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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA In connection with the merits of religious suicide which was popular with all classes of Indians, the importance of the holy waters of the Gaṅgā and other rivers is often specially mentioned. The Śabdakalpadruma, (s. v. gaṅgā), e.g., quotes the following verses from the Kūrma-Purāṇa : Gaṅgāyāṁ jñānatō mṛitvā muktim=āpnōti mānavaḥ | a-jñānād=brahma-lōkañ=cha yāti n=āsty=atra saṁśayaḥ || Gaṅgāyāñ=cha jalē mōkshō Vārāṇasyāṁ jalē sthalē | antarīkshē cha Gaṅgāyāṁ Gaṅgā-sāgara-saṅgamē || The practice of Gaṅgā-yātrā (i.e., going to the bank of the Gaṅgā with a view to die there and to go to heaven as a result of such a meritorious death) is well known in Bengal even today.[1] The prevalence of the same custom also in other parts of India is indicated by P. Thomas who observer, “. . . . old people, on the point of death, make long journeys to Benares of some other sacred city on the banks of the Ganges so that they may wash their sins away in the sacred stream or die in the waters. A dying man is often carried by his relatives to the Ganges and is held immersed knee-deep in the waters of the river. The banks of the Ganges at Benares are as sacred as the Ganges itself and people of the neighbourhood, who fall sick and are not expected to survive, are made to live in huts on the banks of the river till they die.”[2] The celebrated Abbé Dubois also points to the custom as well as similar others when he asks, “. . . . how shamelessly they violate nature by placing the sick, whose recovery is dispaired of, on the banks of the Ganges, or of some other so-called holy river, so that they may be drowned by the floods or devoured by crocodiles ? Have they ever attempted to restrain the frenzy of those fanatics who, in their mistaken devotion, foolishly allow themselves to be crushed under the wheels of the cars of their idols, or throw themselves headlong into the stream at the junction of the Ganges and the Jumna ?”.[3] Now Ḍōmmaṇapāla’s plate was found on the small island of Rākshaskhāli on the southern sea-board of West Bengal only about 12 miles due east of the celebrated tīrtha of Gaṅga-sāgara-saṅgama at the mouth of the river Bhāgīrathī or Gaṅgā now called Hooghly. We have seem how salvation was regarded as the result of death in the waters of the Gaṅga at any place, how the same was believed to be obtained from death at Banaras either in the waters of the Gaṅgā or on its banks and how death not only in the waters and on the banks of the Gaṅgā but also in the air at Gaṅgā-sāgara-saṅgama was regarded as equally meritorious.
That the locality of Dvārahaṭāka lay probably in the vicinity of the Gaṅgā as well as of Gaṅgā-sāgara-saṅgama seems to be indicated by the discovery of the plate in the neighbourhood and by the fact that Dvārahaṭāka is said to have been situated in the small district of Pūrva-Khāṭikā or the eastern Khāḍī which was bounded on the west by the lower course of the Gaṅgā.[4] The second part of the name Dvārahaṭāka is the same as Sanskrit haṭṭaka, modern ºhāṭā which is the common name-ending of many localities ; but whether the first word in the name of our locality indicates one of the ‘ doors’ or mouths through which the Gaṅgā flows into the sea and actually refers to a locality within the Gaṅgā-sāgara-saṅgama area cannot be determined in the present state of our knowledge.[5] There is, however, hardly any absurdity in the suggestion that Ḍōmmaṇapāla went to Dvārahaṭāka with a view to dying in the waters ______________________________________________
[1] The great popularity of the practice as late as the nineteenth century is clearly demonstrated by the news
papers of those days. Cf. B. N. Banerji, Saṁvāda-patrē Sekāler Kathā, Vol. I (B. S. 1344), p. 150 ; Vol. II (B. S.
1348), pp. 535-36.
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