Breathing eternity is Naggar’s
Tripura Sundari
Roshni Johar

The temple of Bala Tripura Sundari Devi.

THE Hadimba Devi temple of Manali is well-known. But across the roaring Beas river rests a lesser-known temple in a small forest clearing in Kulu’s old capital of Naggar, 23 km from Manali. It is the temple of Bala Tripura Sundari Devi.

The temple’s simple and elegant appearance is so unusual yet appealing, it seems to be transplanted from another place, belonging to a forgotten era. According to its pujari it was built more than five centuries ago when the Kulu rajas ruled from their mahals and durbars here. Tripura Sundari Devi was the Raj Rajeshwari, the deity of the ruling rajas. A similar image exists in Kangra, too.

Not spoilt by years, it is built in aesthetic Pagoda-style architecture by Penelope Chetwoode as one characterised ‘with a succession of superimposed penthouses, each one a little smaller than the one below it’. The temple has a three-tier pagoda-styled roof and its top storey is circular. The inside walls of the temple are built of deodar-bonded stones.

Some historians opine that this style is a simple version of the much more sophisticated Nepalese court architecture seen in Kathmandu, while others maintain that it originated in the plains and was introduced in the hills during the reign of Harshvardhana.

According to a Himalayan legend, a brother and his sister once lived in these dense jungles. The sister was known to drink all the milk produced by the cows in the region. The girl’s father didn’t believe this till one day, hiding behind the bushes, he saw her drink it. When he angrily forbade his daughter from doing so, she just vanished into thin air! And after two or three days, the brother, an incarnation of a nag devta, disappeared too.

Soon a bekhri (a thorny bush) emerged from the earth. And a voice was heard from the heavens saying that if the bush is cut down and a stone statue of a Devi will be found near it. Understandably a temple was constructed at the spot. The ancient statue and the bush still exist. Naggar was inhabited at the behest of the goddess.

Tripura Sundari is regarded as the guardian or the Ishta Devi of the region, to whom the villagers come for advice in times of joy and sorrow.

A sariyatra takes place in May every year. Her image is taken in a bedecked palanquin to Kulu, Rupi valley, Manikaran and finally to Malana and back. Pahara musicians accompany the yatra.

The coming of the rains is celebrated on kheerpoli, a light day when village women welcome the monsoon by bringing milk in steel containers to the temple. By noon, about four quintals of milk is collected to which 80 kg sugar and 80 kg rice is added along with coconuts and dry fruits to make a rich creamy kheer. The ingredients are donated by residents of Naggar and the neighbouring villages. Professional cooks stir cauldrons of pulses and vegetables and make dough for chapatis — all to be finger-licked from pattals (leaf plates) by around 3,000 persons.