ABSTRACT
If you go to the village of Bochasan today, a village in Kheda district, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, you can visit the very rst temple constructed by the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha Hindu community. This stone temple, with its tall carved pinnacles, each adorned with a red and white striped ag, is the daily site of pilgrimage and of intense devotional activity. It is also the physical beginning point of a remarkable history. On 5 June 1907, when the Bochasan Swaminarayan temple was inaugurated, there were few amenities for visitors, and no landscaping or leafy trees under which to seek some shade. There was only an un nished temple that housed, in its central and therefore most important shrine (garbha griha), the precious icons, or mrtis, of Akshar and Purushottam. Side by side, with Akshar standing to the left of Purushottam, this positioning of the two mrtis would distinguish the Bochasan Swaminarayan temple from other existing and older Swaminarayan temples. The ritual awakening of these mrtis (Figure 9.1) and
the corresponding consecration of the Bochasan temple signalled, in a public way, the inauguration of not just a place of worship but a new devotional community.
