A Mystery Explained

For six years this little fellow has sat on my stairs windowsill, innocuously enough considering the manner in which I came across him. He doesn't seem to have brought conspicuously ill fortune with him. But I have never known his origins, before he went to the house at Maida Vale which was his previous home. A conversation about haunted mirrors with my friend Ms DarkMorte last week encouraged me to try and found out more. All I could think of to prise open the idol's past was its appearance, Nepalese, I thought vaguely.

A bit of judicious Googling (I always Google judiciously) chased down the truth. In certain parts of northern India, spreading into Bangladesh - so I wasn't too far adrift - a strange triad of deities is worshipped. They are Jagannath, conceived as an incarnation of Vishnu, his elder brother Balabhadra, and their sister Subadhra. They are strange because they are not depicted anthropomorphically: their images have ludicrous big heads with goggle eyes, stumpy bodies, and no arms or legs (my idol is unusual in possessing a pair of little feet). How they became this way, nobody knows. In fact, nobody knows how they developed at all. I think they are local deities, older than classical Hinduism and later assimilated into it, hence their weird appearance. Hinduism can absorb anything, from Jesus to Laurel & Hardy. Black-faced Jagannath, 'lord of the universe', is boss, while Balabhadra has a special responsibility for farmers (I'm not sure what aspect of life Subadhra looks after). The great cart on which the three deities are paraded through the streets on big festival days is the origin of the word juggernaut. 

I did find a parallel idol being sold by a UK antique dealer - except that this isn't Balabhadra, as claimed. Its face is yellow, so it's Subadhra, the sister. However the style is identical so it must surely have been made by the same person, given that nothing else quite the same seems to exist. It's made in exactly the same way, in wood covered in cloth. That's exciting, but it raises the unsettling question - what happened to Jagannath?

All this time I have lived in ignorance as to the nature of my guest. Now I know what it is, I must confess I look at it somewhat askance as I ascend or descend the stairs, and aim some extra prayers in its direction. What if Jagannath came looking for his brother ... ?