What is the Kalaram temple?

Ram is in the middle, Lakshman on his right, Sita on his left, all three in black stone, dressed and ornamented. They are small, about two feet high. The images were not carved by anyone — they are स्वयम्भू swayambhu, self-made, the kind of image that is found rather than made.

In the hall in front of the shrine is Hanuman, also black, with his hands joined, and if you stand where he stands you see what he sees. His eyes are on Ram’s feet.

During the years of the exile Ram, Sita and Lakshman lived at Panchavati, on this bank of the Godavari, and the temple is built on the spot where they lived. Agastya sent them here, Lakshman built the hut, and everything that happened in the forest years happened around this ground — Shurpanakha’s nose, the fourteen thousand rakshasas, the golden deer, Sita taken. When Ram and Lakshman went south to look for her, they went from here. The Ramayana connection tells all of that whole.

The other story is about Sardar Rangrao Odhekar, a Maratha nobleman in the time of the Peshwas. He had a dream. In the dream there was an image of Ram, black, lying in the Godavari. He went to the river, found the images, brought them out of the water, and built a temple for them. Those are the three you see in the shrine.

The temple keeps the memory of the saints who came to see this Ram. Eknath Maharaj came and, with Ram as his witness, wrote a poem about what happened. Samartha Ramdas Swami saw Ram himself here. Gajanan Maharaj came too and saw him. People come now partly because they came.

Sardar Rangrao Odhekar, in the time of the Peshwas, with the Peshwa’s counsel. The main temple was finished first and the hall, the raised walk round the temple and the enclosure came after.

The stone is from Ramshej, the hill north of the town — the hill Nashik says Ram slept on. The masons tested every block of it in boiling milk before they would use it. The whole temple is that black stone, and it is about seventy feet high. It has four doors, one facing each direction. The temple sits in the middle of a walled courtyard, and you come in from the east through an arched gate.

Ram Navami, in the month of Chaitra, is the great festival of the year. A रथ rath is a chariot, the tall wheeled car a god is drawn through the streets in, and the rath yatra on the ekadashi after Ram Navami is the biggest event the temple has. On Dasara Ram is carried out in a silver palanquin. Every day there is aarti morning and evening, bhajan in the afternoon and kirtan at night.

Come in through the east gate into the courtyard and cross it to the hall. Stop at Hanuman first — most people do — and look where he is looking. Then the shrine, and the three black figures. By an old tree in the temple there is a stone with the footprints of Dattatreya marked on it.

Outside, the old banyans are close by, the ones people believe grew from the five the place is named for. Sita Gufa is a few steps away. Ramkund is down at the river, and the Kapaleshwar temple is on the rise above it. Panchavati puts all of it together.