Vrindavan, 2017.06.04 (VT): Even though the Uttar Pradesh Government has merged Vrindavan and Mathura civic bodies into a unified Municipal Corporation , the decision has not been taken very kindly by the devotees of Shri Dham Vrindavan. Shri Dham Vrindavan has always maintained a separate identity than any other pilgrimage town. It has been so revered that the people have been coming to Vrindavan with a desire to die here, since centuries.Image may be NSFW.
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The widows have been migrating from the distant places to spend their rest of the lives under the shelter of the Divine land. But the merger of Shri Dham Vrindavan has killed the hopes and desires of the devotees, who consider this land as ‘Supreme abode of their Lord’, where He resides permanently. There is no comparison between Vrindavan and Mathura. Vrindavan’s Krishna never left Vrindavan, and He performed His intimate pastimes in Vrindavan, whereas He just took birth in Mathura. In Shrimad Bhagvatam Shri Krishna said, “Vrindavanam paritajya padam ekam na gachhati.” i.e He would not go out even a single step from Vrindavan. The Vraja gopis never left Vrindavan; they even didn’t go to Mathura.
Shri Dham Vrindavan is glorified in ‘Vrindavan Mahimamrita’, by Prabodhananda Saraswati Pada. Even the dust of Vrindavan is described to be so pure; it is virtuous just rolling on it.
Even the British and Mughals paid due respect to the city of Vrindvan. They banned hunting and eating non vegetarian food in this temple town. In F.S. Growse, who was the District Collector of Mathura has mentioned Vrindavan’s supremacy in his Mathura District Memoir.
Excerpts from the Mathura District Memoir:
There is no reason to suppose that Brinda-ban was ever that seat of any large Buddhist establishment; and though from the very earliest period of Brahmanical history it has enjoyed high repute as a sacred place of pilgrimage, it is probable that for many centuries it was merely a wild uninhabited jungle, a description still applicable to Bhandir-ban, on the opposite side of the river, a spot of equal celebrity in Sanskrit literature. Its most ancient temples, four in number, take us back only to the reign of our own Queen Elizabeth; the stately courts that adorn the river bank attest the wealth and magnificence of the Bharat-pur Rajas, date only form the idle of last century; while the space now occupied by a series of the largest and most magnificent shrines ever erected in Upper India was, fifty years ago, an unclaimed belt of wood-land and pasture ground for cattle. Now that communication has been established with the remotest part of India, every year sees some splendid addition made to the artistic treasures of the town; as wealthy devotees recognize in the stability and intolerance of British rule an assurance that their pious donations will be completed in peace and remain undistributed in perpetuity.
When Father Tieffenthaler visited Brinda-ban, in 1954, he noticed only one long street, but states that this was adorned with handsome, not to say magnificent, buildings of beautifully carved stone, which had been created by different Hindu Rajas and nobles, either for mere display, or as occasional residences, or as embellishments that would be acceptable to the local divinity. The absurdity of the people coming from long distances merely for the sake of dying on holy ground, all among the monkeys – which he describes as a most intolerable nuisance – together with the frantic idolatry that he saw rampant all around, and the grotesque resemblance of the Bairagis to the hermits and ascetics of the earlier ages of Christianity, seem to have given the worthy missionary such a shock that his remarks on the buildings are singularly vague and in-discriminating.
Mons. Victor Jacquemont who passed through Brinda-ban in the cold weather of 1829-30, has left rather a fuller description. He says, “This is a very ancient city, and I should say of more importance even than Mathura. It is considered one of the most sacred of all along the Hindus, an advantage which Mathura also possesses, but in a less degree. It’s temple are visited by multitudes of pilgrims, who perform their ablutions in the river at the different ghats which are very fine. All the buildings are constructed in the red sand stone of a closer grain of lighter and less disagreeable colour than that used at Agra: it comes from neighborhood of JImage may be NSFW.
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aypur, a distance of 200 miles. Two of these temples have the pyramidal form peculiar to the early Hindu style, but without the little turrets which in the similar buildings at Benares seem to spring out of the main tower that determines the shape of the edifice. They have a better effect, from being simpler, but are half in ruins.” (The temples that he means are Madan Mohan and Jugal Kishor).
“A larger and more ancient ruin is that of a temple of unusual form. The interior of the nave is like that of a Gothic church; though a village church only, so far as size goes. A quantity of grotesque sculpture is pendent from the dome, and might be taken for pieces of turned wood. An immense number of bells, large and small, are carved in relief on the supporting pillars and on the walls, worked in the same stiff and ungainly style. Many of the independent Rajas of the west, and some of their ministers (who have robbed them well no doubt) are now building at Brinda-ban in a different style, which, though less original, is better taste, and are indulging in the costly ornamentation of pierced stone tracery. Next to Benaras, Brinda-ban is the largest purely Hindu city that I have seen. I could not discover a single mosque. It suburbs are thickly planted with fine trees, which appear from a distance like an island of verdure in the sandy plain.” (These are the large gardens beyond the temple of Madan Mohan, on the old Delhi Road.) “The Doab, which can be seen from the top of the temples, stretching away on the opposite side of the Jamuna is still barer than the country on the right bank.”
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