"Rishi means Research" - Gur of Dev Garga-Acharya

Hi,

Have you ever visited the Kullu Dussehera festival? Then you might have seen the procession of the local Devtas, carried on their Raths.Recently I got an opportunity to talk with the Gur(Priest) of the Rishi Garga-Acharya from the Nagwain region of Kullu district. Kullu has Dev-Pranali, almost each village has their own Devta, highly respected and worshipped.

Temple of Rishi Garga-Acharya at Bhadeulli, Nagwain, Kullu, H.P.

Had I been researching much about our Rishis, I could have asked better questions. He was a far uncle of Vinod, my neighbor at our Sunder Nagar residence. We were seated at Vinod's home at Bhadaeulli (Nagwain, Kullu) and I was ready to listen what his uncle had to offer from his bucket of knowledge. 

He told his story of how he got into this Gur status. Earlier, he had been working on his own, he had a light motor vehicle, and his work was good enough to earn his life. At the time one of his uncle from his family clan was the Gur of the Rishi Garga-Charya, and it was the time to shift the responsibility to someone younger from the same family clan. 

The shifting of the responsibility from one Guru to next one is in the hands of the Dev. Someone from the gathered crowd would be chosen as the way of expression of the Dev's decision. This phenomenon is locally known as "Khel", it is believed that the Dev gets into the body of a person, and speaks his mind. For someone from psychology field, this might appear as hypnotism, but that is how it works. You may call that the hypnotized or hypnotizer would pick someone new from the same family clan as the next Gur.

This time it was Vinod' uncle, chosen as the next Gur. I asked him, that what might be the reason that only he was chosen, I expected him to blabber a little, but he simply answered that this was Dev's choice. Okay, then my next inquiry was that how much he believed in his Dev, and what he thought of our ancient Rishis. 

He replied " Rishi mean Research", I was amazed at this answer. I think what he meant is clear enough, what our Rishis did was a pure research. They searched and then researched a lot, that is why that they were able to present the first most texts in the world, such as Vedas, Upnishads, smritis and Shrutis were produced.

Today, when we find that those written texts are the basics of so many world religions, shows the kind of wisdom those saints hold after the meditation and research. I don't have much knowledge of the Rishis and have not either read any of our ancient texts, but read the references of them given by people such as Mahatma Gandhi. 

Do you have anything to share? please leave a comment. 

Thanks for your kind visit!