One day, while wandering around Puri between martial arts research, I looked up and spotted a wheel-like decoration on the spire of the Jagannath temple and casually asked a local boy about it. He replied, quite matter-of-factly.
“That’s the Sudarshan Chakra.”
Puzzled by the word, which I had never heard before, I asked him what it is. He then replied, as if to say, ‘You don’t know such kind of common knowledge?
“It is a weapon used by Lord Vishnu to destroy demons”.
It is also known as the ‘Neela Chakra (Blue Wheel)” or “Kala Chakra (Wheel of Time)”, he said.
In fact, the Jagannath temple, like the Srinath Ji temple in Nathdwara, worships Lord Krishna as its main deity. Since Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu, that is, it worships Lord Vishnu.
According to Hindu mythology, when the world was in chaos, wickedness (adharma) prevailed and justice (dharma) was lost, the Lord Vishnu, the sustainer of the world, would take the form of an avatar and come to the world to destroy evil and restore justice, he said.
The wheel on the spire of the Jagannath temple was a symbol of Lord Vishnu, who radiate his power of destructing evil to protect the human world from all calamities.
Sudarshan Chakra, the ultimate weapon of defeating evil!
The sound of it was very fresh and it really resonated with me as a martial arts geek. As a Japanese Buddhist, I had only an image of the Buddha’s Dharma Chakra in my mind for a long when I thought of the Holy Chakra (wheel), the existence of the Sudarshan Chakra was like a sudden sunder from the blue sky to me.
And the fact that there existed an Idea of a sacred wheel other than Buddha’s dharma wheel reminded me that there was yet another wheel. It’s Konark, a village of ruins on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, north of Puri. The Sun Temple, a World Heritage Site there, was famous for its giant wheel formations.
I have visited the site also ten years before, and this huge stone temple, built in the 13th century, as I remembered, modelled on the divine chariot “Ratha”, that the sun god Surya rode through the sky on. And its giant wheel was called Surya Chakra.
Thinking of Surya’s Ratha chariot, I immediately remembered another one. Ratha Yatra, the annual festival of Jagannath Temple, is famous for the parade through the town with the deity on a huge float, and this float was modelled on a Ratha chariot.
It is said that many ardent devotees used to throw themselves under the huge wheels of the Ratha, believing that by being run over and killed there they would be purified of all their sins and reborn in heaven.
There was also a famous episode in the epic Mahabharata (Bhagavad Gita) in which Lord Krishna fights as a Ratha charioteer. I myself have seen pictures like the one below all over India.
My brain was beginning to run rapidly, spinning out the threads of memories.
Come to think of it, even yoga calls the spiritual energy centres in the body ‘Chakra’. Isn’t that also a ‘wheel’ in the body?
I had a feeling that something was running up my spine, a shivering sensation.
The fundamental question in the first place is why Buddha’s missionary process was compared to the turning of a wheel.
Why did it have to be nothing but “wheel (chakra)”?
Why must the ultimate weapon with which Lord Vishnu destroys evil be a chakra (wheel) as well?
Why does the sun god Surya soar through the sky on a Ratha chariot, and why is his divine authority symbolised by a giant wheel (chakra)?
And why does Lord Jagannath go on a Ratha chariot and why does his wheel have the power to save souls?
Why are the spiritual centres in the body called chakras (wheels) in yoga?
Is the concept of ‘chakras’ (wheels) shared in these verily different contexts just a match of coincidence, or is there any common ideological foundation?
Either way, it was clear that the wheel (chakra) or the ‘ratha chariot’ running with that wheel had some significance in Indian religious thought.
While thinking of this in mind, I walked through the town of Puri and to my surprise, the town was full of wheel (chakra) designs. The myriad of wheels were everywhere: on the balcony railings of private houses, on block wall designs, in paintings on the walls of temples, etc.
The chakra-wheel form permeated not only religious thought but also people’s daily lives. Perhaps this sensitivity, which could be called ‘chakra preference’ or ‘chakra geek’, may have been the reason for the development of stick rotating techniques in India.
But why particularly the wheel (chakra), of all places? The mystery focused on that one point.
However, this new perspective was shelved in my mind for a while. It is difficult to concentrate on researching and studying materials when I’m on the trip (smartphones did not exist at this time and I did not carry a PC and the internet connection was in a unstable internet café only!). Besides, I had more important work to do now than ideological matters.
Having baggage from this ‘chakra problem’ all the way, I left Odisha and headed south to Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
From what I had seen and heard so far, I thought that the superiority of Indian martial arts lies in their bodily basic exercises. Therefore, I had decided to push the three main pillars of it to the fore: the Mallakhamb, meipayattu of Kalari, and the stick rotating technique, as the essence of the arts.
The video camera that I have brought with me will be a great help in this regard. Video is also indispensable for conveying the old-fashioned ethnic atmosphere that Kushti and Kalaripayattu exude. My mission this time was to capture all these scenes on the camera and introduce them on the web for all over the world.
I visited many dojos from Tamil to Kerala to record videos, together with learning the history and philosophy of each martial art. Needless to say, I also sought instruction in order to increase the variety of stick-rotating techniques. I attended several competitions and recorded the virtuosity of top-level athletes on video too. The voluntary support of many masters and players were the great encouragement to me during my busy days where ordinary sightseeing was completely impossible.
In the course of this tour of South India, as “the specialists know that fields”, information on traditional martial arts in North India gradually became available too.
In the north-western state of Punjab, which borders Pakistan, there is a martial art called Gatka handed down by Sikhs; in Maharashtra, a martial art called Mardani Khel; in West Bengal, a stick art called Lathi Khera; and in the north-eastern state of Manipur, near the border with Myanmar, a martial art called Tang-ta.
Furthermore, Rishikesh also known as a yoga sanctuary has preserved a Taichi-like martial exercise called Vyayam, which is said to have a deep connection with yoga and Dhanur Veda.
As stick rotating is also practised in Gatka, Mardani Khel and Lathi Khela, the distribution of this art almost throughout the subcontinent was confirmed here.
In the spring of 2007, I was on my way back to Japan. At the end of this January, during my stay in India, a karate magazine asked me to write an article on Indian martial arts, which became my first business in Japan.
In the meantime, while writing about the results of my trip on the Sangam website, I opened an account on YouTube, which was beginning to attract attention globally at the time, and uploaded the videos I had recorded, gradually completing the contents and reciprocal links.
Sangam Institute of Indian Martial Arts: Youtube Channel
Having thus settled my immediate business, I had to face the mystery of the chakra (wheel) again, which had been bothering me all along my journey.
Behind the mystery of the chakras, must be hidden truth of the stick-rotating technique. While I was busy working, updating the website and practising the stick art, I also scoured the internet for information on the history of chakra thought.
The results revealed startling facts.
The origins of the chakra ideology, at the very least, dates back to 2000 BC, i.e. 4000 years from now.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 