Mathura

Mathura is one of the ancient cities of India. It was the capital of the Surasena kingdom, one of the sixteen great states of the 6th century BCE, and by the time of the Buddha was already a major town on the trade route from the Gangetic plain to the north-west. Its golden age came under the Kushan emperors of the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, when Mathura was one of their capitals and its workshops, carving the local mottled red sandstone, produced the Mathura school of sculpture: some of the first images of the Buddha, Jain tirthankaras and Hindu gods, and portraits of the emperors themselves. The Gupta period added Buddhist monasteries that the Chinese pilgrim Faxian found flourishing around 400 CE.

For Hindus the city's meaning is Krishna, born in a prison cell here to end the rule of his uncle Kansa, and the whole countryside around, the Braj of his childhood, is sacred ground. The temple at his birthplace was raised and destroyed repeatedly: sacked by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017, rebuilt in grand form in the 17th century by Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha, and demolished in 1670 on the orders of the emperor Aurangzeb, who built the Shahi Eidgah mosque on part of the site. Jat rulers held parts of the region before the British took it in 1803.

Under the British Mathura was a district headquarters and cantonment. The Janmasthan temples were rebuilt from the 1950s with industrialist patronage, the mosque beside them remaining, and the ownership of the site has been in the courts for decades. An oil refinery opened in 1982, and the city has grown as a pilgrimage, industrial and commuter town between Delhi and Agra.

Mathura is the heart of Braj, the region whose dialect, Braj Bhasha, was the language of medieval Krishna devotional poetry, and whose culture is bound up with the worship of Krishna and Radha. The great Vaishnava teachers of the 16th century, Chaitanya from Bengal and Vallabha, born into a Telugu family, came to Braj to rediscover the lost sites of Krishna's life, and many of Vrindavan's temples date from that revival. Raslila, the dance-drama of Krishna's play with the cowherd girls, is performed in Vrindavan and at festivals, in some traditions by boys only.

Holi is the city's defining festival, celebrated across Braj for more than a week with its own forms: the stick-beating Lathmar Holi of Barsana and Nandgaon, the flower Holi and widows' Holi of Vrindavan, and the processions and colour of Mathura's own streets. Janmashtami in late summer fills the city with pilgrims for the midnight birth of Krishna. Devotional singing, kirtan and bhajan, sounds from temples through the day, and ISKCON's international devotees have added a global strand to Vrindavan's religious life.

The city also carries older and other identities: the Jain and Buddhist heritage visible in the museum, a Muslim quarter and the mosques of the Mughal era, and the pastoral Braj culture of the Jat villages around, with their wrestling, bullock carts and cattle. Vrindavan's widows, thought to number 15,000 to 20,000, many living in homes run by the government and charities, are part of the town's conscience as well as its scene.

Mathura city has about 450,000 people. The Indian Oil refinery, the army cantonment, the railway and a cluster of industries, textile and sari printing, silver ornaments, water taps and household goods, provide the formal jobs; the pilgrim trade of temples, sweet shops, dharamshalas, rickshaws and ritual services employs much of the rest. Many residents commute to Delhi or Agra on the expressway and the fast trains.

The old city's lanes house traders, priests and craft families in tall houses around temple courtyards, while newer colonies spread along the highway and towards the refinery. The day runs on temple time: the Dwarkadhish and Banke Bihari temples open for early darshan, close through the afternoon and reopen for the evening, and the ghats come alive at dawn and at the evening aarti. Bazaars stay open into the night.

The Yamuna is the main worry. By the time it reaches Mathura, the river carries Delhi's sewage, and its pollution, low flow and the condition of the ghats are constant local and legal issues. Traffic, the monkey population, pressure on Vrindavan's lanes from pilgrim numbers and the dispute over the Janmasthan site are the other recurring themes of civic life.

Mathura's name on the sweet-shop counter is the peda, a dense, brown sweet of milk reduced for hours with sugar and flavoured with cardamom, sold by the box to pilgrims at Holi Gate and the temple gates. Braj is dairy country, the land of Krishna the butter thief, and milk rules the food: makhan-mishri, white butter with rock sugar, offered to the deities; rabri, thick sweetened milk; kalakand; and lassi served in clay cups so thick it is eaten with a spoon.

The breakfast of the old city is kachori, a fried lentil-stuffed pastry, served with a spiced potato curry and a hot jalebi, eaten standing at stalls in the Chowk bazaar before the temples open. Chaat follows through the day: aloo tikki, dahi bhalla and golgappa from carts near the ghats. Full meals are vegetarian thalis, and in Vrindavan sattvic, without onion or garlic, in the temple halls and the restaurants around Loi Bazaar; prasad from the temples, sweets and savouries blessed before the image, is part of every pilgrim's day.

Meat and alcohol play little part in the pilgrim quarters, and the city's eating is the vegetarian cooking of the Hindi belt: dal, seasonal vegetables, puri and paratha, ghee and pickles. Seasonal treats include ghewar for the monsoon festivals and gajak in winter. Chai is the constant, and in summer sattu drinks and sugar-cane juice are sold at the roadside.