A Visit to Dev Mandir, Chiang Mai

This paper will describe about my visit to a Hindu temple Dev Mandir in Chiang Mai on 10 September 2009.The purpose of the trip was to understand Hindu way of worship and religious components shared by Hindu community in Chiang Mai.

This temple is located at the heart of the city with its prominent gate built on Shikhara style. It is a two story temple. The first floor is used for social events like feast while the second floor is reserved for religious celebration. On the second floor, there are images of different Hindu gods and some other divine figures from Hindu epics like Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas along with the images of the Buddha and Mahavira. The front face of the hall was decorated with religious images like Visnu, Siva, Ganesha, Radha -Krishna, Sita Ram, Hanuman, Devi, Buddha, Mahavira, and the walls were punctuated with different religious colorful icons. Like other Hindu temples, this temple is also colorful and the prime color used to glorify the divinity in this temple is yellow color which is, in some way, related to the Vaisnavism. Pilgrims were singing devotional songs when I reached there, and I could observe that most of the visitors were in some way connected with Indian religious tradition, and the devotional songs were in Hindi language. Most of the visitors I met were visiting the temple to get the blessings from the divinity so that they could solve the everyday problem of household affairs. The visitors from Thai origin who could not understand Hindi were also found to be involved in the prayer passionately, it was interesting. There were some visitors from western world who were actively participating in the ceremony. According to one observer, this temple was built with the initiation of Hindu migrants from India to fill up their spiritual void in foreign land.

The organization of the religious images and their respective sizes were not according to what we find in India and Nepal, rather they were in different order. As for example, the image of the Buddha was relatively larger and was at the frontal face whereas that of the Siva—the chief deity of Hindu tradition—was smaller and at the rear side. Similarly, the image of the Buddha and Mahavira, who represent heterodoxy in Indian religious tradition, were also in line with other orthodox Hindu images, which is not common in Indian tradition. The decoration of the deity images with ornaments, bright attire and garlands was something that inspired me positively because it reflected the values that local communities assigned to the divine images. One fierce looking divine image on the wall with sword in hands was confusing me, since I had not seen such images before in Hindu temples of my locality in Nepal. Likewise, the presence of the donation box in front of the divine images, which is also found in other religious traditions, helped me to think that God too is a social invention which needs human care.

After the devotional prayer, there was a feast organized at the first floor. This tradition of having food together after a common celebration goes back to the prehistoric times. It is one of the common characters of every faith system. Food brings people together. In the same way, in every religion there are some common elements expressed in different forms. It is therefore appropriate to explore these commonalities inherent in faith systems and use them for the betterment of humanity in general. Is this possible?

The conglomeration of all Hindu, the Buddhist and Jain religious images in this temple reminded me of the spirit of coexistence inherent in these religions. In India and Nepal each of these deities has their own specific temple and religious tradition, but in Thailand they all have learned to live together. At the one hand it reminded me of a saying that birds of the same feather flock together, and on the other hand I could understand the compatibility of these different faith systems in a different geographical space.