Janai Purnima – Raksha Bandhan

Nepal is a country of varied religions and occasions. Janai Purnima, mostly know as Janai Purne and also known as Kwati Purne, Srawani Purnima, Rishi Purnima and Raksha Bandhan is one such festival which very magnanimous. This festival falls in the full moon of Bhadra (August).

On this day Bhraman and Chhetri communities in Nepal change their sacred thread called Janai or Yajnopavita; sanctified by the Bhraman Priests after taking a holy bath or dip in the river. And the other communities tie Janai or Doro or Tago on their wrists from the Bhraman Priests.

This festival is very much popular among the Hindus. People have belief that if some one ties Tago on this day by the Bhraman Priests; and offer them donations; they will earn virtue and blessings from the God for auspicious life. The sacred thread Janai and Tago is venerated as a feature of Lord Vishnu and it protects us from being and kind of spiritual sickness as well.

And on this day sisters tie Rakhi on the wrist of their brothers. and it is a unique bond between a brother and a sister which celebrate to show love and affection shared between a brother and a sister. Sisters tie a delicate cord of Rakhi on this day and pray for their brothers long life. Brothers, in turn, give them Rakhi gifts and vows to protect and care for them life long. So it is called Raksha Bandhan.

And on this day mainly the Newar community cook a special food called Kwati a mixure of sprouted legumes and eaten with wheat-bread (chapati). Kwati is the Newari word and the literary meaning of it, is hot soup. It is a soup of nine-mixed-beans – Black-eye Peas, Cow Peas, Black Lentils, Mung, Peas, Rajmas, Chickpeas, Soybeans, Favas. Some mix more beans too.

Janai Purnima signifies the end of the rainy month and beginning of the cold season in Nepal.

Newar farmers offer different food items to frogs on this day. Belief holds that worshiping the frog, which is considered an agent of the God of rainfall, by making offerings of different food items help to increase the production of crops.

Thus all celebrate Janai Purnima or Raksha Bandhan with great enthusiasm.

Today is Janai Purnima and we wish you all Happy Janai Purnima and Raksha Bandhan

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Bhanubhakta: The Original Poet of Nepal

Toady is 195th Bhanu Jayanti which we Nepalese celebrate in the remembrance of the Nepal’s Pioneer Poet Bhanubhakra Acharya. He is more popularly known as Adikavi (original poet). Another poet Yuvakavi Motiram Bhatta while writing biography of Bhanubhakta, had first been used “Adikavi” to Bhanubhakta. It’s not because Bhanubhakta was the first poet but he was the first poet who wrote with an understanding of the inner essence of poetry.

Bhanubhakta was born in a very wealthy Brahmin family of Chundiramgha, Tanahu on B.S. Asar 29, 1871. His grandfather Shrikrishna Acharya who was very well known of his time.He received an excellent education with a strong leaning towards religion at home from his grandfather.

When Bhanubhakta was 22 years, he was influenced by a incident so much that made him to turn out a poet. One day he encountered a grass-cutter and in their conversation he found that the grass-cutter wanted to give something to society so that he could be remembered after death too. After listening to the grass-cutter answer Bhanubhakta felt ashamed of himself. Therefore, by the inspiring words of the grass-cutter, he wrote two verses which are as follows:

Bhar janm ghans tir man diei dhan kamayo
naam kyai rahos pachhi bhaner kuwa khanayo
ghansi daridra gharko tar buddhi kasto
mo bhanubhakta dhani bhai kan aaj yastoMera inaar na ta sattal pati kyai chhan
je dhan ra chijharu chhan ghar bhitra nai chhan
tes ghansile kasari aaj diyechha arti
dhikkar ho makan basnu na rakhi kirti

He gives his life to cutting grass and earns little money,
he hopes to make a well for his people so he will be remembered after death,
this high thinking grass-cutter lives in poverty,
I have achieved nothing though I have much wealth.I have neither made rest houses nor a well,
all my riches are inside my house.
This grass-cutter has opened my eyes today,
my life is worthless if the memory of my existence fades away.

It not only sparked literary creativity in Bhanubhakta but also inspired him to do something noble, which eventually resulted in his translation of the great epic Ramayana from Sanskrit into Nepali and he made it to accessible, readable and understandable for a wide range of Nepali people. And because of his noble work Bhanubhakta and Nepali language became synonym in Nepali literature.

Poet Bhanubhakta was not only a romantic but a satiric poet too. Other remarkable books by him are Badhu Sikshya, Bhakta Mala and Prasnottar Mala.

You may find details of the book Bhanubhakta ko Ramayana and other books on Bhanubhakta and poets of Nepal in our Web Site.

Guru Mahima

Sab Dharti Kagaz Karu, Lekhan Ban Raye
Sath Samundra Ki Mas Karu Guru Gun Likha Na Jaye
~ Kabir

This beautiful doha (couplet) is by the great saint Kabir. The meaning of this doha is “Even if the whole earth is transformed into paper with all the big trees made into pens and if the entire water in the seven oceans are transformed into writing ink, even then the glories of the Guru cannot be written. So much is the greatness of the Guru.”

Guru means a teacher, master, mentor etc. “Gu” means the dark and “Ru” means preventing. Thus the literary meaning of “Guru” is preventing the dark. It means showing the path which leads to the light. Therefore, Kabir again, expresses his feelings for Guru as follows:

Guru Govind dhovu khade, kake lagav paay
Balihari guru apne, jin Govind diyo dikhay

And meaning of this doha is “Guru and Govind (God) stand together, to whose feet should I bow. I will bow to my Guru as he guided the way to reach the Govind (God)”.

Today is Guru Purnima. The full moon day in the Hindu month of Ashad (July-August) is observed as the auspicious day of Guru Purnima. This particular day has been chosen to give ritualistic expression to this feeling because it is the birth anniversary of Sage Veda Vyasa, who is regarded as the greatest Guru of all and edited the four Vedas, wrote the 18 Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Srimad Bhagavata. Vyasa even taught Dattatreya, who is regarded as the Guru of Gurus.

Guru refers to spiritual preceptor. Most Hindus would have Gurus. On Guru Purnima the devotees pay obeisance to their Gurus as thanksgiving for guiding them through the travails of life and towards spiritual liberation. Therefore, we have a shloka in which it says that Guru’s place is higher than the Divine Trinity.

Guru Brahma Gurur Vishnu
Guru Devo Maheshwaraha
Guru Saakshat Para Brahma
Tasmai Sree Gurave Namaha

Guru is verily the representative of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. He creates, sustains knowledge and destroys the weeds of ignorance. I salute such a Guru.

In the Bhagavata Purana, Dattatreya enumerates a list of his twenty-four gurus- earth, air, sky or ether, water, fire, sun, moon, python, pigeons, sea, moth, bee, bull elephant, bear, deer, fish, osprey, a child, a maiden, a courtesan, a blacksmith, serpent, spider, and wasp. It proves that we can learn and get wisdom from anyone and everything. Everyone and everything can be our Guru from whom/which we can learn something and enrich our knowledge and wisdom. Therefore we must be thankful to our parents, gurus, teachers, our elders, youngers, siblings, friends, acquaintances etc. from whom we learnt something new in our life.

Happy Guru Purnima to all of you.

Benares Illustrated

New Releases

Benares Illustrated: James Prinsep with James Prinsep and Benares
Edited by: O.P. Kejariwal

ISBN: 8177694006
2009 (Reprinted), Limited Edition
Cover: Hardback, English
232 pages, 270×310 mm, B&W Sketches of Benares.

If ever there has been an unsung genius, it is James Prinsep. Born in 1799, he has a short life of only forty years, dying in 1840. And yet, considering his wide variety of interests and his seminal contributions in many of these areas, it can, with some confidence, be stated that he was one of the greatest geniuses born in human history. Thus, he was at the same time a physicist, a chemist, an anthropologist, a geologist, a meteorologist, a numismatist, an epigraphist, a town-planner, a cartographer and an architect and one may not have exhausted the list. Actually his one achievement, that of deciphering the Brahmi script, through which India and the world came to know of that unique figure in world history – Emperor Asoka – would have entitled him to a place alongside those of Champollion and Rawlinson, among the greats of intellectual history. And when one considers that James deciphered not one but two accident scripts – Brahmi and Kharoshthi – through which was revealed the existence of a whole line of Indo-Scythian kings, one stands in awe of the man.

But among all these varied interests, it was Benares, which was his passion. He spent only ten years there, but in this short span, considering his contributions, one can say that no individual contributed to this holy and ancient city as much as James Prinsep did. For consider these: he was the first to draw up a map of the city, the first to determine its latitude and longitude, the first to carry out an authentic census, and the first to construct a bridge over the river Karamanasa, a feat which had defied engineers and architects for nearly a century. He was also the person to lay the underground drainage system – no one that still serves the city. As a family memoir says: ‘to extend the catalogue to a detail of the roads, bridges, drains and other works of every variety of description [in Benares], which were put in hand and completed would fatigue the reader’.

Amidst all this hectic activity, one can almost picture him sitting on a winter afternoon on one of the ghats, with the river [which he fondly calls ‘our Ganga’] flows quietly by, looking around and then conceiving of this magnificent work Benares Illustrated. As you turn these pages, you not only travel with him from ghat to ghat, but also participate – though in a limited way – in the life of the city. One can only marvel at the three-dimensional portrayal of the various sites and the play of light and shade in these marvelous sketches.

With this edition, one hopes that James will also come to occupy a place among the greatest artists of his age!

Note: This present edition is a reproduced edition which includes Benares Directory. Mr. Kejariwal revisited those important places in Benares where Prinsep worked and this present edition is included their photographs.

For more information about books and ordering, please visit our Web Site

Forthcoming Titles – Fiction

Paths less Travelled
By Matthew S. Friedman

Paths less Travelled represents a very simple, gentle love story between two young people – the boy was from a devout Hindu household and the girls from a traditional Muslim home. What makes it different from most other books is that it looks at the emotions associated with a love situation, more from the boy’s perspective than the girl’s – something that is less often the focus of other stories. The love that is explored is raw, unrefined, masculine and spiritual.

Matthew S. Friedman has worked in the field of international health and has traveled extensively, visiting over thirty countries around the world. Currently based in Thailand he still continues to take a great interest in the cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Amongst his other published works are Tara: A Flesh-trade Odyssey, The Gorkha Urn, Time and Proximity, Nepalese Casted Religious and Cultural Lamps and Nepalese Casted Vessels, Decanters and Bowls.

Maya – A Novel
By Dr. Ruby Gupta

Maya alludes to one of the basic themes of Hindu philosophy that this world is nothing but an illusion. The protagonist Viren, travels from India to the US and back to the newly formed State of Chhattisgarh, in India. His journey becomes an unconscious journey into the self – a quest to understand the existential angst. This is the larger connotation of the title.

Maya is also the name of one of the central characters, a beautiful mysterious woman who stays alone in a dilapidated fort. Viren repeated interaction with her intrigue him; and he begins to question the purpose of his current lifestyle. Their conversations about life and mysticism form the core of the novel.

Dr. Ruby Gupta, recipient of the Pratibha Samman Award for journalism in 1998 she was also selected a GSE program member for the USA by Rotary International in 2004 was initially a student of science who later switched to creative writing, dabbled in journalism, went on to acquire two gold medals for literature, and finally ended up with a PhD. Her published works include two books – Khushwant Singh: Reality and Myth and A Collection of Short Stories.

For more information and ordering please click here

New Releases

The Cuckoo and the Pigeon: A Collection of Bhutanese Folktales
by Ngawang Phuntsho
ISBN: 9788177697674

With the youth of today distracted by so many outside influences, such as television and internet, movies and magazines, the telling of folk tales by grandparents at the fireside has been dying out. It is hoped that this unique collection of traditional folktales from Bhutan will help to revive and preserve this tradition.

Charmingly told and full of meaning, these tales will amuse both young and old. They will appeal particularly to children.

As well as being a source of entertainment for all ages, such stories will teach the young and remind the old of the mysterious ways in which right and wrong can manifest themselves in everyday life.

The Dark Mermaid
by Amar Shrestha
ISBN: 9788177697490

Kali is a 12 year old girl, born Kalawati, living in Birganj, a sub metropolis of Nepal. She is a local swimming champion, bright in studies and popular with others. Unfortunately, she is afflicted with asthma and her parents decide to send her to Darjeeling for her studies, as the weather there is more compatible for her health. She joins Mount Hermon School and the story continues.

For ordering please click the link.

Why Pilgrims?

Simply, we have faith that all beings are on a pilgrimage through life. So the questions arise: What am I? And what is this human life all about?

We are individuals. Whatever relationship we may have with the universe, we must keep in our minds the ultimate truth that one day we all have to leave everything behind us. All that will remain is our good deeds and creations, and the joy that we have brought to others.

So, simply put, Pilgrims stands for constant celebration and creation, moment by moment, with a deep desire to glorify divine wisdom.

Come and see what we have created…books and much, much more.

Namaste!

Dear Friends,

Namaste!

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We appreciate your valuable comments and suggestion for the further improvement of our effort to update you with news, views and thoughts.

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