Platonic Romance

Back to Holy Abu. To the south of Delwada Temples, a short distance away are the shrines of Kanya Kumari and Balam Rasiya. These bear an inscription of the year 1440 A.D. The folk lore is intriguing, romantic and tragic.

Kanya Kumari was the virgin daughter of a chieftain in Abu. Balam Rasiya, a sage in penance was enamored by her beauty and renouncing his afflictions, sought her hand in wedlock. The crafty mother, however, did not approve the match. But to honor the feelings of the saintly paramour, set him the impossible task of laying 12 different approach paths to Abu in a single night before the first crowing of a cock in the morning. Aided by spirituality, Balam Rasiya set to work zealously and had almost finished the project, but the scheming mother anticipating the loss of her comely daughter to a sage, feigned the crowing of the cock just as the work was about to be completed. Tricked, demoralized and frustrated, the ascetic in a rage, threw a magic spell that turned the mother and daughter into idols of stones. The idols, simply enshrined in a small temple, quite unpatronized but looked after by generations of priests, illustrate this fact and remind the interested and visiting onlookers of the romantic past.