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Pilgrimage to tirthas, India's sacred
zones, is one of the oldest strands of the Hindu
tradition, and one of the most prominent forms of popular
piety practiced in India today. Tirthas are
"crossing places" which act as portals linking
heaven and earth. There are many different types of
tirthas. There are tirthas whose sanctity is imbued in
the landscape, such as the Himalayan mountains and the
Ganga river. There are other tirthas famous as pilgrimage
sites for the divine images housed there such as the
great Vishnu temple of Badrinath in North India. Tirthas
vary in importance from small shrines of local
significance to places of pan-Indian importance
attracting pilgrims from across linguistic, sectarian and
regional boundaries. Diana L. Eck, a historian of
religions from Harvard University writes,
For
Hindus, pilgrimage to the tirthas has been an
important unifying force, not only for sects and
regions, but for the wider Hindu perception of what
constitutes the land of India. Everyone knows how
diverse India is, in race, language, religion, and
sect. In its long history there have been few
centuries of political unity until modern times. But
one thing Hindu India has held in common is a shared
sense of its sacred geography.
Furthermore,
The
whole of India's sacred geography, with its many
tirthas - those inherent in its natural landscape and
those sanctified by the deeds of gods and the
footsteps of heroes, is a living geography...The
recognition of India as a sacred landscape woven
together north and south, east and west, by the paths
of pilgrims, has created a powerful sense of India as
Bharat Mata - Mother India. Pilgrims have
circumambulated the whole of India, visiting hundreds
of tirthas along the way, bringing water from the
Ganga in the north to sprinkle the linga at
Ramesvaram in the far south and returning north with
sands from Ramesvaram to deposit in the riverbed of
the Ganga (History of Religions 1981: 323-324).
One
of the earliest discussions of the efficacy of a
"grand tour" of tirthas as ritual practice is
found in the chapter "The Tour of Sacred Fords"
within the Indian epic poem the Mahabharata. It is
suggested here that performing pilgrimage is equal in
merit to the great Vedic ritual practice of horse
sacrifices. Other texts suggest performing a pilgrimage
to the char dham, the four divine abodes residing at the
four compass points of India. These four pilgrimage
places, Badrinath in the North, Puri in the East,
Ramesvaram in the South and Dwarka in the West delineate
the furthest limits of the sacred land. Pilgrimage to
these four "abodes" is called mahaparikrama,
the "great circumambulation."
Today,
with the advent of modern transportation millions of
people go on pilgrimage every year and many accomplish
abbreviated forms of Pan-Indian pilgrimage tours. In the
modern context pilgrimage functions as a form of
religious tourism which justifies and encourages groups
of people to travel to the great tirthas and the
religious melas (fairs). In traveling to religious
festivals villagers are exposed to parts of India they
may have never seen before and are able to meet people
from diverse ethnic backgrounds. For me, this was held
true when I attended the Ganga Sagar Mela at Sagar Island
near Calcutta. On a remote island in the mouth of the
Ganga river delta over 450,000 pilgrims gathered to pray,
bathe and worship. At this festival I met pilgrims from
places as far away as Nepal, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.
The
photographs and stories within this website are part of a
project re-creating a pan-Indian tirtha-yatra. I am
making a clockwise circumambulation of the significant
tirthas found throughout India. The goal of this project
is to photograph pilgrims in the landscape of the tirtha
and to document significant religious festivals that take
place in these locations. In traveling the width and
breadth of the country a visual record of both the
sanctity and the complexity of India will be achieved.
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