Sacred Hindu Architecture-Design and deified Shrines (Roadside & Others (original) (raw)
Related papers
Faith and place: Hindu sacred landscapes of India (In: The Routledge Handbook of Place)
Routledge, 2020
The sacred landscape combines the absoluteness of space, relativeness of places and comprehensiveness of landscape; thus altogether results in a ‘wholeness’ carrying the inherent and imposed spirit of ‘holiness’, which is to be called ‘sacredscapes’, and are regulated and survived by the faith involved in and the sacred rituals. We begin the sense of our-place from the local scale and here we first experience the sacred message (spirit of place, genus loci) and power of place: place speaks, place communicates! The Matsya Purāna (c.ce 400) enumerates a large number of sacred places with descriptions of associated schedules, gestures, dreams and auspicious signs and symbols. The seven sacred cities (Sapta-purīs) include Mathura, Dvaraka, Ayodhya, Haridvar, Varanasi, Ujjain and Kanchipuram. Similarly, the twelve most important Shiva abodes are scattered all over India. The four abodes of Vishnu in the four corners of India are another group of popular pilgrimages. These are the examples of pan-Indian pilgrimage places. The chapter presents such vivid examples.
Timothy Edensor, Uma Kothari and Ares Kalandides (eds.) 2020, The Routledge Handbook of Place. London: Routledge, 2020
The sacred landscape combines the absoluteness of space, the relativeness of places and the comprehensiveness of landscape. Altogether, this constitutes a 'wholeness' that conveys the inherent and imposed spirit of 'holiness', which here we call 'sacredscapes'; these are regulated and reproduced by those of faith and in their sacred rituals. Accordingly, as adherents of faith within sacred space, we form a sense of ourselves and the sense of our-place at varying scales of space-time. We begin from the local scale, and here we may first experience the sacred message through the spirit of place, its genus loci, and the power of place: place speaks, place communicates. In Hindu cosmology, the Matsya Purāṇa (ca. CE 400) enumerates a large number of sacred places with descriptions of associated schedules, gestures, dreams, and auspicious signs and symbols. The seven sacred cities within this schema (Sapta-purīs) are Mathura, Dvaraka, Ayodhya, Haridvar, Varanasi, Ujjain and Kanchipuram. Rather differently, the twelve most important Shiva abodes are scattered all over India and are known as Jyotir lingas tīrthas, with the four abodes of Vishnu in the four corners of India serving as another group of popular pan-Indian pilgrimage places. This chapter will focus on particularly vivid examples, illustrating Hindu reciprocal relationships between sacred places and the faith system. These are illustrated within the taxonomic frame of sacred places, ritualscapes, festivities, sacred water and aspects of spatial transposition that link locality and universality.
Pilgrimage has been one of the strongest traditions in Hindu religion since the Vedic time. In the course of time, Varanasi has been eulogized and accepted as the most sacred city in Hinduism. By the turn of the 13th century, many pilgrimage circuits and spatially manifested holy sites and shrines developed in Varanasi. The re-establishment of important pan-Indian holy sites in Varanasi makes this city a microcosm of India. Many cosmological symbols also occur, such as the 56 Vināyaka shrines representing a multiple frame of eight directions and seven layers of the atmosphere. Similarly the five most popular pilgrimage circuits represent the five gross elements making life, according to the Hindu cosmogony. All these pilgrimage circuits are associated with the shrines referring to numerical symbolism. The pilgrimage journeys are described according to months and seasons for which specific shrines or holy spots are prescribed. To engage in the special ritual honouring the patron deity, Vishveshvara or Vishvanātha, is the purpose for about sixty percent of the pilgrims to Varanasi; and the sacred journey around his temple is known as the “inner sanctum” route of the city. In geographic symbolism, the three forms of Shiva (with the respective segmented circuits Omkāreshvara, Vishveshvara, and Kedāreshvara) make the shape of a trident, which is why the city is perceived as lying on Shiva’s trident. The sacred topography of the city shows one of the best known examples of mesocosm (earthly) representation interlinking macrocosm (heavenly bodies) and microcosm (individual being or deity, or inner sanctum of a temple). Key words: cosmology, circumambulatory circuits, pilgrimage, Varanasi, Shiva.
Introduction. Wayside Shrines in India: An Everyday Defiant Religiosity
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2018
Drawing on this special issue’s ethnographic data and analysis this introduction aims to offer an analytical framework for understanding the notion of wayside shrines. It does so by defining wayside shrines as sites that enshrine a worshipped object that is immediately adjacent to a public path, visible from it and accessible to any passerby. Further, we argue that wayside shrines are spaces in which we can observe a unique form of everyday religiosity that challenges sedimented discourses and practices at three different scales: at the level of the individual, of the community, and of the state.
The deeper sense of geographic concerns employ to investigate the inherent power of sacred places by searching cosmic geometries embedded in ritual landscapes and the spatial orientations towards astronomical phenomena. Such sacred cities can be considered to be a mesocosm, geometrically linking the celestial realm of the macrocosm with the microcosmic realm of human consciousness and cultural traditions of text, tradition, and rituals. The Hindu literature, both the classical and modern, is full of reverence for ‘Mother India’ (Bhārat Mātā) and ‘Mother Earth’ (Bhū Devī). The ‘land (and the earth)’ is personified goddess. This image, as described in literary tradition, is conceptualised by relating all geographical features as lived and imagined landscapes, viz. mountains, hills, rivers, caves, unique sites, etc. to the mother earth and in that sense those sites and places automatically becomes part of the sacred geography of ancient India (cf. Eck 2012: 11). Every region or place has its own sacred geography where humans meet with the divinities and ultimate emerged the microcosmic web which are always regulated and expanded by the continuity of rituals, festivities and celebrations. Better known expression of the Nature-Man interfaces through spirituality is presented in the form of sacred geometry and maṇḍalas (i.e. geometric arrangements of esoteric symbols or symbolic representations of the abodes of various deities). The sacred landscape combines the absoluteness of space, relativeness of places and comprehensiveness of landscape; thus altogether result to a ‘wholeness’ carrying the inherent and imposed spirit of ‘holiness’, which is to be called ‘sacredscapes’. In Hindu tradition this is called ‘divya kṣetra’ (a pious/ divine territory).
The Space of Street-side Religiosity Miniature Shrines in Chennai
There are two competing theorisations of street-side religiosity in India. One is process-centric; the other is event-centric. While the former approach conceptualises artefacts such as street-side shrines as offering resistance to the dominant ideological spaces, the latter seeks to understand the " event " of their construction and demolition within the " multiple modernities " framework. However, both the approaches take an instrumental view of these shrines. This view is reinforced by dualisms such as modernity and religiosity, local and global, space and place. These shrines co-construct and constitute an interconnected, open-ended, autonomous space. This space is shaped by practices and does not exist prior to the identities. Both space and identities are perennially under construction. The autonomy of the space is derived from its contingent nature.
Religious Architecture: Transcending Legacy of the Himalayas
Places make up the persona of the people who live in them. Imagery of a place imparts a sense of belonging to its habitants. The locals identify themselves with the surroundings, the structures, the landscape, the weather, the seasonal variations in the flora and fauna and the cycle of changes that they live with. Change spells growth. The changing moments are the memory makers. Memories grow from short-lived fun moments to everlasting remarkable moments of events that shape lives. Events inculcate joy, sorrow, pleasure, comedy, tragedy and such emotions into the memory consumers. Spirituality hails Moksha or detachment from the materialistic world. Civilizations come and go while defining their own era. The world changes for the betterment and the consumers tend to take it further from their memories of the past. In the race for growth, at times, they forget the ancestral values which were the reason for the success of their respective times. And as is the law of nature, life goes full circle. In the fast paced world, resources begin to get depleted and the consumers are forced to look back at the heritage for sustainable solutions. This paper is an endeavor to explore the folk traditions and solutions of the people of the NorthWest parts of India, where the most colorful and vibrant societies flourished, their attempts to live in harmony with ecosystem and their efforts to preserve nature. The research will bring forth the amalgamation of different styles of Architecture in the religious buildings of the region.
Among the ancient epics, the Mahabharata, dated ca 5th century BCE, is the first source of Hindu pilgrimages (tirtha-yatra). The mythologies of medieval period eulogised the sacred places and their sacred spots. These works describe how the pilgrimage symbolises spiritual progress and how it would be beneficial in getting relief from sins and worldly affairs. Pilgrimage is prescribed as a duty for spiritual merit. The notion of Hindu pilgrimage symbolised different contexts like route, place, riverbank, and also sites associated to sages. The typology of sacred places is described in ancient texts on the scale of location, merit, associational context, and intensity of power. In general, a four-tier hierarchy of pilgrimage places is accepted. According to ancient mythology and the Hindu mind-set still the most popular sacred place is Kashi (Banaras), eulogised as one of the three ladders to the heaven; the others are Allahabad and Gaya. These three together form ‘bridge to the heaven’. Keywords: cosmic circuit, faithscape, ghostscape, Hindu belief system, Kumbha Mela, mandala, sacredscape, typology.
2017
The 'ritual landscape' is result of maintenance of sacredness and of reciprocal and interfacing relationship between human faith and landscapes in the trajectory of 'time-space-ritual' routines through variety of rituals and performing functionaries. The bank of the Sarayu River at Ayodhya consists of a number of sacred places where devout pilgrims perform variety of the rituals that emerged to form a distinct ritual landscape, thus developed ritualscapes. Ayodhya is the sacred place not only for Hindus, but also to other religious groups, like Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Muslims; that is how multicultural ritual landscapes emerged. Every year around 1.9 million pilgrims pay visit to Ayodhya, and pay visit to variety of sacred places and perform rituals, including sacred walks along the three important pilgrimage routes, i.e. Panchakroshi, Chaudahkroshi, and Chaurasikroshi. The present paper describes the historical and mythological values of varying components of ritual landscapes in the frame of variety of religious places, and finally attempts to develop Ayodhya as a city of global understanding and harmony. Keywords: ritual landscapes, ritualscapes, sacredscapes, faithscapes, pilgrimage and routes, religious heritage.