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).