Karni Mata, Deshnoke

The heart of Deshnoke is the bond between the Mother and her kin. Laxman, a child of her own household, drowned in the Kapil Sarovar at Kolayat, and Karni Mata sought him back from Yama himself; from that day she ordained that her Charans — the Depawats, the lineage of her own house — would never again fall into Yama's keeping. At death they pass into her court at Deshnoke as the kabas, and from the kabas they are born again among her own people. The kabas are the family the temple was built around: some twenty thousand of them, sacred rats moving unafraid through the marble halls, fed with milk and grain from great bowls as one feeds one's own.

The devotee's frame is exact: prasad the kabas have first tasted is received as a high honour, and they share the thali of the Charan sevaks who serve the shrine. The sighting of a white kaba is held the most blessed darshan of all, for the white ones are the Mother herself with her four nephews; pilgrims wait quietly by the great door for that grace.

Twice each year the Navratras fill Deshnoke: the Karni Mata fairs run from Shukla Ekam to Dashami of Chaitra and again of Ashvin, and pilgrims come from across Rajasthan and from Gujarat, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. The temple is administered by the Shri Karni Mandir Nij Pranyas, and Charans of the Depawat line keep her daily worship, beginning with the Mangla aarti and bhog when the doors open before dawn.

Karni Mata was born in the Kiniya clan of the Charans at Suwap village in the Jodhpur region, on Ashvin Shukla Saptami of Vikram Samvat 1444 (1387 CE), and her people knew her in her own lifetime as an incarnation of the Devi: of Hinglaj Mata, the great goddess of the western desert, and of Durga. She lived as a wandering Charan mystic whose wonders the desert still recounts, and on Vaisakh Shukla Dwitiya of Samvat 1476 (1419 CE) she founded the village of Deshnoke itself, where her temple stands.

The kingdoms of the desert rose under her hand. Rao Jodha of Marwar sought her blessing, and in 1459 CE she laid the foundation of the fort and city of Jodhpur, with the word that his line would rule there for twenty-eight generations. In 1485 CE she laid the foundations of the citadel of Bikaner for Rao Bika, blessing him with a future in these lands greater than his father's; and to this day she remains the guardian goddess of both royal houses — the thrones she seated have never ceased to call her Mother.

Her earthly course closed on Chaitra Shukla Navami of Samvat 1595 (1538 CE), when tradition holds she was one hundred and fifty-one, and passed from sight at Dhineru talai between the Bikaner and Jaisalmer lands. Worship at Deshnoke has continued unbroken since her own time; the temple as it stands, with its marble face and silver gates, took its present form in the early twentieth century under Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner.

The temple is a Rajput-style marble complex of the early twentieth century, raised by Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner: a carved white-marble face with a grand and high marble gate, and within, the solid silver doors the Maharaja gave. The Devasthan Department's record lists white and black marble, red stone and lime in its fabric, and in the sanctum the image of the Mother stands about seventy-five centimetres — two and a half feet — tall.

The building is made for its family: fine protective wires are stretched over the open courts so that the kabas move unharmed beneath them, and pilgrims cross barefoot, placing each step with care — the first rule of Deshnoke is gentleness.