Ash and Essence

Aprocedural snafu stalls your columnist’s predawn entry into Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar temple. Slinking away discreetly from the gates is one option. Not for Spiritual Atheist though, because, as per protocol, a written request backed by a valid ID had been made on the previous day. Inexplicably, permission was denied.

In the end, it takes just one call to the chief administrator of the shrine for your columnist to be given direct access to the sanctum sanctorum to witness and to participate in a most moving ceremony called adoration with ashes (bhasmaarati) of Shiva as Sri Mahakaleshwar, or Master of Time.

Instead of using traditional fire-and-wick ceremonial lamps, the priests use muslin bags filled with ashes to worship the ritually decorated icon. Chanting sacred hymns, they shake and wave the bags around the lingam, which creates spectral clouds of silvery ash.

Moments later, the sandal paste- and turmeric-smeared black basalt emerges as a ghostly white icon. Even to the sceptical eye, this does look like a ‘Linga of Light’ (Jyotirlinga) for which Ujjain has been renowned since ancient times.

Cold ash, rather fire, is used to worship Mahakala, or Great Time, probably to avoid a redundancy: in the Indian tradition, Time (Kalagni) is one of the five elemental fires that reduce all things to ashes. So, the Great Fire is worshipped with the Great Essence (Bhasma) rather than with little fires. The Bhasmalepa (coating with ashes) rite also stands for extinction of devotee’s individual self and emergence of his eternal one — verily from Ashes to * Shesa (Eternal), pun intended!