(“Clothing Ghat”) A bathing (snana) place on the Yamuna River in the town of Brindavan, which is identified as the site for one of the most famous stories about Krishna. The story tells how the
gopis, Krishna’s female companions,
have taken a religious vow to bathe each morning in the Yamuna during the cold months and dedicate the religious merit from this vow toward gaining Krishna as their beloved. Although their austerity is laudable, they are also bathing naked, which is taboo in Hindu culture. Krishna spies them in the water and climbs up in a tree with their clothes. He then refuses to return the clothes until the mortified
women come out of the water to ask for
them, symbolically demonstrating the nakedness of the soul before God and humans’ inability to control the divine. A gigantic tree still stands by the Chir Ghat, which is believed to be the same
tree from which Krishna humbled the gopis. As pilgrims recall the story, they tie strips of cloth to the tree to relieve the gopis’ embarrassment and share in their feeling of communion.
Chitpavan
A brahmin jati that is a subset of the
Maharashtri brahmins, who were them-
selves one of the five southern brahmin communities (Pancha Dravida). Jatis were endogamous subgroups of tradi- tional Indian society whose status was determined by the group’s hereditary occupation. This sort of differentiation applied even to brahmins, whose role has been to serve as priests, scholars, and teachers. The core region for the Chitpavan brahmins is in western
Maharashtra, particularly the coastline
and the region around Poona. Although never very numerous, they were histori- cally significant both as the chief minis- ters (peshwas) to the Maratha kings and also for producing some of the great figures in the struggle for independence: M. G.
Ranade, G. K. Gokhale, B. G. Tilak, and V. D. Savarkar. Because this group of
brahmins was largely located on the Chir Ghat
Depiction of Krishna having stolen the gopis’ clothes while they were bathing. This episode from Hindu mythology is believed to have taken place at Chir Ghat.
Konkan coastline, they are also known as Konkanastha.
Chitrakut
City in the Banda district of Uttar
Pradesh, about sixty miles south and
west of the city of Allahabad. In the
Ramayana, the earlier of the two great
Hindu epics, Chitrakut is the place in which Rama, the epic’s hero, his wife
Sita, and his brother Lakshmana live
during the early part of their exile. It is here as well that Rama instructs another brother, Bharata, to rule as regent until the fourteen years of Rama’s exile have ended.
Chitswami
(late 16th c. C.E.) One of the ashtachap, a
group of eight northern Indian bhakti (devotional) poets. The compositions of these eight poets were used for liturgical purposes by the Pushti Marg, a religious community whose members are devo- tees (bhakta) of Krishna. In the Pushti Marg’s sectarian literature, all eight are also named as members of the commu- nity and as associates of either the com- munity’s founder, Vallabhacharya, or his successor, Vitthalnath. Chitswami is traditionally associated with Vitthalnath, a link confirmed by his poems written in praise of this guru. Aside from such explicitly sectarian compositions, Chitswami also wrote poetry in praise of Krishna, which tends to be more elaborate and uses more Sanskrit than his contemporaries. To date, his works have not been translated, perhaps because interest in them is limited to a small sect.
Chittirai
First month in the Tamil year, corre- sponding to the northern Indian solar month of Mesha (the zodiacal sign of Aries, which by the Indian solar calendar usually falls within April and May). This name is a modification of Chitra, the four- teenth of the twenty-seven nakshatras in the lunar zodiac. See also Tamil months.
Chittirai
(2) Ten-day festival celebrated in the southern Indian city of Madurai during the Tamil month of Chittirai (March–April). Madurai is famous for its gigantic temple dedicated to the god-
dess Minakshi, and the Chittirai festival
celebrates Minakshi’s marriage to the god Shiva in his form as Sundareshvara. According to mythology, Minakshi is a fierce goddess who vows that she will marry only a man who bests her in bat- tle. She fights and conquers all of the kings of the earth, but when she approaches Shiva, she is suddenly and spontaneously stricken with modesty. The powerful warrior is transformed into a shy and bashful girl, and she becomes his wife.
Although the wedding of a goddess normally marks her domestication and subordination to her spouse, in this case Minakshi remains the more powerful
deity. She is the patron of Madurai, with
a temple dedicated to her, whereas Shiva is merely her consort. The wed- ding is celebrated with great festivity throughout the city, and one of the high points is the public procession of the deities around the city in the temple chariots. For further information see Dean David Shulman, Tamil Temple
Myths, 1980; the festival is also the
subject of a film, The Wedding of
the Goddess, produced by the South
Asia Center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Chokamela
(d. 1338 C.E.) Poet and saint in the
Varkari Panth, a religious community
centered around the worship of the Hindu god Vithoba at his temple at
Pandharpur in the modern state of Maharashtra. Chokamela was born an untouchable Mahar, and he is the only
untouchable among the Varkari saints. Despite Chokamela’s deep devotion to Vithoba, his low social status prohibited him from ever entering the god’s temple, since his very presence would have ren- dered it impure. The hagiographical
literature tells many tales where Vithoba comes outside to meet him. Chokamela’s memorial shrine is at the steps of the temple, the same steps that marked his boundary during his life. It seems that Chokamela accepted the restric- tions that came with his social status, but some of his poetry expresses social protest. For further information see G. A. Deleury, The Cult of Vithoba, 1960; and Eleanor Zelliot, “Chokamela and Eknath: Two Bhakti Modes of Legitimacy for Modern Change,” in
Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol.
15, Nos. 1–2, 1980.