Nashik, and the places on the river
Nashik is on the Godavari, and the rites a family keeps for its dead are performed on the river here, at a pool called Ramkund. The old part of the city, Panchavati, is on the same bank, and it is where the Ramayana's forest years are placed — the hut, the cave, the morning Shurpanakha lost her nose. This page says how the river, the pool, the old city and the story fit together, and which page to read first.
The Godavari
Through the town, with Panchavati on its left bank
Ramkund
Through the year, on the left bank
Twenty-four tirthas
Ten of them inside the town
Panchavati
Named for five banyan trees
Section I
Why do families come to Nashik?
Because of the river. The Godavari comes through the town and turns south as it does, and on the left bank, at the turn, there is a pool cut into the stone called Ramkund. That is where the rites for the dead are performed at Nashik — through the year, every day, by a priest sitting with a family at the water’s edge. Families bring the ash and bone of someone they have lost to a tirtha inside the pool, the Asthi Vilaya Tirtha, and give it to the water. The rites themselves — what is done, who may do it, what a family receives — are under the rites. These pages are the places.
Pilgrims come for something else as well. The old part of Nashik is Panchavati, and Panchavati is where the Ramayana’s forest years are placed. The hut Lakshman built is here. The cave Ram hid Sita in is here. The forest where Shurpanakha lost her nose is a little downstream. The temple of Ram, black stone, is built on the ground Ram lived on, the temple says. A family that comes for the rites walks through all of it on the way to the river.
Section II
How do the places fit together?
Think of it as one bank of one river. The Godavari runs through the town with Panchavati, the old city, on its left. Along the bed of the river, upstream and down, Nashik counts twenty-four bathing places, the tirthas, and ten of them are inside the town along the bank at Panchavati. Ramkund is one of the ten, and the only one with a pool built round it. On the rise behind Ramkund is the Kapaleshwar temple, beside it is the Ganga Godavari temple that opens once in twelve years, and a few minutes’ walk back from the water are the Kalaram temple, the old banyans and Sita Gufa. Downstream along the same bank is Tapovan. Every one of these places is within that walk, except the hill called Ramshej to the north.
Section III
Which page should you read first?
If you have come for the rites, start with Ramkund — where the pool is, what Nashik tells of Ram bathing there, the tirtha inside it, who built it, and what you see when you come down to it. The Godavari at Nashik is the river itself, the turn it makes and the seven streams that join it. The tirthas on the Godavari has all twenty-four bathing places, and the three a family would come for, including the one called Ram’s Gaya.
If you have come for the story, start with the Ramayana connection, which tells the whole of the exile as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, from Agastya’s advice to the empty hut, and then walks you round the places. Panchavati is the old city and the hut. Sita Gufa is the cave, and the day of the golden deer. Tapovan is the forest downstream, the morning Shurpanakha came, and where the sadhus camp at the Kumbh.
For the temples, the Kalaram temple is the temple of the black Ram and the stories it tells of itself. The Kapaleshwar temple is the temple of Shiva with no Nandi, and the story of the calf who showed Shiva the way. The temples of Nashik has the rest — the Vitthal who stayed behind, Naroshankar’s bell, the ling Janak set up.
The river and the rites
The Godavari as it comes through Nashik, the pool on the left bank where the rites for the dead are performed, and the bathing places along the bed of the river.
Ramkund
Ramkund is the pool on the Godavari at Panchavati in Nashik where the rites for the dead are performed. Where it sits on the river, what Nashik tells of Ram bathing here, the Asthi Vilaya Tirtha where the ash and bone are given to the water, who built the pool, what it is at the Kumbh, and what you see when you come down to it.
The Godavari at Nashik
The Godavari is the river the rites at Nashik are performed on. Where it comes from, the turn to the south it makes as it enters the town, the seven small streams that join it there, the stretch of its bed that holds the bathing places, and what it is like to stand at its edge.
The tirthas on the Godavari
The tirthas are the named bathing places in the bed of the Godavari at Nashik — twenty-four of them between Govardhan and Tapovan, ten inside the town. How they are counted, how they got their names, which ten lie along the bank at Panchavati, and the three a family keeping the rites for its dead would come for.
The Ramayana and its places
The old part of the city where the hut is placed, the cave named for Sita, the forest downstream where the story turned, and the whole of the exile told in one place.
Panchavati
Panchavati is the old part of Nashik, on the left bank of the Godavari, named for five banyan trees. This is where Ram's hut of the exile is placed. The story of the hut as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, what Nashik tells of the name, and what you see walking through it — the banyans, the cave, the temples and Ramkund at the river.
The Ramayana connection
Nashik is where the forest years of the Ramayana are placed — the hut at Panchavati, Shurpanakha at Tapovan, the golden deer, the sadhu at the door, the empty hut. The whole story as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, and every place in and near the town that remembers a piece of it.
Sita Gufa
Sita Gufa is the cave at Panchavati in Nashik where, people say, Ram hid Sita when he had to leave her, and from where Ravan took her. The day of the golden deer and the sadhu at the door, as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, what Nashik tells of the cave, and what it is like to go down into it.
Tapovan
Tapovan is the forest on the Godavari just below Panchavati at Nashik, where the Kapila joins the river. This is where Nashik places the morning Shurpanakha came to Ram's hut and Lakshman cut off her nose — the morning the Ramayana turns. The story as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it, what Nashik tells of the place, and what you see when you go.
The temples
The temple of the black Ram, the temple of Shiva with no Nandi, the rest of the temples along the river and the stories they keep, and the white marble temple at Nashik Road with copies of all twelve jyotirlings inside it.
The Kalaram temple
The Kalaram temple is the temple of Ram at Panchavati in Nashik, named for its black image of Ram. The temple tells that it is built where Ram lived during the exile, and that its images came out of the Godavari. What is inside, the stories the temple tells, who built it, the days it keeps, and what you see when you go.
The Kapaleshwar temple
The Kapaleshwar temple is the temple of Shiva on the rise above Ramkund at Panchavati in Nashik, and there is no Nandi before the ling. The story the temple tells of Brahma's skull and the calf who showed Shiva the way, where the temple is, who built it, the days it keeps, and what you see when you climb the steps.
The temples of Nashik
The Godavari through Nashik is lined with temples. Three have pages of their own — Kalaram, Kapaleshwar, and Muktidham out at Nashik Road. This page has the rest — the Ganga Godavari temple that opens once in twelve years, the Vitthal who stayed behind, the ling Janak set up, Naroshankar's bell — the stories Nashik tells of them, who built them, and how to walk them.
Muktidham
Muktidham is the white marble temple at Nashik Road, near the railway station, built in 1971 by J.D. Chauhan Bytco so that copies of all twelve jyotirlings could be in one place — each one made to the size of the original and sent to its own shrine to be made holy before it was set here. Also inside, a Krishna temple with his life and the Mahabharata painted on its walls and all eighteen chapters of the Gita written up, shrines to Lakshmi, Hanuman, Durga and Ganesh, and a dharamshala.
The town and the hills beyond it
What Nashik tells of its own past — the names it has had, and the morning it got the one it has now — and the two hills outside the town, the seven peaks where the goddess with eighteen arms is, and the hill where Hanuman was a baby.
The history of Nashik
Nashik has been called Panchavati, Trikantak, Janasthan and Gulshanabad, and the name it has now comes from one morning by the Godavari, when Lakshman cut off Shurpanakha's nose. What Nashik tells of its own past — Agastya, the years Ram lived here, the morning at Tapovan, the Kumbh — and what of it you can still see.
Saptashrungi
Saptashrungi is the hill of seven peaks outside Nashik, in Kalwan taluka, where the goddess with eighteen arms stands out of the rock face itself. Nashik counts it as the half of Maharashtra's three and a half shaktipeeths. Who she is as the Devi Mahatmya tells it, how she came to the hill as the hill tells it, the story of Sati and the places where she fell, and what you see when you climb up.
Anjaneri
Anjaneri is the hill on the road from Nashik to Trimbakeshwar that has Hanuman's mother's name, and Nashik tells that Hanuman was born here, in a cave on the hill. Who Anjana was, how the Wind gave her a son, and the morning the child went up after the sun thinking it was a fruit, as the Valmiki Ramayana tells it. Then what is on the hill — her temple, the pond shaped like his foot, and the temple on the top where Hanuman is a child.