Tulmul

Aditya Kaul

Every year for the last 20 years during the scorching dry months in India my parents have been visiting a particular place without fail. Guess what, they went this year as well and that too during a gaping lockdown. It was the birthday week of a Devi Kheer Bhawani. Just weeks back our family of 7 had recovered from the 2^nd wave of Covid-19 virus in India. I hadn’t managed much sleep for over 2 weeks, taking turns with my little brother to nurse our elderly grandparents who were badly hit and developed severe pneumonia. Always on duty, by the time we all had hit the road to recovery, my younger brother and I had managed to train ourselves to clinically monitor a 75-year old COVID patient with pre-existing co-morbidities, with help from clinicians across the globe. I still get terrible nightmares of that period. And here were my parents lionhearted rebellious to go to Tulmul, a small village in Kashmir. They strongly felt it was both deemed and imperative that they should visit as they have for the last 2 decades since they had witnessed the blessings from the Devi a month back. So after 30 years of my existence, I decided to know more about the Devi (who happens to be the Kuladevi, protective patron deity of Kashmiri Pandits) who invokes such strong emotional connection in my parents to this day.

Marga

A Path of practice in Hinduism such as Vama marga, Bhakti marga, Sankhya marga and so on.

Taking the liberty of assuming the reader to be unaware, I now explain. 

Kheer Bhawani is common name of a Hindu deity of the Trika marga of Kashmiri Shaiv Tantra system. The term kheer refers to rice pudding that has been offered as prasada in the spring since ages to the Devi, which became part of the name of the temple where she resides. Some people are of the opinion that there was a mulberry tree near the holy spot of Kheer Bhawani which, in local language, is called tul mul. But tul mul is also derived from the Sanskrit word atulya mulya meaning great value. It is believed that Ravana, after his worship of the Goddess, offered her kheer, which she accepted and since then it is called Kheer Bhawani. 

She has many names: Ragnya Devi, Sharika, Rajni, Lalitah, Raja-Rajeshvari, Tripura Sundari and so on. Tripura Sundari literally translated to ‘Tri meaning three, Pura meaning the world and sundari meaning lovely; ‘she who is lovely in the three worlds’. She is considered to combine in her form all three major deities: Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati and Mahakali. A very famous Hindu text, Saundarya Lahiri, composed by revered Maharishi Adi Shankar is dedicated to the Devi. Incidentally there is a temple by that name in Kashmir, The Shankarcharya Temple dedicated to the great sage from Kerala. 

The mention of Kheer Bhawani is also found in Kalhana’s Rajtarangini, the first chronologically documented historical text of Kashmir. Kalhana writes that the sacred spring of Tula Mula is situated in a marshy ground. The name of the spring is Mata Ragini Kund (pond).

Thousands of years ago, many floods occurred in Kashmir and the sacred spring of Tula Mula was inundated under its sway and the holy place could nowhere be traced. At last, Kashmir’s Yogi Krishna Pandit Taploo of Bohri Kadal, Srinagar had a dream in which the Goddess appeared to him and directed that she would swim in the form of a snake at the proper place and that he should stick large poles to demarcate the holy spot in the marsh land. Subsequently, when the water subsided there the holy spot was discovered. This event happened during the Samvat 4041 (Hindu lunar date). It is also said that Maharagya was pleased with the devotion of Ravana and appeared before him and Ravana got an image of the Goddess installed in Sri Lanka. However, the Goddess became displeased with Ravana and is believed to have instructed Lord Hanuman to reinstall the Pratima at the spot of Tula Mulla.

Pancha-dasha-kshari

A Beeja mantra with (Ka Ye E La Hrim Ha Sa Ka Ha La Hrim Sa Ka La Hrim) as Beeja`ksharas.
One of the famous and powerful mantras.

A recently popularized term Sri Yantra in India and world over by the so called masters of Sri Vidya have to be given the credit of getting the term back to our collective memory. It is astonishing to know that the Sri Yantra can only be installed by invoking the Devi Tripura Sundari using the Srividya mantra. As Dr. Shashishekhar Toshkhani has cited in his book Rites and Rituals of Kashmiri Brahmins, “the Srividya mantra consisting of fifteen syllables (Pancha-dasha-kshari) is not the Devi’s symbol but the Devi herself in her sonic form”. Incidentally Devi Kheer Bhavani and Sharika also have fifteen syllable mantras.

Tapri (Slang)

 A local tea snack cart in India

As far as the recollection of my first and only visit to the Devi is concerned, I vividly remember it was around the year when Dr. Manmohan Singh had sworn in as the Prime Minister of India for his first term. What I profoundly remember is that I had never ever witnessed such torrential rainfall in my life. It rained as if we were in Mawsynram (a town in Meghalaya). We decided to run out of the car and take shelter at an open Chai Tapri adjacent to the main gate. Run by a thin built man from the Hindi heartland of India selling tea and snacks, his inviting hot pot of tea smelling sweet like Saunadrya Lahiri! I could feel the moist breeze hitting my face as I examined his cart for all the edible items. We could only hear the rain and nothing else. I screamed so hard out of bliss, the moment I took a bite of the freshly prepared bread butter toast which the gentleman offered to us. Tea and plain bread butter toast had never tasted so nectareous; it had sent me to tranquility. Then the gentleman laughed and added a touch of butter to our tea. I don’t reminder anything thereafter, only that a Hindu deity’s Pratima was installed in the middle of a pearly white pond is one of its kind. My mother however, remembers every step of that place and to her nothing tastes as divine as the louche te halwa from Tul mul.It is believed to be an indication of inauspicious times for Kashmir whenever the pond turns black or darkish and the last it did was before the forced exodus our community. 

May the Devi bless and shelter us all. 

न तातो न माता न बन्धुर्न दाता

न पुत्रो न पुत्री न भृत्यो न भर्ता ।

न जाया न विद्या न वृत्तिर्ममैव

गतिस्त्वं गतिस्त्वं त्वमेका भवानि ॥१॥