your bridge home
Tales of the Gods
Portuguese authorities destroyed an estimated three hundred temples across Goa. The gods those temples housed survived anyway, carried inland by their own priests one step ahead of the demolition crews.
The buildings did not survive. The gods did, carried out on foot, over a border, by the families who served them.
Before 1510, Goa was a dense and prosperous temple country.
Shrines had been built and endowed across the coast and the river valleys for centuries. Under the Kadambas, and later under Vijayanagara.
The Mangeshi temple. Shanta Durga. Mahalasa. Nagesh. Mahalaxmi. Ramnath. And hundreds of smaller village shrines.
Much of it was sustained by the Gauda Saraswat Brahmin community.
Their trading and scholarly networks ran far up and down the western coast. And their wealth returned into the temples they endowed and ran. The administration was communal: each temple was managed by its mahajans, the founding families, who held hereditary responsibility for it.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.