Adjacent to the Raja Ram Temple at Orchha is located a much smaller shrine dedicated to Lala Hardaul, which we visited one September evening... In comparison to the brightly lit and garishly painted Raja Rams, the Hardaul shrine was was rather dark with only couple clay lamps glowing near it...local people told us that Lala Hardaul was a Bundela hero who was killed by his own brother Jujhar Singh and was subsequently elevated to godhood... Next morning I collected from Orchha bazar a little booklet which described Hardauls story in great detail...that he was a son of Bir Singh Deo Bundela, and that he was murdered by Jujhar Singh who compelled his wife to poison Hardaul in suspicion of an illicit relationship with his sister-in-law...in the bazar they sold heaps and heaps of music CDs of this folklore... Later on, I found Hardauls reference in Alexander Cunningham and William Crookes scholarly works...they noted that while in Bundelkhand the Lala is a wedding godling, elsewhere people believed that he could influence the outbreak of cholera epidemics...it is said that a terrible epidemic of this pestilence broke out at the camp of Lord Hastings during the third Anglo-Maratha war [1817 - 1818] when killing of beef for the use of the British troops happened in a sacred grove where the ashes of Hardaul reposed !! With the current posting, I share four visuals depicting Hardauls icon at Orchha, the booklet I picked up at the bazaar, and two snippets from Crookes Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, London 1896...
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 20:03:53 +0000
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