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In search ... of the palace of lac
HUGH and COLLEEN GANTZER
A part of the mystery ... an unusual temple door.
THE ice-melt water of the stream is cold and sparkling on our bare feet. We had stopped on our drive out of Mussoorie to have a picnic. And while we were munching our brunch under a Himalayan oak tree, we re-read the Mahabharata translated by Rajaji. In the simple, lucid, language that was his forte, he described how Duryodhana had plotted to kill Kunti and her sons. He had lured them to Varanavata, on the pretext of joining in a great festival. Secretly, however, he had instructed his minister, Purochana, to have
"a beautiful palace built for their reception. Combustible materials like jute, lac, ghee, oil and fat were used for the construction of the palace. The materials for the plastering of the walls were also inflammable... When the Pandavas had settled down in the wax house, the idea was to set fire to it at night when they were sound asleep."
The story is a familiar one and we have come here in pursuit of a persistent legend connected with it. It said that the palace of lac had been built in a village now called Lakhamandal. Naturally, there would be no trace of it now because it had been set alight by the fleeing Pandavas. But we felt that we might, in our amateur way, be able to uncover a link with that famous conflagration.
It is time now to resume our journey up the hill to Lakhamandal and see things for ourselves.
What a quaint and attractive village Lakhamandal is. (We're writing this on our return to our cottage in Mussoorie) There aren't many woods around the village, certainly no forests where the Pandavas "used to go out hunting" and through which Bhima "strode effortlessly like a lordly elephant forcing his way through... pushing aside the shrubs and trees that obstructed his path." But after many centuries of human habitation, the forests have given way to terraced fields that stretch down the slopes like giant steps. There have also been more recent changes. A cemented path, winding up between parapets, led past a few "modern" concrete buildings. Beyond, however, were the traditional timber houses of the village. We paused, enchanted by the sight of them.
Lakhamandal looked like a woodcut of a medieval European hamlet except that these houses were much more beautiful. Their walls, pillars and arches were intricately carved. A man sat near his house using an adze to sculpt a handle for his bill-hook. "Can you carve pillars and arches like those?" we asked. He stopped his work and his face wrinkled in a smile. "Can you get me the deodar wood for such carvings? Can you persuade the Forest Department to let me fell a tree? If you can, I can carve!" Uttaranchal takes the Forest Conservation Act very seriously. We looked around. Festoons of golden rope hung like blonde locks from one of the balconies. It looked like bleached jute. "What is that?" we questioned a woman framed in an arch. "It is made from the Bhimal tree," she said. "We soak the young branches in water for six months, then we strip the fibre and weave it into rope." She pointed to a woman carrying a load of slim, pale, sticks on her head. "That's what is left after the fibre has been stripped. They make excellent torches and burn for a long time."
Little pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle began to fall into place.
We trudged up a long flight of stone steps to the highest point in the village. A Shiva temple stood there at one side of a large, stone-flagged, terrace. To the right of the temple was a higher platform holding shivlings, and at the base of the platform were two stone figures. An interested bystander informed us that they were dwarapalas, guardians, that had been unearthed by the Archaeological Survey of India. "They say that there was a large temple here, perhaps many temples" he added. "But they were destroyed possibly in a fire ... who knows?"
There must have been a large temple in the legendary town of Varanavata because "... a great festival in honour of Siva would be conducted there with all pomp and splendour" according to the scheming Purochana.
In their carved balcony ... some of the women of Lakhmandal.
We entered the temple. It had a number of seemingly old idols, greatly revered judging by the devotees who streamed past. It was when we were leaving that we noticed the unusual symbols on the door. They had been beaten out of strips and sheets of brass and depicted a number of themes: a hunter with a bow and arrow shooting an antlered deer, people riding an elephant, two snakes, two women holding hands. The subjects were varied but the style was unusual. They had all been crafted in the manner of the Stone Age paintings we had seen in rock-shelters in many parts of our land.
Our hearts began to thud a little faster than usual.
"Are these very old carvings?" we asked the poojari.
He shook his head. "No. They are not old. Some local people made them."
"Do they have any religious significance?"
"No. It's nothing like that. They are only decorations for the door."
We peered closer. Some of them bore a distinct resemblance to the script of the Indo-Saraswati civilization. We had visited both Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat and had read a fair amount about those ancient people.
Very recently, in fact, we had become aware of the opinion of a scholar who claimed that there was a strong similarity between that script and the still undeciphered Rongo Rongo glyphs of the Easter Island people. Some of these symbols and petroglyphs, apparently are akin to early Brahmi script.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Brahmi writing system "... is ancestral to all Indian scripts except Kharosti ... Among the many descendants of Brahmi are Devanagari.. the Bengali and Gujarati scripts, and those of the Dravidian languages."
Though the brass embossings on the doors of Lakhamandal's temple are comparatively new, they could have been copied and re-copied from earlier glyphs. It's possible that those original inscriptions were memorised and revered from those distant days when the first script came to, or was created in, our land. The name of the place also lends credence to his theory.
The Lac Palace was built in Varanavata. Local Sanskrit scholars have given us a whole bouquet of meanings for the word, or words, "Varana-vata". Among them: "The place to be remembered by all generations" and "The place of the alphabet". If either of these explanations is true then the village we now know as Lakhamandal, in searing recollection of that terrible act of attempted arson, was earlier famed as the hamlet where the memory for the primal alphabet had been preserved. And not just as a memory but as an actual record. In Chidambaram, the graceful poses of Bharatnatayam have been sculpted onto a temple door. Is it so difficult to believe that here, in Varanavata, far seeing savants had preserved, for future generations, the greatly venerated letters of our first alphabet?
Or perhaps, as enthusiastic amateurs, we have been gravely misled. In which case, it has still been a fascinating excursion out of Mussoorie... .
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