Abstract
After secular ideas of landscape ecology, this chapter deconstructs the understanding of sacred nature and natural landscapes in the subcontinent. Religious and philosophical thought has always influenced people’s social and ecological behaviour in India. The unique world views of nature in Indian thought through relationships between place, the idea of sacred, and narratives about sacred landscapes called sthala purāna are elucidated. The chapter also explains how secondary narratives called sthala māhātmya recount the human experience of the sacred and create a moral relationship between landscapes and people. As practices around sacred geography and pilgrimages are prevalent even today, I conclude this chapter with suggestions of the possible place centric, relationship-based ethics of sacred landscapes.
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Notes
- 1.
Parts of this chapter were published as a paper in a journal: Baindur (2009).
- 2.
While cosmologies are theories that relate to the origins of a universe according to a world view, cosmogonies include stories and myths too.
- 3.
It is, however, an onerous historical task to find out whether these folk traditions influenced the major texts or vice versa. It is clear that there have been exchanges at various periods of Indian history.
- 4.
In time, however, such local stories get absorbed into the larger mythologies of Hinduism or adapt to their own versions depending on the socio-political views of the people belonging to a place.
- 5.
The name is in Tamil, the local language. For details of this story, see Das (1964, p. 6).
- 6.
In Sanskrit, sthalā means place, purāṇa means history or ancient stories, so the word would mean ancient story of a place. These have been documented and published into written books only in recent times. Sacred groves also belong to this landscape category with their own stories.
- 7.
Annual festivals, rural fairs with folk narrative, and drama traditions often portray the narrative at the sacred place.
- 8.
Parts of this section are from Baindur (2010a).
- 9.
Emphasis in bold is mine.
- 10.
Verse 10, Chap. 83, Vanaparva, Mahābhārata. Trans by author.
- 11.
The word “landscape” devoid of its historical antecedents in the west would be ideal as the translation as it includes within it the word “land”.
- 12.
- 13.
For instance, in Talakaveri, the spring considered the birth place of the Kaveri, the bathing area is kept separate from the actual spring where worship is offered. Kalyanis, or special tanks, were constructed on the lake banks in Bengaluru to provide for the immersion of Gaṇeśa clay idols during the annual festival which would have otherwise polluted the lakes and tanks.
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Baindur, M. (2015). Sacred Geographies and an Ethics of Relating with Reverence. In: Nature in Indian Philosophy and Cultural Traditions. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 12. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2358-0_7
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