Wood Carving: Saharanpur to Sandalwood, the Future of Indian Crafts

Akshaya Tritiya at the Rath Khala

It is Akshaya Tritiya morning at the Rath Khala in Puri. A small crowd has gathered outside the temple workshop on the south side of Bada Danda, the wide road where Lord Jagannath's chariots will roll in two months' time.

Inside, four men in white dhotis stand around a fresh log of phasi wood. They are the Maharana carpenters. Their families have built the chariots of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra for the Rath Yatra every single year for at least the last six hundred years. Some say longer. The first axe blow of the new chariots must fall today, on this most auspicious morning, or the chariots will not be ready in time.

The senior carpenter lifts the bhauri, the small ceremonial axe. He whispers the name of Vishwakarma. He swings. The chip falls.

A drum begins to play near the temple gate. The crowd folds its hands. Outside this workshop, in a small lane in Saharanpur, in a tiny shop in Mysore, in a wooden hut in the Kashmir Valley, another carpenter is also picking up a chisel this morning. Indian wood carving did not die. This lesson is the story of why.

Daru: When God Himself Is Made Of Wood

Most cultures carve wood. Very few worship it.

In the Sanskrit tradition the word for wood is dāru, and dāru is not just a material. The Atharva Veda calls the World Tree dāru. The Rig Veda speaks of the daru-yajna, the sacrifice that begins with the cutting of a tree. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad the whole universe is compared to a great tree, with its roots above and its branches below. To work wood, in this view, is to work with the body of the cosmos.

The most striking proof of this is in Puri itself. The deity in the Jagannath temple is not made of stone. He is not made of bronze. He is wood. Once every twelve to nineteen years, on a date the priests calculate from a hidden manuscript, the deities are remade from a fresh neem tree found in the forest. The rite is called the Nabakalebara, the New Body. The wood ages. The god is reborn.