Mathura - Vrindaban Visit

February 25, 2015

First let me thank Surinder for arranging this wonderful religious experience, it is fun.

Today at Mathura was a better experience than Vrindaban yesterday, although the place is dirty but it gave me a further background into Hinduism.

Did you know that after Gupta Dynasty of about 400 AD, Hinduism was on decline because the Buddhist were slowly overpowering it? In fact it had completely overpowered Hinduism by about 700AD. A Pala dynasty of Bengal ruled Mathura. This place had more Buddhist monasteries than Hindu ritual places. It was in about 1025 AD that Mahmud of Ghazni, destroyed it. Indians had lost by then, capability to fight the invaders, hence they miserably lost. Mathura was destroyed together with all Buddhist and Hindu culture. So were many other cities, in all seventeen of them. For about two hundred years nobody cared much about Mathura when Turkic / Afghans ruled from Delhi, until Tughlaks came to power. It is then that Hindu revivalism began. A guy with a name Chaitanya Parbhu came from Bengal in about 1400 AD and began the Hindu revivalism.

The most important place in Mathura for Hindus the Krishna Birth spot had also stayed dilapidated. It had been destroyed by Ghazni in 1025 AD. Before that the Krishna birth spot had been well cared for for about a thousand years. A temple marked the spot and it had been rebuilt three times, each time enlarged. The last one was built by Gupta kings in about 400 AD. After its destruction, a charitable man built it again at the behest of Chaitanya. Aurangzeb had it destroyed in 1670 AD and used that building base and it's material to build a Mosque at the spot. The poor Hindus lost a very important relic of its culture. This is what you get when you listen too much to peacemakers like Buddha. Nobody dared to build anything resembling a temple or marking the births pot of Krishna anywhere.

First attempt to reclaim that spot was made a local Raja from the neighborhood using the British style court system in India in about 1870AD. As a matter of fact, Hindus won the case two times, each time the Muslim lobby refusing to vacate it. In about 1900 AD, the British granted permission to Hindus to build a temple next door and erect a wall, leaving the Mosque in tact. That is how the situation is today I.e. at the exact historical spot of Krishna birth, there is a Mosque. Next door is temple which can also claim proximity to the Krishna birth place, but not exact. The exact historical spot has been occupied by Muslim. 

Anyway this visit for me is religious experience. I do not prey much, that is Sushma's job. I let my presence in the place give me the feeling of accomplished something. There is a third temple which claims to be jail house where Krishna was born. It is poorly visited, meaning that nobody believes the priest claiming to be the jailhouse. I also was skeptical. 

There is a DwarkaDhish temple right in the middle of the town. It is difficult to get to, but I and other's got to it by a rickshaw. It is highly crowded and not well kept place. By the name of it DwarkaDhish means king of Dwarka, that is Krishan. Why not to call it Krishan temple like others. I believe the person who had it built probably came from Gujarat, and wanted to commemorate Gujarat - Dwarka kingdom of Krishna. 

We did go to funny places like Radhasrowar, and another pond but uneventful. Oh yes!, I did go to see the temple where Krishna and his friends lifted the Goverdhan mountain to act as an umbrella during rain. I could see no mountain nor any trace of it, but being smart I did not question anything. If I did, I could be ejected out of the car. 

An interesting place we visited was the Radha temple on the mountain top about 30 Km from Mathura. Radha is worshipped there. I joined in that too. 

We were dead tired by the time we returned to the hotel. Much of the time was spent in getting to these spots and following the security instructions. Security at the Krishna Birthplace is very tight. 

I have had enough of the religious experiences, I wanted no more, hence we pack tomorrow and leave all the religious experiences for this trip behind. But hold on, that may restart, I am going to Haridwar in about two weeks.

Cheers

Hari Sud