beneath the altar in the gosāuni ghar. Reputedly established by the lineage founder 24 or more generations ago, she is the spiritual mother of the lineage who ensures the fertility, continuity, and well-being of all the generations. In addition, a symbol of the kuladevī is painted on the wall over a raised platform that is her shrine; the symbol is covered with a red cloth, as if she, like the wives, is also in pardā (veil). If a patrilineage divides or moves to a new village, a portion of the soil of the kuladevī must be carried to the new site and ritually reestablished in the new household shrine. Each new bride spends her first three nights in her husband’s house sleeping chastely with the kuladevī prior to consummation of the marriage and the contribution of her fertility to its future generations. The kuladevī is worshipped daily by the wives of the household. Like any mother, this goddess protects the family’s well-being and monitors their conduct; she can let her displeasure be known in numerous ways, including by possession of one of the wives of the household. In such cases she may be appeased by feeding five young girls (kumārīs) who represent her.

Another important goddess to the family is Gaurī, the consort of Mahādev or Śiva, to whom young girls pray for a husband like Śiva. The various divine couples are available as models for human ones at marriage; Kṛṣṇa-Rādhā, Rām-Sītā, and Śiva-Pārvatī are most popular throughout India. Even though Rām married a princess of Mithila, Maithil brides and grooms are not seen as modeling the Kṣatriya hero but rather Gaurī and Mahādev, the ascetic lord of the Himalayas. One of the wedding rites is gaurīpūjā, when the bride offers sindūr (vermillion) to the goddess – in the form of a betel nut (bot. Areca catechu) – in thanks for the husband seated behind the bride. A popular folksong of the women expresses the women’s view of the choices of husband open to Rādhā, Sītā, and Gaurī:

Gaurī went with friends to the garden to pick flowers.
One friend went on ahead,
one friend was left behind,
and one friend went into the garden.
Sītā went ahead,
Rādhā was left behind,
and Gaurī went into the garden.
One friend plucked the white flower,
one friend plucked the yellow flower,
and one plucked the china rose in the garden.
Sītā picked the white flower,
Rādhā picked the yellow flower,
and Gaurī picked the china rose in the garden.
One friend requested Rām for a husband,
one friend requested Kṛṣṇa for a husband,
and one requested a beggarly sādhu.
Sītā requested Rām,
Rādhā requested Kṛṣṇa,
and Gaurī requested the beggarly sādhu.
(Heinz, 2000, 1)

The ironic women’s view of their ascetic, Śiva-like husbands is captured in another folksong reputed to be by Vidyāpati:

[Śiva] It is time for bhaṅg*,
Rise, O Gaurī
[Gaurī] How can I rise now?
Kārtik is sleeping in my lap
Mother-in-law is not in the house
Who will keep Kārtik in her lap?
[Śiva] Rise, O Gaurī.
Spread the mat and lay Kārtik down.
Rise, O Gaurī, and crush the bhaṅg.
Vidyāpati says,
Listen, O Gaurī, Mahādeva’s heart is hard.
(Heinz, 2000, 8; *bhaṅg is a ball of crushed marihuana
leaves; see intoxication)

The annual cycle for Maithil Brahmans and Kayasthas is a sequence of rituals on particular days of the bright waxing half (śuklapakṣa) or dark waning half (kṛṣṇapakṣa) of the lunar month, marked by the no-moon (amāvāsyā) and the full-moon (pūrṇimā) nights. A particularly intense period corresponds with the monsoon months and is known as the cāturmāsa, the four months during which Viṣṇu sleeps. There are rites for putting him to sleep and waking him up, as well as a midpoint for turning him over in his sleep. Nāga (the snake-god) is worshipped during this period, especially at nāgpāñcamī at the peak of the rainy season, when offerings are made, women sing folksongs, and stories of Nāga and Manasā (the goddess who protects from the venom of snakes) are retold year after year.

Karmakāṇḍa

What makes a Maithil Brahman, they say, is proper marriage practices, as governed by the pañjikars (genealogists) and the genealogical records, and karmakāṇḍa, their vedic activities. Detailed ritual manuals like the 4th-century texts, the Śrautasūtras (texts expalining public vedic rituals) and the Gṛhyasūtras (rituals to be performed in the home), provide gesture-by-gesture, mantra-by-mantra instructions for the meticulous performance of the daily rites of the Brahman. A legend invariably cited by Maithil Brahmans accounts for the interior hierarchy within their caste, consisting of Śrotriyas, Yogyas, and Jaibar, in that order. This is still a fairly rigid hierarchy with little intermarriage, and that which does occur is carefully regulated by the genealogists. The legend tells of a great king who, following the model of Janaka, hosted a banquet to discover who were the best Brahmans in the kingdom. Many Brahmans were so eager to feast with the king that they arose early in the morning, bathed, and rushed to the palace, arriving in midmorning. These inferior Brahmans became the Jaibar. Others bathed, chanted the gāyatrīmantra, and arrived at the palace at midday. These became the Yogyas. Only a few superior Brahmans refused to rush through the prescribed rites even to feast with the king; they bathed, chanted the gāyatrī, and performed all other required rites, and thus did not arrive until evening. These few superior Brahmans became the Śrotriyas.

The question has been, in recent times, to what extent do any Maithil Brahmans still practice these complex daily rites? There is little data to answer this question; the best that can be said is that not many do, but there are definitely some; and these are not limited to the Śrotriyas. The status hierarchy these days is preserved not by actual vedic activity, but by correct marriage making.

The morning rite that was the original criteria-based test for the quality of Brahmans is known as saṃdhyopāsana. S. Einoo (1993) has studied the contemporary performance of this rite in Mithila and compared it with versions found in the vedic texts in order to discover both what is done now and whether it is continuous with the ancient texts. The present morning ritual is called the mahādevapūjā, performed at the “joint” of the day, the juncture of night and day – that is, at dawn. It consists of two parts: the first half is the saṃdhyopāsana; the second half is worship of Śiva and other gods. After bathing, and seated on a straw mat, using water and a metal spoon, and chanting dozens of specific Sanskrit mantras, the Brahman purifies himself, restrains his breath (prāṇāyāma), sips water (ācamana), removes his sins (aghamarṣana), worships the sun (sūryopasthāna), recites the gāyatrī (gāyatrījapa), worships the gods, seers, and ancestors (tarpaṇa).

S. Einoo traces the evolution of the morning and evening rites from the Śrautasūtras through the Gṛhyasūtras and on through later commentaries and works such as Padmapurāṇa. Several important differences emerge between the vedic texts and later texts like Padmapurāṇa that have been passed into contemporary practice. Perhaps surprisingly, the later rites (and their present-day version) are a considerably expanded form of the earlier ones; for example, the act of tarpaṇa for honoring the gods, seers, and ancestors has been added. Most significantly, the later texts were “moving away from the world of the Vedas and towards the world of Hinduism,” where the gods (Viṣṇu, Rudra-Śiva, Durgā) are the object of worship, and the method of worship is pūjā, a format involving installing the image of the deity and making offerings of water, perfume, flowers, incense, lamps, and food.

Intercaste Relations and Hindu Practices

Religious practices are intended to produce concrete benefits to their practitioners, maintaining or restoring well-being and harmony to the life of local social groups. In the process of ritual action, ritual tasks are assigned to specific persons or groups, and in that process social groupings are reproduced and reaffirmed. Wives responsible for daily worship of the kuladevī are daily reincorporated into the patrilineage as nurturing mothers and female attendants to its divine protector. When the relevant social group is larger than a single family or caste, ritual tasks are assigned to various groups, and in the process the social hierarchy becomes expressed and affirmed. A great deal of Hindu practice in Bihar, as elsewhere, revolves around social projects of relevance to a mix of castes in which the goal is ostensibly restoration of social and cosmic harmony, but where interests of dominance or resistance also come into play.

The Hindu village consists of a mix of castes of unequal rank and wealth, held together by economic relationships, an ideology of brotherhood, and collective religious practices. Most of the land is in the control of one or a few dominant families of high caste, with other castes providing services and labor. These dominant castes frequently take the initiative in projects for the collective good: establishing a temple, digging a sacred tank or well at the completion of the temple, and organizing celebrations of festivals such as durgāpūjā, lakṣmīpūjā, chathpūjā, and rāmnavamī. Durgāpūjā is one of the most important of such festivals throughout Bihar. Durgāpūjā is expensive and complex, and the village-level events are typically organized by a committee made up of members of most of the principal castes, including Dalit castes. The expenses are covered by a per bighā (unit of land area, approx. 0.15 hectare) levy on landowners; landless families contribute labor reckoned by the going rate of their usual daily wage. In addition, village families contribute activities suitable to their place in the caste hierarchy. Brahmans read the Kathās (stories), perform pūjā, and distribute prasād (material substances, usually edible, first offered to the gods and then consumed). Most of the physical work, however, falls on the Dalit community. They clear the space where the image of Durgā will be installed, washing it with cow dung and water; they build a stage, erect a temporary paṇḍāl (a structure often made of bamboo and grass to enshrine the deity), raise a tent for visitors, collect the mango wood for havan (sacrificial fire), carry the images on their shoulders, and provide the music of brass band and drums. Afterwards, they clean up, taking down all the temporary structures and returning materials to their owners. In the course of all this collective participation, village harmony is asserted, and the benefits bestowed by the goddess Durgā flow to all. In this process, the unequal relations among castes are reenacted, reinforcing the hierarchy as a ritual subtext of events. The big landowners are the patrons of the festival; Dalits provide labor, remunerated and unremunerated, in this ritual time as in secular time.

Durgāpūjā, like most of the villagewide festivals celebrated in Bihar, is a fixture of the pan-Indian, Sanskritic culture that is in control of the ruling classes, though particularly beloved in Bihar and Bengal. The spirit world is, however, a much wider domain than the Sanskritic one, and there are areas of Dalit autonomy and power that are also recognized by the elites. G. Prakash (1986) has described some of these dynamics in a study of Gaya district drawn from 19th-century British reports and his own interviews in the 1980s.

G. Prakash argues that relations of inequality are not driven simply by economic interaction patterns that have become normative. Rather, the relations of bondage between laborers (Kāmias) and landlords (Māliks) are rooted in an array of ongoing practices in everyday life, including the propitiation of non-Sanskritic spirits. The Māliks’ control over land expanded from Mughal revenue-free grants through the British Permanent Settlement and introduction of legal titles to land control and ownership. At the same time, both classes had relationships with a complex spirit world that consisted of ancestors, ḍāks (sorcerers), and bhūts (ghosts). Ancestors of all castes were worshipped in the form of clay mounds called piṇḍas in a corner of the house. These spirits of the dead ancestors, being free of the limitations of bodily form, are in a position to give warning and protection to their living descendants. Although most people die good deaths, a few die “bad” deaths. Those who die good deaths go on to new lives, but some linger in the spirit world. A few of these lingering spirits, such as certain heroic apical ancestors of Mālik castes, are benign, but many more ḍāks and bhūts are those who died unnaturally and are therefore potentially dangerous and definitely powerful. Many of the Kāmia castes, such as the Bhuinyas, install one or more of these powerful spirits as their Mālik devatā, the protector of the household.

The period of the agricultural cycle when the rains restore fecundity to the land and the fields must be ploughed is a spiritually risky time. The regeneration of life brought about by planting last year’s seeds for next year’s crops must be facilitated by the Kāmias in the landlord’s fields. Their roles as life restorers to dead fields hinges on the dangerous act of the ploughing and impregnation of the soil, the transition from death to life. G. Prakash describes the annual rite that initiates the new agricultural cycle, asārhipūjā, involving all the Kāmias and their bhūts. It begins with one Bhuinya selected by the landlord ploughing a small corner of a field and then sowing seed left over from the previous harvest. On a later date, all Kāmias propitiate the Mālik devatā and then invite all the village ḍāks and bhūts to the pūjā. As Chamars beat their drums and bhagats (shamans) dance, the village bhūts are invited one by one to make requests for gifts, and a procession circles the village to expel stranger ḍāks. The village ḍāks are then offered whatever they desired, while a pig is sacrificed to the local deity Tulsibir (Tulsībīr) and a goat to Bhagwati (Bhagavatī). Thus the landlord’s fields are made safe and ready for planting, a task he could not do for himself; nor could his own ancestral spirits be invited to protect the land, because they have all been sent off to the afterlife through Sanskritic rites at Gaya. The caste hierarchy is, in this process, reproduced through the ritual structure and assignment of tasks. The Mālik who is the principal beneficiary of the entire event appears only at the beginning and the end, while all the rest of the ritual activity is conducted by the Kāmias.

At other times, Māliks purchased ghosts to protect their property from Bhuinyas. L.S.S. O’Malley described a case where two female bhāgats sold such a ghost to a Kayastha landlord. For a fee, the landlord was given a four-directional lamp and a sieve with a handful of rice. He then returned home. The sieve followed him and lodged in a tree at the village boundary. Piṇḍas were established there, the village was informed that the Mālik devatā had arrived, and regular worship commenced. The Mālik devatā protected the fields from harm, including theft by members of the lower castes whence it came.

The Scheduled Castes of Bihar worship a number of additional deities, sometimes referred to as “godlings” in the earlier literature. Many are deified heroes whose activities were subversive of the Brahmanical order. Dusadhs worship famous criminals like Gariaya, Salhesh, and Karikh. Doms worship Gandah, who was hanged for theft. Others worship ghosts of persons innocently accused and murdered by the upper castes. Among these is Murkatwa, who is worshipped by Mushahars. He was killed for debauching a landlord’s daughter. He ran away from the girl when she tried to seduce him, but not before a speck of sindūr rubbed off on his forehead, which was taken as evidence of his crime.

Hinduism and Communal Conflict

Early scholars of religion emphasized the function of religion to promote social solidarity and create moral communities, but in recent decades religious life has been recognized as an important arena for communal conflict as well. These arenas have been characterized by two opposite forms of conflict: resistance to domination by dominated groups, as well as efforts by persons belonging to the dominant religion, Hinduism, to further marginalize religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians. These developments have been enhanced by the emergence of Dalit communities as forces in electoral politics, the rise from these groups of powerful political figures such as Lalu Prasad Yadav (see below), and the devel-opment of Hindu nationalism in political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The previous section described practices of domination in which dominated groups cooperate for their own perceived self-interest as well as for the greater good; there are other important cases in Bihar where certain religious activities are “weapons of the weak,” expressing hidden transcripts of resistance to status and ideological domination. A recent study by B. Narayan (2001; 2003) illustrates the political dimensions of the public performance of a popular folk ballad by Dusadhs in the Bhojpuri regions of southwestern Bihar. This is the ballad of Chuharmal, a Dusadh legendary hero whose story is recited or performed as a nautaṅki (folk play) on special occasions, often at weddings and annually during caitra (Mar–Apr) at Charidih near the town of Mokama. Most Dusadh groups throughout the state, as well as other lower castes, have versions of this story, but its performance has provoked local violence in recent decades in Patna, Bhojpur, Jahanabad, and Aurangabad districts.

There are numerous versions of the Chuharmal story, but its central theme is that of a Bhumihar girl, Reshma, who is attracted to a dashing Dusadh youth named Chuharmal. She attempts to seduce him; he at first resists, but then gives in to her charms. Reshma’s brother discovers the romance and attacks Chuharmal to revenge his sister’s honor. The Dusadh hero, with the assistance of the goddess Durgā, defends himself by killing Reshma’s brother, but after discovering that they are gurubhāī (a form of kinship deriving from sharing a teacher), he commits suicide by drowning himself in the Gaṅgā. Inconsolable, Reshma drowns herself at the site of his death. Thereafter, Chuharmal became a deified culture hero, worshipped at many locations associated with his name.

This important legend is instructive on many levels. Some might object to considering it a religious story at all, preferring to classify it as folklore rather than religion. However, it belongs on a continuum with the stories of Rām, Kṛṣṇa, and other divinities of the great tradition pantheon who evoke devotion and ritual celebration by humans. The Chuharmal story embodies a subaltern vision of society: Chuharmal does not aggress against female virtue, but the Bhumihar girl offers herself to him; there is an implication of equality rather than verticality in their love. He has the support of the Sanskritic goddess Durgā, who offers him a sword with which he successfully defends himself. His moral blame is not for eloping with Reshma, a girl of another (and superior) caste. Rather, it is for killing a gurubhāī. Here, the story denies the apparent inequality between Bhumihar and Dusadh by asserting the brotherhood of two men who have the same guru; they are too close to be linked by marriage, rather than too distant. The relationship is wrong in the direction of incest rather than of cross-caste pollution. For this sin, Chuharmal takes his own life, or rather offers it in jalsamādhi, a form of ritualized extinction in the sacred waters of the Gaṅgā. In an act reminiscent of satī (self-immolation), Reshma follows him in the same act.

The moral qualities and reversals in the story, however, are lost on high-caste critics, who read the story from the perspective of the Sanskritic, Brahmanical tradition. From that point of view, a daughter of their caste is described as wantonly seducing a member of an impure caste. This can be nothing but an insult to Bhumihar honor. In real life, rare cases like this almost always end badly, with boy and girl banished at best, and often executed. As a story or drama, the Bhumihars have attempted to suppress it by forbidding its enactment and sometimes violently interrupting it. Between 1970 and 1990, there were four caste riots in central Bihar over the performance of the story.

Hindus and Others

We must exercise caution in discussions of identity in India, particularly when it comes to the Hindu/non-Hindu distinction. Everyone has multiple group identities: family, lineage, caste, village, tola (segregated section of a village), region, religion, speech group, state, nation. The significance of these identities is partly situational. For example, lineage identity becomes important within the caste at times like marriage, but is irrelevant in most other situations. The principal religious identities in South Asia – Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jew – are not different in this respect. Even though they are situational, these identities are emotional and powerful because they define the self’s and family’s place and well-being in the world. This importance makes them subject to political and economic manipulation. Since Partition and Independence, “Hindu” and “Muslim” identities in India have been weighted with new political meanings and have been contested in new arenas. The association of the powerful Congress Party with a secular constitution and state left space for right-wing political groups to construct a power base around Hindu identities, linking Hinduism with Indian nationalism and defining Muslims as the “alien within,” descendants of conquerors or converts from Hinduism who should reawaken to their Hindu-ness.

The Hindu nationalist movement known as hindutva (Hindu-ness) is both a national and a local development. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), founded in 1980 as a counter to the long-dominant Congress Party, initially focused on the development failures and corruption of Congress, but gradually embraced hindutva in a complex process that came to focus on Ayodhya as a multivalent symbol of Hindu-ness and Indian nationalism, the putative birthplace of Lord Rām and the center of rāmrājya, India’s political golden age under Rām. Ayodhya had become an important pilgrimage center only in the 18th century (van der Veer, 1987), and though the area was not without conflict between Hindus and Muslims throughout history, there was also a great deal of syncretic devotional action, with the Muslim nawāb (provincial governor) supporting Hindu pilgrimage. According to tradition, two Muslim pīrs (saints) promised Babur that he and his descendants would be emperors of India if they built a mosque on the site of the Rām Temple. This he did, and it is the Babri Mosque that has been at the heart of the dispute. There is quite a significant body of literature on the complexities of these events and their causes nationally, but in Bihar events took first a characteristic violent turn, and then a surprising political one.

The claims of hindutva extremists found widespread sympathy among Bihari Hindus. Two years before the destruction of the Babri Mosque, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) devised a plan by which devout Hindus from every part of India and abroad could contribute bricks to the building of a temple to Rām at Rāmjanmabhūmi, Rām’s birthplace – despite the fact that a mosque currently occupied the site. Noting that there were wealthy Hindus who could have donated all the necessary money, they chose to draw into the movement Hindus of every caste and economic status with small contributions of one, five, or ten rupees per person. State organizations were mobilized to hold śrī rām śilā pūjās, to raise money for the foundation of the new Rām temple, where the devout would bring their contributions, the actual bricks were sanctified at śrī rām mahāyagyas and then shipped to Ayodhya on raths, the decorated carts (in this case, trucks) that are used to process the gods during great festivals. According to VHP documents, śrī rām śilā pūjās were held at 26,248 locations in Bihar and involved 13 million devotees.

In October 1989 the rām śilā procession of bricks for Rām’s temple turned violent. Beginning in towns, it soon spread to the countryside and ultimately involved more than 250 villages in Bhagalpur district along the West Bengal border. In the towns, targets were mostly poor Muslim weavers; in the villages, many of the Muslims were among the larger landowners. The worst violence occurred in the village of Logain, where backward-caste Koiris were incited to riot against their Muslim landlords, and 116 persons died. In the region, more than 1,200 persons died before the violence came to an end.

The events in Bhagalpur, triggered by religious action but incited by economic and political grievances, provoked a realignment of power at the state level. The Congress Party had ruled for decades with a coalition of upper castes, Muslims, and the poorest Dalits. But the Congress government had not protected Muslims and had not halted the rām śilā pūjā efforts for fear of offending Hindus. Muslims across the state withdrew their historic allegiance to Congress and threw their support to the Janata Dal in the 1990 elections. As a result, the notorious Lalu Prasad Yadav was sworn in as chief minister in March 1990 (Thakur, 2000). Six months later, L.K. Advani, the president of the BJP, entered Bihar with his rām ratha yātrā on its way to Ayodhya along a convoluted route beginning in Gujarat. The yātrā had crossed from Hazaribagh and Gaya, made its way across the state, and forded the Gaṅgā into north Bihar. At Samastipur, Lalu Prasad Yadav stopped the yātrā and arrested L.K. Advani. From the time of the arrest of L.K. Advani, Bihar became a safe haven for Muslims, and Lalu Prasad Yadav, whatever his later failings, a hero for them. Hindu-Muslim violence continued throughout India over the following two decades, but Bihar has remained relatively free of such conflict.

These dramatic events stand in contrast to the daily negotiations and peaceful interactions among Hindus and Muslims in most areas. P. Gottschalk’s (2000) important work on Hindu-Muslim relations in the Bhojpuri town of Arampur and vicinity attests to the strength of community institutions allowing these groups to coexist and cooperate even while not refraining from making critical and wary remarks about each other. He describes coming upon the leader of a local branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, together with a number of his family members, in a public ritual honoring a local šahīd (martyr) who had provided help to his family centuries earlier. This Brahman family arranges and attends the annual pūjā, with a Muhammadan pujārī as sacrificer. At the šahīd’s tomb, Hindu and Muslim together offer garlands of orange blossoms and half a dozen shawls, lighting incense in clumps of clay. Then they cover their heads and bow, cupping their hands in the Muslim prayer position as the pujārī recites a prayer in Arabic. They kiss their hands, touch their foreheads, and touch the tomb.