South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Volume 36, Issue 4, 2013 (pp. 554-570), Jun 2013
The growing popularity of ‘guru-devotion’ centres as pilgrimage destinations is an important phen... more The growing popularity of ‘guru-devotion’ centres as pilgrimage destinations is an important phenomenon that occupies a central place in contemporary religious practice in India. In this study, we consider how Shirdi, the epicentre of the global Sai Baba movement, is undergoing rapid transformations in its emergence as a destination for religious tourists. Sai Baba, a twentieth-century Maharashtrian saint, resided in the village of Shirdi for more than sixty years, from 1858 until his death in 1918. Since then, Shirdi has grown from a rural hamlet to a bustling town of approximately thirty thousand permanent residents with an estimated annual influx of eight million short-term visitors. Through focus on Shirdi as a pilgrimage centre associated with ‘guru-devotion’, we examine how socio-spatial transformations have created a new mosaic of ‘regional pluralism’ at the site. While the separate co-existence of different communities is one of the hallmarks of religious pluralism in India, we argue that the ‘complementary compartmentalisation’ of co-religionists hailing from different regions is a significant outcome of rapid urbanisation at pilgrimage sites, particularly those associated with guru-devotion.
Uploads
Writing by Andrea Farran
centers far and wide. In contemporary Uttarakhand, modern
māhātmyas are a nearly ubiquitous commodity in the bazaars of the state’s temple towns, such as Haridwar and Rishikesh, where eponymous site texts appear prominently among the stock items for sale at religious souvenir stalls. In this chapter, I consider change in Himalayan pilgrimage through the lens of
modern māhātmya. I first introduce readers to modern māhātmyas of Uttarakhand by recalling the classical Sanskrit literary genre of māhātmya, or religious encomium, as the basic source of inspiration for the modern genre, and then turn
to the hybrid content of the modern ones, with their distinctive style of imbricating Hindu scripture with travel ephemera. I then consider three accounts of changes in the 4-Dhām pilgrimage, in approximately thirty-year intervals, beginning with the pilgrim’s diaries of Sister Nivedita (1928) in 1896 and Swami
Tapovanam (1925, 1930) (Tapovanam Maharaj 1971), and concluding with Vishalmani Sharma Upadhyaya (c.1965) as an exemplar of modern māhātmya writing on Uttarakhand. In reflecting on modern māhātmyas of Uttarakhand, I show how these texts invite readers to personally “pocket” the Himalayas, through domesticating the mountains and representing the “land of the gods” as an accessible destination for pilgrims travelling by train, motorcar, and other modern means.
in an infinite variety of forms according to
differing regional, sectarian, and individual contexts.
The concept of prasāda is common to Sanskrit,
almost all modern South Asian languages,
and some Southeast Asian languages (e.g. Thai)
in orthographically modified forms. Looked at
broadly in Hindu and Indic civilizations, prasāda,
or the “sacred share,” has multiple levels of meanings.
While no treatment of prasāda can ever
be comprehensive, I take a multidisciplinary
approach in this article to highlight some contexts
for prasāda that are widely applicable to many of
the literally infinite forms that it can take.
revealed to be a core cultural category related to gratitude and beneficence that is characteristically South Asian in outlook. Taken here at the centre of analysis, study of prasada provides an opportunity to integrate insights from philological and ethnographic research on topics ranging from Hindu food and Hindu sectarian traditions, to aesthetic response theory and soteriological uplift.
Papers by Andrea Farran
centers far and wide. In contemporary Uttarakhand, modern
māhātmyas are a nearly ubiquitous commodity in the bazaars of the state’s temple towns, such as Haridwar and Rishikesh, where eponymous site texts appear prominently among the stock items for sale at religious souvenir stalls. In this chapter, I consider change in Himalayan pilgrimage through the lens of
modern māhātmya. I first introduce readers to modern māhātmyas of Uttarakhand by recalling the classical Sanskrit literary genre of māhātmya, or religious encomium, as the basic source of inspiration for the modern genre, and then turn
to the hybrid content of the modern ones, with their distinctive style of imbricating Hindu scripture with travel ephemera. I then consider three accounts of changes in the 4-Dhām pilgrimage, in approximately thirty-year intervals, beginning with the pilgrim’s diaries of Sister Nivedita (1928) in 1896 and Swami
Tapovanam (1925, 1930) (Tapovanam Maharaj 1971), and concluding with Vishalmani Sharma Upadhyaya (c.1965) as an exemplar of modern māhātmya writing on Uttarakhand. In reflecting on modern māhātmyas of Uttarakhand, I show how these texts invite readers to personally “pocket” the Himalayas, through domesticating the mountains and representing the “land of the gods” as an accessible destination for pilgrims travelling by train, motorcar, and other modern means.
in an infinite variety of forms according to
differing regional, sectarian, and individual contexts.
The concept of prasāda is common to Sanskrit,
almost all modern South Asian languages,
and some Southeast Asian languages (e.g. Thai)
in orthographically modified forms. Looked at
broadly in Hindu and Indic civilizations, prasāda,
or the “sacred share,” has multiple levels of meanings.
While no treatment of prasāda can ever
be comprehensive, I take a multidisciplinary
approach in this article to highlight some contexts
for prasāda that are widely applicable to many of
the literally infinite forms that it can take.
revealed to be a core cultural category related to gratitude and beneficence that is characteristically South Asian in outlook. Taken here at the centre of analysis, study of prasada provides an opportunity to integrate insights from philological and ethnographic research on topics ranging from Hindu food and Hindu sectarian traditions, to aesthetic response theory and soteriological uplift.