Karni Matha temple udaipur
KARNI MATA temple is a small temple adjacent to city palace udaipur on a hill top. You can climb up on foot or take the rope car to the top. We were expecting a lot of rats roaming around in the temple. Here they are kept in an enclosure only. The idol of karni Mata made of marble is do beautiful to look at and us so full of grace and benevolence. We were blessed to witness the arti at 600pm. The sight of the city with the lake and city palace is beautiful and makes you to spend more time here.
Shri Manshapurna Karni
Mata Temple is a Hindu temple located on
the Machla Magra Hills, near
the Doodh Talai Lake in Udaipur, Rajasthan. It enshrines
the stone idol of Karni Mata.
The main Temple of
Karni Mata in Deshnok, also known as “ the Temple of Rats”, is
30 km from Bikaner. Karni Mata was basically a Hindu sage who was born as the
seventh daughter of Charan Rajput clan in 1387 AD in Suwap village of Jodhpur
district. She was believed to be the incarnation of Goddess Durga. Her original
name was Ridhu Bai. She was married to Depoji Charan of Sathika village but
after just two years of married life and despite the initial mockery from her
husband, she married off her sister Gulab to her husband and
left the village forever in order to fulfill her desire to leave all the
worldly affairs and live life like a Nomad. After wandering for some time with
her followers and herd, she reached Deshnok and finally settled here and also
by then she became Karni Mata. The temple is famous for its
enormous population of 25,000 rats which are religiously known as “Kabbas”.
The story behind the rat population is that once the stepson of Karni
Mata, Laxman, fell and died in the Kapil Sarovar in Kolayat
Tehsil in attempt to drink water. After continuous pleading from Karni Mata,
Yama, The God of Death, agreed to retrieve her son as a Rat and also permitted
all her male children to be reincarnated as Rats. The Kabbas are
known to be very holy and feeding them with sweets and eating the food nibbled
by them is considered as “prestigious”. The temple in Udaipur too has a
considerable number of white and black Kabbas. Karni Mata laid
the cornerstone of two major Forts of Rajasthan that is Fort of Jodhpur and
Fort of Bikaner. On March 21, 1538, while returning Deshnok, the Convoy halted
in order to drink water near Kolayat Tehsil. When the followers got back to her
she was nowhere to be found and after much search, she was never found hence
she just disappeared then and there at the age of 151 years.
History
The temple in Udaipur
was built by Maharana Karan Singh to mark the boundary and safety of Udaipur
when the area of Machla Magra was built for residency purposes between
1620-1628. The temple was abandoned for a long time before 1997 when the temple
committee restored and renovated the premises and it is still in progress. The
temple premises is quite large and peaceful. The stairway path to the temple is
a 10 min long journey and it is fulfilled with viewpoints, rest shelters, and
water cooler. To the left of the stairway, at a bit distance, lies a high
structure with holes in the walls. The structure used to be the place where
kings used to hide and hunt and place their guns out through these holes. It
can be visited but only at your own risk as it is not maintained and might have
snakes and other animals. If you take the stairway, you might also sight
peacocks and their symphony is the loudest in the morning. Apart from the
temple structure, there are elongated premises up to the ropeway station and
one should be extremely careful about the monkeys as they chased me not once
but twice. The 4 min. Ropeway journey in bright red, yellow and green
cabins start from the banks of Lake Pichola to the Hill of Machla Mangra along
the 387 m long cable.
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