Beluṛ Maṭh

 

Beluṛ Maṭh

In the beginning of 1897, Swami Vivekananda arrived in Baranagar, Calcutta together with his small group of Western disciples. Two monasteries were founded by him, one at Belur, which became the headquarters of Ramakrishna Mission and therefore the other at Mayavati on the Himalayas, in Champawat District, Uttrakhand, called the Advaita Ashrama. These monasteries were meant to receive and train young men who would eventually become sannyasis (religious ascetic) of the Ramakrishna Mission, and to offer them a training for their work. The same year the philanthropic activity was started and relief of the famine was administered .

Swami Vivekananda's days as a parivrajaka (wandering monk) before his visit to Parliament of Religions, took him through many parts of India, and he visited several architectural monuments just like the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri palaces, Diwan–I–Khas, palaces of Rajasthan, ancient temples of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and other places. During his tour in America and Europe, he found buildings of architectural importance of recent , Medieval, Gothic and Renaissance styles. It is reported that Vivekananda incorporated these ideas in the design of the Belur Math temple.

Swami Vijnanananda, a brother-monk of Swami Vivekananda and one among the monastic disciples of Ramakrishna, who was, in his pre-monastic life, a engineer , designed the temple consistent with the ideas of Vivekananda and Swami Shivananda, the then President of Belur Math laid the inspiration stone on 13 March 1929. The massive construction was handled by Martin Burn & Co.. The mission proclaims the Belur Math as, "A Symphony in Architecture".

The famed, two-storey Ramakrishna Museum hosts artifacts used by Ramakrishna, Sarada Devi, Swami Vivekananda, and some of his disciples. These include the long coat worn by Vivekananda within the West, Sister Nivedita's table, and an organ of Mrs Sevier's. The museum chronicles the contemporary growth of the movement, and the Bengalese.

The museum features a realistic recreation of the Panchavati — the clutch of 5 sacred trees of the Dakshineswar Kali Temple where Ramakrishna practised sadhana (spiritual disciplines). The black stone bowl from which Ramakrishna took payasam (a sweet Indian dish) during his final days, while affected by throat cancer, and therefore the pillow he had used, within the house in Calcutta where he spent his previous couple of months, are on display.Ramakrishna's room within the house, where he distributed ochre clothes to 12 disciples anointing Vivekananda (then Narendranath) as their leader, has also been shown with a model of Ramakrishna bestowing grace on his disciples, and the footwear used by Ramakrishna has been put on the model. The room at Dakshineswar where Ramakrishna lived has been recreated with display of garments and other objects employed by him, the tanpura employed by Vivekananda to sing to his master, and the copies of two charcoal drawings sketched by Ramakrishna are on display.

Sarada Devi's pilgrimage to Chennai, Madurai and Bangalore has also been exhibited, along side items employed by her then, in 1911. The museum showcases an enormous replica of Swami Vivekananda within the front of the Chicago Art Institute, where the famous Parliament of the World's Religions was held in September 1893. Alongside an equivalent display, may be a letter by Jamsetji Tata, Swami Vivekananda's co-passenger on the trip, that reveals a crucial and well-known work of Tata's, which was inspired by Swamiji: the founding of the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore.

The wooden staircase and therefore the lotus woodwork of Victoria Public Hall in Chennai, where Vivekananda gave inspiring speeches to an outsized congregation, are brought over. A few displays away from this is a show on Miss Josephine MacLeod, who met Swamji in the U.S. in 1895 and served India for 40 years thereafter. She played a crucial role within the Ramakrishna movement. At this enclosure is a crystal image of Swamiji that was done by Paris jeweler René Lalique.