Dharti Ma

Salman Rashid

It was in 1992 at the shrine of Chanan Pir in Cholistan that I first realised how an ancient belief had been modified to adapt to a new religion. The so-called burial open to the sky, the supplication for sons and wealth and the bringing of their best cattle to do obeisance at the shrine all harked back to an earlier cult. But the best of all was the timing of the Chanan Pir festival: early February to mid-March.

The temple of Dharti Ma must never have a dome above, she gives sons and wealth, she brings fertility and she is celebrated when she rejuvenates the earth after the barrenness of winter. The so-called shrine of Chanan Pir is an open sand dune because the Pir purportedly so ordained. They worship the sand dune in spring to pray for sons, good crops and wealth. They bring their cattle to pay salaam just as their ancestors did three or four thousand years ago when the lost Hakra River flowed and Chanan Pir was simply Dharti Ma.

The insight that this was the conversion to Islam of an ancient Sindhu valley cult led to a search for other sites. I learnt that other than Chanan Pir and Udero Lal (Hyderabad, Sindh), all shrines that hark back to Dharti Ma or a similar earth deity are placed upon high mountain peaks. In June ‘94 I climbed the 4055-metre peak of Musa ka Musalla in Kaghan and four months later the 3447-metre Takht e Suleman in the apex between Balochistan and Pukhtunkhwa. Both summits set my heart racing, and not for the climb but for what they had to show.

On the Musalla (prayer-mat), the snow was still thick and the stone altar, all but covered, could easily have been missed. Only the coloured flags fluttering in the brisk wind gave away its location. It was a platform of rough-cut stones; its corners aligned with the cardinal points and measured about six metres square. Near its base, where the heat of the sunlit stones had melted away the snow, I saw cowpats. Talking to Gujjar herders later I learned that those of their bulls and cows that were due to mate were first brought up the mountain to pay homage to Musa so that the herd would grow. They did not know who Musa was. It could either be the prophet Moses or a Gujjar patriarch from the distant past who worshipped on the summit and gave it his name.

On the throne (takht) of Solomon, I flagged and some way below the summit did not wish to go any farther. My Pushtun guides said it would be a shame if I were to come this far and not raise up my hands in orison at the tomb of Qais Abdur Rashid. That was sufficient inducement. The ‘tomb’ was a six and a half-metre square altar (this time I had a measuring tape) and lay in the shade of blue pines just a short way below the actual summit. Now Qais Rashid is the supposed ancestor of the Pushtuns. But that is all he is: supposed. So when the Pushtuns, having converted to Islam, wished to consecrate the ancient site of Dharti Ma, they turned it into the grave of a fictional ancestor.

The most telling connection with Dharti Ma worship I learned only recently from an elderly Gujjar in Balakot. Once they used to offer Musa streams of milk straight from the udder, but the practice is increasingly being overlooked. Dharti Ma where she is worshipped in India is still similarly appeased with milk. Takht e Suleman on the other hand is utterly desiccated. There are no springs of fresh water making it nearly impossible to take cattle up. Surely before the climate of our part of the world changed and there was greater precipitation, worship on the takht had a different colour.

In June 1999 I was on the peak of Sikaram (4770 metres) north of Parachinar town. This time there was no altar, just a simple grave nearly six metres long. It was supposed to be the burial of some Syed Karam whose name, they said, had been corrupted to Sikaram. Unfortunately for the tellers of this tale, the grave was not the prescription north-south alignment of Muslim graves; it was out of kilter by about forty-five degrees. Once again, the converts’ zeal of the Pushtuns had attempted to expunge the memory of Dharti Ma. The one disappointment on Sikaram was that the shrine was not restricted to praying strictly for sons and wealth.

Exactly four years later, I was slogging up another peak where thyme grew so thick that, crushed underfoot, it filled the air with its lovely bouquet. This time it was Pir Ghal (3515 metres) in South Waziristan. En route my guides and I fell in with a man, a young father of three daughters, who was on his way up to pray for a son. On the summit, a black billy goat was slaughtered as sacrifice. As a good Pushtun he obviously did not accept it was to appease Dharti Ma for that would be sacrilege. It was a simple sadqa, the man said. A sadqa to please God so that He may grant him a son.

Pushtun lore makes Pir Ghal sacred to the prophet Ishmael who is said to have sojourned on it in his time. And because he had been favoured by God by his miraculous removal from under his father’s knife, it was appropriate to invoke him for a son. On the peak they have built a small room for pilgrims to overnight in, but there is no structure to mark a shrine. There is only a low wall behind which pilgrims stand, face west and pray for what they must. Here too they believe it would be bad form (not to mention very difficult!) to raise a building above the spot.

Man has always placed his gods on mountaintops, Kailas in Tibet and Olympus in Greece being two good examples. Even Moses climbed the mountain to receive the commandments. Their loftiness and inaccessibility gave the peaks sanctity. And if man had to commune with the deity he would first have to do penance by undertaking the hard slog to the summit. Then only was the black-haired goat acceptable to the deity; then only was prayer answered. Compared to the alpine deities, Dharti Ma of river valleys was benign.