Yamunā Ghāṭ at Vrindavan

The Yamunā Ghāṭs at Vṛndāvana

Kesī Ghāṭ, the flute-player, and the mud of the river

The ghats of Vṛndāvana, on the Yamunā in Mathura district, Uttar Pradesh, are the pilgrimage frontage of the Kṛṣṇa-cult, and the most visited of them is Kesī Ghāṭ. The name and the practice belong together: the leelā holds that the Yamunā's mud was carried to the place where Kṛṣṇa played his flute and covered the banks, and that mud — kesī-ka-mṛda — is still used at the ghats to make the tilak on the deities' foreheads. The faithful bring it back in bottles, and it is a small object carrying a very large claim about the geography of the rāsa-līlā.

The ghats face the rasa-maṇḍala of the town, the open ground north of the ghats where the rāsa-līlā is said to have been enacted, and the pilgrimage is organised around walking the sequence of leelā-sthāna: the ghats, the rasa-maṇḍala, the Kusum Sarovar associated with Kṛṣṇa's bath, the śālā grove and the newer shrines. The Śrī Śrījī Māhārāja temple, with its śālā parivāra system that feeds the deities on schedule, is the institutional centre of Vṛndāvana's sevā, and its sevak — the rota of lay and professional servers — is the modern form of the leelā.

Vṛndāvana's status in the 108 Divya Deśam list should be handled carefully. The lists are not unanimous, and the point a guardian should check is whether an Āḻvār hymn names the town; on the usual reckoning the Āḻvār geography is centred on Tamil country and the northern Vaiṣṇava shrines are not sung in it, so an inclusion should not be asserted without the hymn. What is certain is that Vṛndāvana has been a major Śrī Vaiṣṇava tīrtha since at least the medieval period, and that the Rāsa-līlā literature in Braj is the printed tradition through which most pilgrims meet the town.

Sources and what is still unverified

• Rāsa-līlā literature in Braj — work level.
• The Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa and Vaiṣṇava tīrtha literature; Bhandarkar, History of the Dravidian Branch of Vishnu Worship, for the southern comparison.
• Mathura District Gazetteer (Government of India gazetteer series) — for the ghats and the town.
• Unverified: the Divya Desam question, the kesī-mud claim beyond its leelā status, and every festival date listed in the frontmatter.