Salasar Balaji, Salasar

Hanuman is the perfect bhakta, and his greatness is that he sought none of his own: strength past measure laid whole at Shri Rama's feet, so that the Rambhakta's glory and his Lord's name are one thing. Salasar knows him as Balaji, and this darshan is like no other — a face of sindoor bearing beard and moustache, for it was in that form, the temple tells, that he came to Mohandas ji in sleep. Rajasthan's own account calls the murti swayambhu and the place a Shakti Sthal.

Two flames measure the years here: the jyot kindled at the installation, burning unbroken since, and at the south gate Mohandas ji ka dhuna, the ground of his tapasya, whose fire has never been let die. At the entrance stands the Samadhi Sthal of Mohandas ji and his sister Kanhi Dadi, and Salasar holds no darshan finished until one has bowed there; a kilometre off on the Laxmangarh road is Anjani Mata's temple, where the same rule keeps — the mother first, then her son.

A coconut bound with moli in the precinct is the manoti, the wish laid before Baba, and no coconut so tied is ever put to another use. A savamani is cooked — sava mani, one and a quarter — some fifty kilos of churma, dal-baati, boondi and laddoo offered to Balaji and then given away; in the hall the Sundarkand and Hanuman Chalisa run for hours.

Tuesdays and Saturdays are his, and every Purnima; but the year turns on two. Chaitra Purnima, kept as Hanuman Janmotsav, and Ashvin Purnima, the Sharad full moon, bring melas of six and seven lakh, when the samiti routes the crowds along a walking path of some six kilometres through the town. From here the pilgrim turns east: Khatu Shyam lies about a hundred kilometres off, and the two together are the great darshan of Shekhawati.

Salasar stands in the sand of Shekhawati, in Churu district, on the road from Jaipur to Bikaner; and its lord came out of the earth. On a Shravan Shukla Navami of Samvat 1811, tradition holds, a Jat farmer of Asota in Nagaur was ploughing when the share struck stone and rang. He dug, and lifted out a murti of Balaji caked with soil. His wife had come to the field with his midday meal; she cleaned the image with her odhni, and he offered it the bajre ka churma she had carried — and from that offering to this day, churma is Balaji's bhog.

That night the Thakur of Asota dreamed of Balaji, who bade him send the murti to Salasar in Churu; the same night Mohandas ji, a bhakta of Hanuman at Salasar, was shown the same thing, and when his message reached Asota naming what he had never seen, the Thakur knew whose work it was. The murti was set on a bullock cart with the word that where the bulls halted the Lord would be enthroned; they stopped on a dune, and that sand is Salasar Dham. In Samvat 1815 the temple was raised by the craftsmen Noor Mohammad and Dau — a brotherhood Salasar tells with pride. Mohandas ji gave the seva to his nephew Udayram and took jeevit samadhi on a Vaishakh Shukla Trayodashi; Udayram's line serves still, beside the Shri Hanuman Seva Samiti.

The garbhagriha of Samvat 1811 was raised in mud and stone; the rebuilding in white marble is credited to Rao Devi Singh, jagirdar of Sikar. Sanctum and prayer hall are worked in silver and gold — the silver walls carved with scenes of the Ramayana, gates and windows silver-plated, the marble entrance cut with floral design. The wider complex is largely of the 1990s, a bridge named Ram Setu carrying the queues.