The Dasara festival (also called Navarathri) is a festival celebrated all over India by the Hindus. It had and still has a special significance for Mysore State (now called Karnataka State).
This festival, which is celebrated for ten days(or nine nights), usually occurs every year in September-October months, the exact dates being determined by the Hindu Shalivahana Shaka calender. In North India , it is celebrated as the victory of Rama (of the famous Hindu classic epic Ramayana), who is considered as an avatar (incarnation) of God, over his enemy Ravana. People burn the image of Ravana on the tenth day in a very boisterous manner.
In the state of Bengal, whose capital is the great metropolitan city of Calcutta, it is celebrated as the victory of Durga (another name of Shiva's consort Parvati) over the demon king Mahishasura. Durga is the mother goddess of Bengal, where the mother cult is very strong. Huge beautiful painted images of Durga, made of clay, riding on a tiger, with the images of her two sons Ganesha and Kartikeya by her side, and with the images of the goddess of learning Saraswati and of the goddess Lakshmi of wealth accompanying Durga, and the image of the demon Mahishasura riding a buffalo, are made and worshipped for four days. Usually huge pandals (temporary tentlike sheds which are also beautifully decorated ) are constructed in open places all over the city for this purpose, and anybody can attend the functions. There are entertainments consisting of music, dance, and drama in the evenings. This celebration is called Durga Puja in Bengal, and is the most important holiday season in Bengal. On the last day of Vijayadasami, these images are carried by young men, usually on an open truck, and with a lot of boisterous shouting and dancing, and are immersed in the river Ganges (also called Hooghly) or its numerous branches in its huge delta region, which covers the state of Bengal and also the country of Bangladesh. After the immersion ceremony, they come back to the pandal where the images were earlier were installed, and enjoy a grand feast consisting of fried wheat cakes called "luchis", rice, vegetables, sweet yogurt, and many types of sweets. Men , women and children are decked in new clothes, and are in the best of spirits. The men embrace each other, but the women also enjoy themselves, though they do not embrace each other, and forget enmities and misunderstandings. After the Durga Puja is over, for a week or two, families invite other families to their homes, and delicacies and sweets are served to everybody. They call these parties Bijoya parties.
On the whole, this is the grandest festival for the people of Bengal, and at that time they forget all their worries and headaches. This attitude of people is true all over India in general, and I feel that this is why India and its civilization has survived over thousands of years, by adjusting itself to all newcomers and leaving them alone to take care of themselves in their own way. I think this is probably true of the people of this country of the United States of America, where I am living for a short time.
In other parts of India, where Bengalis are in large numbers, Durga Puja is celebrated in the same manner, and non-Bengalis also attend the puja in large numbers. I have attended many Durga Pujas in Bangalore city, where I have lived almost all my life.
However, in Mysore state where I grew up, and which was governed by a Maharaja, whose dynasty is several hundred years old, the festival is called Dasara or Navarathri, and it was a royal festival, in addition to people celebrating it in their homes.
Everywhere in old Mysore state, and also in the neighbouring Tamil speaking areas (now called Tamilnadu), the people did special worship of the household dieties for ten days, and the temples also had special Pujas (worship) on these ten days. Men, women, and children wore new clothes and joined the worship at home and in the temples. Everyday different delicacies were prepared and offered to God. Some of the special delicacies were obbattu which is a wheat cake looking like a thick tortilla, and stuffed with coconut and brown sugar and cardamom, steamed dumplings of spiced rice flour, different types of sweet puddings made of milk, vermicelli, raisins and almonds or cashews, or made of lentils and brown sugar. The young girls in the family used to display their dolls, including two wooden dolls representing the Maharaja and his wife, the Maharani of Mysore, and images of various gods and goddesses like Shiva, Parvati Vishnu, Ganesha, Lakshmi, Saraswati and so on. In the evenings, the girls used to invite their friends to see their displays, and used to offer them nice sweets and delicacies prepared at home. My cousin Vijaya, my sister Seetha, and I used to enjoy these occasions very much. All the schools had vacation at this time. Though this custom is still followed by some Kannada and Tamil families, the simple pleasures we enjoyed as little girls, have been lost, due to the more commercialized aspects of life in big cities , and due to the pressures of modern life.
In the old Mysore State Dasara was celebrated as a "Royal Festival" by the Maharaja of Mysore. He worshipped the royal family dieties every day in a very grand manner, and some of the high ranking officials of the government and their families were invited to attend these functions at the palace. In the evenings, he used to give audience to the public, seated on a beautiful old gold throne embedded with precious jewels, in a big open balcony, and could be seen by the common people who had gathered in the open space in front of the balcony. The higher rank officials used to gather on the two sides of the throne , in a very orderly manner. These included some important British invitees. Each one of the officials, in his turn, had to bow down before the Maharaja and offer him a silver rupee (Indian coin of highest value), to show his allegiance to him. Most of the offi
cials were men those days, and the number of women could be counted on your fingers. This function was called the Durbar.
The other people standing in the outside space outside the balcony, could enjoy themselves watching wrestling matches, young beautifully dressed young girls performing the intricate classical Bharatnatyam dance, and jugglers and stilt walkers, and so on. They sat on the steps of two temporary galleries made of wood, on either side of the open ground.
So every day of the ten day Dasara festival was really a very grand festival for Mysore city..Thousands of people came from not only all over the state, but from all over India, to take part in this grand festival. House owners in Mysorecity used ro rent out their open verandas to outsiders to sleep at night, because the hotels in Mysore could not accommodate all these visitors.
On the tenth day of Dasara, which iscalled Vijayadasami, meaning "Day of Victory," the Maharaja sat on a richly decorated royal elephant and went in a procession through the main thoroughfares of the city to a place called Banni Mantap. He was followed by his well dressed top officials and his personal army in their resplendent uniforms. At the Banni Mantap, which was the destination of the procession, he performed a ceremony of cutting a tree called the Banni tree. This symbolized his going to war and defeating his enemy.
This festival is several hundreds of years old, and its main significance is that after the rainy season (monsoon) is over, the Maharajas or kings used to worship their Gods and Goddesses, and then went to war against their enemies. The most important family diety for the Maharajas of Mysore is Chamundeshwari, who is Parvati, the consort of Shiva, with another name and a different form.. There is a big hill overlooking Mysore city, called Chamundi Hill and a Chamundeshwari Temple on the top of the hill. Durga, who is worshipped in Bengalby the Bengalees, is just another name for Chamundeswari. There is a huge image of Mahishasura, who was destroyed by Durga or Chamundeshwari, half way up the hill. Mysore is named after Mahishasura.
After the independence of India in 1947, the Maharaja of Mysore at that the time, Sri Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, became the official governor of the state for some years. In the 1960s, the Maharajas were divested of their titles, sanctioned a privy purse, and became ordinary citizens of the democratic republic of India. The last Maharaja, the (late) Sri Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar was a very learned man, who has written several scholarly books on Indian philosophy and religion. He was also a good musician, and has composed several classical pieces of music in the Karnatic style of classical Indian music. He was also a good connoisseur of European classical music. His youger sister Vijaya Raje is a well known pianist of India.
Today, the government of our state Karnataka, has made the Dasara festival a national festival. They have kept all the festivities, except the fact that there is no Maharaja, and the image of Chamundeshwari, the family diety of the Maharaja, is placed on the royal elephant, and taken out in in procession just as in the old days. Tourists from all over India flock to Mysore city to take part in these festivities. There are also some competetive games and an exhibition to attract the people
We , as children could attend the Dasara festivities and also go the Mysore palace, in the 1930s, because my grandmother Kamalamma used to get an invition and some passes, because she was a member of the Mysore Legislative Assembly
A Note on The Hindu Pantheon:
I wish to explain to the reader the erroneous concept of many people all over the world ,about the many "Gods" and "Goddesses" of the "Hindu Pantheon." At the highest level of Hinduism, there is only one God (Brahman), and it is only very few people who can think at a very high level and understand the concept of being "one with Brahman." This is what our greatest teachers like Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Madhvacharya and Chaitanya and so on, taught us, and they interpreted our very old scriptures , the Vedas and Upanishads, which could be understood by only such high level thinkers.
However, for ordinary people this concept of becoming "one with God" is too difficult to understand. So the great teachers whose names have been mentioned above, and many other religious teachers, have taught the ordinary people that there are other means of reaching God or Brahman. One of the more refined methods of reaching "him"is by repeating the several names of "God" and praising him every day'. This method is called the Bhakti method, by singing songs called Bhajans. For people with less education and less capacity to think, the method is to have a "symbol" in the form of an image, and to worship the symbol every day. If the individual does not have the capacity to praise the image and worship it, the priest does it for her or him.
These images are given names, and these names denote the numerous forms of the same "God". For example, Shiva, Ishwara, Nanjundeshwara, Mahadevea, Venkateshwara, Chidambara, Vishwanata, Jagannata and so on are the several names of God. The female names of God are Saraswati, Lakshmi, Parvati, Chamundeswari, and so on.
Each region has its own names, and each Hindu temple is usually devoted to one or two of these different forms of God.
So in Hinduism, though there are many Gods, they are all different names of the same GOD.
This is a very simplified explanation of mine, to try to make the world outside Hinduism, to understand the multifaceted nature of the Hindu religion.
As far as teachings of wisdom to all human beings goes, most of it is embodied in the famous treatise Bhagavatgita, which is in the form of a dialogue between Lord Krishna (an Avatar or incarnation of God) and Arjuna of the famous epic Mahabharata. The Bhagavatgita deals with advice to human beings in all sorts of circumstances.