Karni Mata

Karni Mata is a warrior-sage goddess of Rajasthan, a historical Charan woman whom tradition places in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and venerates as an incarnation of the Goddess, often identified with Hinglaj or Durga. Born into a Charan family of the Marwar region, she is remembered as an ascetic of formidable authority who settled at Deshnoke, south of Bikaner, where her principal temple now stands. Tradition assigns her an extraordinarily long life, spanning a century and a half, during which she moved through the desert with her herds, founded settlements and settled disputes among the clans. Few figures in Rajasthani religion bind together folk devotion and dynastic history so completely: she is the tutelary deity of the Rathore royal houses of Bikaner and Jodhpur.

The tradition

Tradition credits Karni Mata with blessing the foundations of two kingdoms. Rao Jodha, founder of Jodhpur, and Rao Bika, founder of Bikaner, are both said to have sought her sanction, and later chronicles associate her with the laying of foundation stones at their fortresses. Whatever the historical core, the association endured: the rulers of Bikaner honoured her as their protectress for five centuries, and her cult spread widely among Charans, Rajputs and the trading and pastoral communities of the desert. She belongs to a distinctive western Indian tradition in which Charan women of exceptional sanctity were worshipped as living goddesses, and among the deified Charanis she is by far the most widely venerated, with shrines across Rajasthan and into Gujarat.

The temple at Deshnoke

The Deshnoke temple is celebrated for its kabas, the thousands of rats that live freely within the shrine and are fed milk and grain by priests and pilgrims. In local belief they are the reborn members of Karni Mata's own clan, the Depavats, granted this form by the goddess so that her people would never pass through the realm of death; sighting one of the rare white kabas is held especially auspicious. The temple's marble facade and silver doors reflect the patronage of the Bikaner court, with major embellishments attributed to Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early twentieth century. Large fairs are held at Deshnoke during the Navratris, when pilgrims arrive on foot from across Rajasthan.