The identity of the Mahasu brothers is slowly evolving from Pahari to pan-Indian. This change in identity is reflected in the deities’ switch to a vegetarian diet; the spread of a more abstract concept of divinity; the deepening identification of Mahasu with the pan-South Asian pantheon of Hindu gods; the transition from an aggressive to a calmer character; and the decline in the practice of roaming. Each of these changes is evident at the ritual, mythological, and conceptual levels. This provides us with the opportunity to examine who is responsible for the change in Mahasu’s identity—is it Mahasu or the people who worship him?

This question is focused on the apparent gap between believers’ and anthropologists’ perceptions of the gods. While believers see gods as autonomous entities responsible for their own fate and that of humans, many ethnographers are in a quandary about the actual existence of the gods. In this book I have sought to demonstrate that the gap between the point of view of anthropologists and those they study—often termed the etic and emic perspectives—is smaller than scholars tend to realize. This can be seen in two points. First, although Mahasu followers do not face an ontological dilemma regarding the existence of the gods, as some anthropologists do, they certainly face epistemological dilemmas about them. That is, they wonder whether they are actually speaking to Mahasu when they communicate with him through mediums.

The second point relates to the question of the agency of Mahasu and other gods. In this book I have demonstrated that the research participants, like the anthropologists who study them, are aware of the dominance of humans in the decisions of the gods. For example, they state that human beings have also been involved in the decision to stop the custom of animal sacrifices. Thus the concept of distributed agency—the idea that agency does not belong to one individual, but is instead shared by a multiplicity of people, objects, and other entities—is a more adequate description of actions like the cessation of animal sacrifices.

On our first visit to the main temple of Mahasu in Hanol, my two companions and I were joined by a young man named Nitin. On the way back he suggested that we stop at Koti, a small, picturesque village a few kilometers from Hanol. Chalda Mahasu, a local god known for his many magical deeds, was staying in the village at the time. Although we were excited to meet Chalda and his entourage for the first time, night had fallen and it was raining. There was no direct access to Koti by car, so the journey involved a twenty-minute walk through a forest along a path that not even Nitin was familiar with. After some discussion, we decided to visit Koti some other time in the daylight. Two days later, the three of us visited Chalda without Nitin. The next day, when we told Nitin we had visited Chalda without him, he told us in frustration that he had tried and failed to visit Chalda three times in the last two weeks. He told us, “The old people would say Chalda doesn’t want to meet me right now, not yet. He is playful like that. You cannot choose when to see him; he will choose for you. Chalda has his own ideas; he does what he wants.”

This episode, which took place a few days after we first arrived in the field, introduced Chalda’s teasing personality and opened a window to the interesting and complex relationship between the villagers and the local gods. This complexity is expressed not only in how the locals personify the deity, but also in how they deal with the idea of wandering gods that can be conversed with through human mediums in the context of the growing popularity of opposing (modern and pan-Indian) perceptionss. “The adults would say so,” Nitin said when asked to explain Chalda’s trickery. But what about the young people? What about Nitin himself? Did he believe that Chalda was playing games with his followers?

Chalda is one of four deities—Botha, Chalda, Bashik, and Pabasi—that are believed to be brothers whose joint name is Mahasu.

Getting into the Field

After completing my doctoral studies in anthropology, I decided to look for a new field of research outside of Israel. At the same time, Hagar, my partner Adva’s twin sister, was debating what to do in her Master’s studies. She wanted to continue in Indian studies, but did not know which direction to go. I suggested that she choose a thesis based on fieldwork in India instead of concentrating on analyzing texts in Sanskrit. After convincing her, I realized that this could also be an opportunity for me to do fieldwork in India. It would also be a great experience for Adva, who had traveled to India several times and was just looking for a reason to return. So in 2013 Adva, Hagar, and I set out for India to study Mahasu. After returning to Israel, Hagar went on to obtain a doctorate in Indian studies, focusing on medieval Yoga, and I returned to the field of research at least once each year, sometimes more. This book is the result of this fieldwork, which ended in 2019. The following year I was unable to return to India due to the coronavirus pandemic. Since India was temporarily closed to me, I took the opportunity to comprehensively set down the story of Mahasu and his followers, which resulted in this book.

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To get to Mahasu’s domain, we flew from Israel to Delhi, from where we took an overnight bus to Shimla, the capital of Himachal Pradesh. From Shimla we took another bus east to Jubbal, a fairly large village on the Shimla-Rohru road.

The first trip from Shimla to Jubbal was challenging. The road was unpaved, uneven, and rough. It was also narrow in places, making two-way traffic nearly impossible.

Local Rituals Fade, Gods Persevere

The Jagra festival is a very special event for Mahasu’s followers. A few days prior to the festival, people who live outside of Mahasu’s territory begin returning to their home villages. A young woman studying for her master’s degree in Solan, a man working in a government job in Shimla, a schoolteacher working in a distant village—they all come home to be with their families during Jagra. So for the men and women who work outside the village, Jagra is an opportunity to come back home, even for a short while. For those who observe their religion more strictly, it is not just an opportunity for reunion with their family or the other villagers, but also an important religious holiday. For example, Munish is a young man from the Jubbal region who was working in his first job as an engineer. When his boss did not give him vacation time to return to his village for Jagra, he chose to quit his job and come home. Jagra is the most important festival of Mahasu and the other deities in his area. It is said that Mahasu has a rule that at least one person from each family must attend Jagra.

The name Jagra is derived from jagran, which literally means staying awake (all night). During Jagra, locals celebrate the arrival of the Mahasu brothers from Kashmir to Maindrath and the establishment of their kingdom. The specific date is decided by the jyotish (astrologist), but it always falls in the month of Bhadra (August–September), between the fourth and sixth of the white fortnight (tithi). Usually the Jagra of Mahasu falls on the fourth day of Bhadra—which is also the date of Ganesh Chaturthi, a Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Ganesha.

Personalities and Identities

The myths and stories documented by the British mostly deal with a wandering deity terrorizing the local population, indicating that Chalda was the most dominant of the four brothers. This is why, when I first came to Mahasu’s territory with my two companions, we initially searched for Chalda. In many respects, we considered Chalda to be a synonym for Mahasu. On the second day of our stay in Jubbal, my two companions and I were sitting in Gupta’s dhaba (restaurant) drinking chai. There is no manual for ethnographers, so we were wondering what to do now that we had reached the field of research. Suddenly I had an idea, probably an obvious one, to visit the local Mahasu temple. I thought that perhaps someone would be there and maybe we would even see something interesting. And indeed, in the courtyard of the temple we happened to see two villagers who were talking with Mahasu through a medium (mali). After their conversation ended, we asked to speak briefly with the mali himself. We wanted to know how he became a mali. Our assumption was that he was a mali of Chalda. It was only in our second meeting with him, a few days later, that we learned he was a mali of Botha, and that the temple in Jubbal is to Botha, not Chalda. Later, we were surprised to discover that most of the temples in the Jubbal region are to Botha.

The reason for Botha’s popularity is his method of expansion. While the other brothers move with a palanquin (palki) and in principle are found in only one place at any given moment, Botha moves through space through signs (nishan).

The God’s Management

The Mahasu brothers’ management comprises several roles, one of the most prestigious being that of wazir. There are two wazirs, one for shathi and one for pashi. The wazir of shathi is the head of Bashik’s vazarat (management) and is also responsible for Chalda when he is traveling in shathi. Likewise, the wazir of pashi is the head of Pabasi’s vazarat and is responsible for Chalda when he is in pashi. The wazirs of shathi and pashi are jointly responsible for the main temple in Hanol, the permanent location of Botha. As Hanol is located within shathi, the wazir of shathi has an advantage that manifests in the role of nayab wazir, the resident manager in Hanol. This position lasts for two years and is held alternately by people from Chatra, Purtad, and Ninus. These villages are in the Bawar region of shathi.

Although the wazirs are important, the people who actually manage the temples in the territory of Mahasu are the priests (pujari), priests’ assistants (thani), and accountants (bhandari). They are known as the kardars (management) of the temple. The kardars operate the temples independently of the wazirs, especially Botha’s temples and temples that have palanquins (palki) of their own.

The priests of Mahasu are called pujaris or deopuzia. They are responsible for temple services, including the daily puja. Often the pujaris also function as kul purohit (family priests), overseeing life-cycle rites in the village. For example, they perform their duties when a child is born and purification ceremonies are required, or when a family wants to read a child’s horoscope (janma-kundali). As the role is usually passed down from father to son, pujaris enjoy traditional authority (parampara, a Sanskrit word for series, tradition; lineage). When a pujari can no longer hold the position (due to death or retirement), his oldest son has the right to be the pujari.

The Appearance of Mahasu: Version 1

It is hard to determine with any certainty when belief in Mahasu began, at least in its current configuration. Nineteenth-century British colonialism has provided several sources that allow us to conjecture, at least partially, the structure of Mahasu’s cult and how far it extends into the past. One early source that alludes to Mahasu is the writing of James Baillie Fraser, a Scottish traveler and artist who explored the Himalayas in 1815 and published his impressions five years later. Fraser mentions Mahasu in one solitary paragraph in connection with his chronicles of Bunkoulee village. He writes that the village is located near Lakha Mandal (“Lak,ha Mundul”), so it can be surmised that he is referring to Bhankoli village, which today has a Mahasu temple. The village is located in the Jaunsar-Bawar region, in the southern section of Mahasu’s territory.

Two more historical sources that discuss Mahasu at length are the writings of Walter Hamilton, published in 1820, and those of George Robert Carlisle Williams, published in 1874. They also refer to Mahasu worship in the Jaunsar-Bawar region, but unlike Fraser, they note that they did not actually visit Mahasu’s territory. Williams relies mainly on an 1827 report by Major Young, an English army officer. This means that both Williams and Hamilton researched the Mahasu phenomenon as it was described in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

According to Hamilton and Williams, the belief in Mahasu originated in Deogar. “[B]eing the spot where the sect and tenets of the Mahassoo Dewtah religion originated,” Hamilton reports, “the division of Dewgur has been considered holy land.”

By political iconography we mean the infinitely varied universe of images through which power and the powerful are represented. It is a language made up of symbols, allegories, and histories, suitable and modified to define the precise concepts whose understanding is available to a defined social circle. It matters little that it is explicated in dynastic portraiture, monumental sculpture, medals, or cycles of frescos and tapestries, in the open or inside the palatine spaces. It was a language that was set out on various semantic levels and whose alphabet developed in time. The triumph of ancient gods in Renaissance Italy and then in Europe occupies an immense place ‘in the art and literature of the sixteenth century.’ It is a ‘veritable invasion.’ Italy is not merely the place where ancient gods first reappear, it is where they were first returned to their pristina forma (‘original form’). They were restored in their authentic aspects and attributes and from this profound discontinuity vis-à-vis the Middle Ages starts a new era of their parallel life with Christian symbolism. Reinvigorated by their new traits, they undertake a long journey – of over three centuries – in European political iconography, in poetry and in the imagination. It is ‘thus frequently by way of Italy that sixteenth-century Europe gains its knowledge of antiquity’; it is Italy that sends out the ancient gods ‘to the conquest of other peoples.’

We can take the equestrian statue as an example. The genre was already widespread in the Italy of the Communes and signorie in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it was not till the following century that it crossed all boundaries. In any case, from the effigy of Niccolò III facing the cathedral of Ferrara (1431) to that of Peter the Great looking toward the Neva in St Petersburg (1782), the equestrian statue was ‘une pièce fondamentale dans les stratégies de représentation et de communication de la monarchie en Europe occidentale aux temps modernes.’ The continental monarchies were inspired by the Italian model.