Panel abstract EASAS conference

Convenor: Prof. Rana P. B. Singh, Dept of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India

Panel Abstract: In the increasing pace of ecotourism and heritage ecology, the deeper understanding of cultural traditions and their systems of interactions and communication become the vital issue with a view to searching global peace and harmonious relationship among the people. If pilgrimage-tourism and heritage planning be integrated correctly, it can significantly contribute to sustainable socio-economic development, promote ethical sense and environmental conservation. Specially the Indic culture has a vital frame and potentials for such development as it preserved and continued the deeper culture in the form of tradition like pilgrimages, rituals, architectural symbols, and above all the mind-setup. This panel will help to re-establish the basic message of religious practices (dharmas). For this purpose, three broad themes covered here:

(A) Evolution and Symbolism: Evolution of pilgrimage system, textual base and contextual reality, growth of sacred environment, pilgrimage archetype and mandala, sacredscape and cosmological principles, spatiality of time and temporality of space in the context of sacrality, travel genre and memory of landscape, heritage cities;

(B) Ritual Landscape: Ritualisation process, festive landscape, ritual landscape and faithscape, geometry of time, circulation network and linkages, hierarchy and patterns, sacred functionaries and sacred systems; and

(C) Cultural Heritage and Issue of Preservation: natural and cultural heritage, heritage ecology and application in planning, issue of ecotourism and environmental laws, heritage legislation, conservation of heritage and commitments, heritage zones, mass awakening and role of NGOs; and text, context and future prospects.

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

SESSION I (Tuesday 6 July, 13-18)

Paper 1 Title: Places of Peace and Power: Stonehenge – Machu Picchu – the Pyramids – Jerusalem – Banaras – Mt. Fuji – Mecca

Paper Abstract: Since prehistoric times sacred places have exerted a mysterious attraction on billions of people around the world. Ancient legends and modern day reports tell of extraordinary things that have happened to people while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, enlighten the mind, inspire creativity and awaken the soul to a knowing of its purpose in life. While contemporary science cannot explain the remarkable phenomena which occurs at the holy places, they continue to be the most venerated and visited locations on planet earth. What is the key to the mystery of the sacred sites and how are we to explain their power?
Explorer-anthropologist Martin Gray has spent 18 years as a wandering pilgrim visiting, studying and photographing more than 1000 sacred sites in 80 countries around the world. To share his insights and photographs with a wide audience, Martin lectures at museums, universities and conferences throughout the United States, South America and Europe. Based upon extensive scholarly research and his own mystical experiences at the sacred sites, Martin offers a fascinating discussion of the mythology and anthropology of pilgrimage places and a radical explanation of the miraculous phenomena that occurs at the sites. Featuring hundreds of stunningly beautiful photographs, the slide show is a magical blend of art, history and travel adventure, shamanism, inspiration and spiritual ecology.

Paper 2 Title: Dialectics of Nature and Culture: Conflicting Ideologies over the Management of a South Indian Pilgrimage

Paper Abstract: The thorough study of the spatial insertion of a huge pilgrimage, well known all over South India as Sabarimala Yatra in Kerala, in which the male members of the Hindu community form the core of the participants, provides exiting research material. A geographical analysis of this gathering related to the cult of Ayyappa, an ambivalent deity typical of that area, sheds indeed some light on the nature of links entertained between the multifaceted phenomenon of religious travel (pilgrimage) and the reflexive notions of territoriality and territory. Beyond the relevance of studying pilgrimage as a geographical ritual and phenomena, I propose here to deconstruct the pilgrimage though the analysis of the main discourses, which preside over the management of environmental issues and the refashioning of both cultural and regional identity. This presentation aims at bringing fresh inputs regarding the debate around nature and culture as each of these ideologies tends to favour one of the components of this dialectic or deny all of them. Let’s remind that the Sabarimala temple, which is the final and central link of a long chain of ritual places to be crossed by pilgrims before reaching it, is located in the Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Kerala, thus reinforcing tensions between the Kerala Forest Department and the TDB because the latter is constantly breaking environmental laws such as the Forest Conservation Acts (among many others) by cutting trees and misappropriating lands. The hidden objective of the TDB is to may their hands on more and more lands to build a new temple town contributing then to the destruction not only of the geographical and ritual networks of pilgrimage at the regional scale but also of the religious spirit which presides over this temple.

Paper Abstract: Pilgrimage are not only a journey trough space and states of mind. It is also a journey through sounds, rhythms and melodies. Devotional music has gained more of the marked in India and bhajans are common music among the pilgrims. This kind of music lacks the traditional emphasis on the ragas, but nevertheless takes elements from them and may even mix elements from different raga-s within one song. The modern devotional songs focus upon the lyrics that are normally addresses to a particular Hindu God. The rhythmic part, the talas that are so elaborated in Classical Indian music, are also simplified. In most cases it comes in the form of an eight-beat cycle with minimal of variations, thus giving the rhythm a monotonic character which emphasis the continuum. When the pilgrims come to the sights and enters the temple the sound-journey changes significantly. Bells and drums impose concentration and in the temple the devout faces the recital of the holy texts, the sources of Hinduism and much of its music.

Paper Giver 4: Prof. John McKim Malville, University of Colorado, USA, and Prof. Rana P. B. Singh, Department of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, India

Paper 4 Title: Time and the Ganga River at Asi Ghat: Pilgrimage and Ritual Landscape

Paper Abstract. During 0600 mornings between November 1999 and May 2001 we made hourly counts of visitors to Asi Ghat, the southernmost ghat along the Ganga in Varanasi. More than 1.3 million pilgrims and bathers were recorded during this period. The numbers of such visitors peak sharply during festivals, as pilgrims clearly watch the lunar-solar calendar very closely to establish the correct dates. There is a remarkable connectivity from year to year for certain festivals. For example on the day of Shivaratri, when an average of 22,500 came to Asi Ghat, there was a difference of total numbers of only 7% between 1999 and 2000. On days when more than 300 people arrive per hour at Asi Ghat, the numbers of visitors follow a power law distribution, similar to that of many of the self-organised systems of the natural world. With a catchment basin that includes most if not all of the sub-continent of India, the pilgrimage system of Varanasi behaves at times as large living organism, with energy flows due to human movement and specific patterns of behaviour. During the greatest festivals when more than 2500 people arrive per hour, the self-organisation of the Varanasi pilgrimage system intensifies partially due to increased mutual interaction of pilgrims who arrive in informal groups of family and friends or various kinds of pilgrimage tours. On non-festival days, especially in the cool mornings of winter, there may be fewer than 300 people arriving per hour, and there is no evidence of such a self-organised system.

SESSION II: Wednesday 7 July, 13–17

Paper Giver 5: Dr. Ravi S. Singh, Dept. of Geography, Kisan PG College, Bahraich, India, and Prof. Rana P.B. Singh, Department of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, India

Paper Abstract: Omnipresence and omniscience of the goddess are attested by the variety of goddess-images in the sacredscape of Kashi (Varanasi). The veneration of the goddesses initiated the process of establishment of shrines and temples. Processes of getting in close contact with the divine spirit, spatial manifestations, acceptance and recognition of Folk tradition by the Great tradition, and symbolic expression of identity, respectability of the feminine divine, etc. have shaped the human quest to establish goddess-images in various forms and at different places. Local mythologies are superimposed to justify the historicity and religious merit, and after passage of time it finally became part of the contemporary tradition. The spatial pattern of goddesses in Kashi is an outcome of representation of manifestive realities, acculturation process and maintenance and continuity of the tradition. The paper deals with the cultural, symbolic and spatial affinity of goddesses in Kashi; their number reaches 324 in the Puranas. The physical complexity of location converges into an order of patterning, which easily fits into the symbolic description in the mythology. This complexity can be explained in the context of fractal, and self-organised system in which the complexity of dis-equilibrium itself forms an order and finally results to equilibrium. This system is always re-created and rejuvenated by the ritual processes and the sacred performances.

Paper Giver 6: Ms. Xenia Zeiler, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Dept. of Ancient Indian History, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

Paper 6 Title: The Yatra of the Ten Mahavidyas – A contemporary pilgrimage in Banaras

Paper Abstract: The yatra, a recent development of the “Kashi Pradakshina Darshana Yatra Samiti”, is organised ca. once yearly and takes one day to complete. It covers the sites available in Banaras - small shrines as well as fairly large temples - connected to the individual Goddesses of the late 10th century conception of the Dasa Mahavidyas. This group of ten mainly wild and fearsome (ugra) individual Devis, namely Kali, Tara, Tripurasundari, Bhuvaneshvari, Chinnamasta, Tripurabhairavi, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi and Kamala, figures prominently in several tantric texts, but remains almost unspoken of in the puranic lore. Today Banaras shows the highest concentration of shrines to the individual Devis of the Mahavidyas in all India. This surely is the main reason for the emergence of a “Mahavidya pilgrimage”, a yatra unheard of in classical literature and being unique in contemporary India. Here this yatras history and the efforts of the organising Samiti to awake sensibility for conservation of cultural heritage shall be briefly accounted. Following the pilgrims path an introduction and observation of the individual Devis, the shrines and their locations in the sacredscape of Banaras will be undertaken.

Paper Giver 7: Prof. Rana P. B. Singh, Department of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, India

Paper 7 Title: Varanasi as Heritage City on the scale the UNESCO World Heritage List: From Contestation to Conservation

Paper Abstract: It has been realised that the cultural and natural heritages are increasingly threatened by destruction not only due to the traditional causes of decay, but also by changing social and economic conditions. It is decided to adopt a general policy, which aims to give the heritage a function in the life of the community, and maintaining it in a sustainable way. India has recently become a member of the general council. From India 24 properties are enlisted, however Varanasi has not yet been proposed for inclusion. This paper attempts to critically examine the rationales for proposing Varanasi as a heritage city in the WH List. In this context the status of Varanasi on the scale of UNESCO-WH List, the implications of the present Master Plan, and governance strategies are described. It is suggested that the City (District) Administration: (1) Draft and ratify a Manifesto committing itself to the conservation and protection of the city, (2) All built heritage assets of the city must be documented through a survey, listing, mapping, architectural plans of individual buildings, (3) A specific conservation plan must be drafted as an integral part of the development plan of the city, (4) A Conservation Cell must be created within the local Development Authority, consisting of various experts and institutions, and (5) Specific by-laws must be formulated for the development and preservation of heritage sites and areas. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the site as living organism.

Paper Giver 8: Ms Mariana Kropf, South Asia Institute of Heidelberg, Germany

Paper 8 Title: When Devi goes to dance. Masked goddess dances in the Kathmandu Valley and their relation to space and time

Paper Abstract: There are manifold manifestations of goddesses and goddess circles within Newar traditions of the Kathmandu Valley. They are present in temples, they have their pithas outside of human settlements. During festivals they are 'shifted' into their movable utsava murtis and taken out for chariot or litter processions. One distinctive feature of Newar tradition are the various Devi dances, all of them following structures bound to their respective ritual and mythological traditions. Not only major Newar towns have their divinized dance groups but also farmers' villages maintain ensembles dancing at distinctive times and selected places. The well-known Navadurga of Bhaktapur, the Harasiddhi dancers or the Mahakali-Nach groups follow their own patterns of assessing the divine bound in human form and related to specific places and times. The paper investigates central features of two dance ensembles localised in Khokana and Kathmandu respectively. As common feature they are both staging the Astamatrkas ('eight mothers') and their attendants, the victorious goddess being Si-Kali (Rudrayani) for Khokana village and Naradevi for Kathmandu. It will be shown that in both cases the myths enacted -- including buffalo sacrifice as a regular ritual sequence -- feature as a core theme the victory of the goddess over demonical forces. This will lead, within a broader frame, to an analysis of cycles attributed with qualities of creation, prosperity and destruction corresponding to manifestations of the goddess not only travelling in space but as well in time.

Paper Giver 9: Dr. Pravin S. Rana, Dept. of History of Art and Tourism Management, and Prof. Rana P. B. Singh, Dept. of Geography, Banaras Hindu University, India

Paper 9 Title: Behavioural Perspective of Pilgrims and Tourists in Banaras (India)

Paper Abstract: Pilgrims are the special tourists whose purpose is basically visiting a place where they are involved in religious activity. The behaviour of pilgrims and tourist depends on what kind of exposure they have before visiting the city, and associated perception, attitudes and motives they possess. The sacred city of Banaras/ Kashi has always received a very special image in each of the visitor’s mind. The first impression of the foreign visitors associated with this city refers to the religious notions like one of the most sacred cities for Hindus, the abode of Shiva in the form of Vishvanatha, and ghats along with Ganga river. The behavioural changes among the foreign tourists are noticed obviously. Domestic tourists-pilgrims visiting Varanasi mainly involved in rituals like ancestors’ rites, pouring ashes and flowers of their recently dead family members, and taking holy dip in the Ganga river. The Ganga river in Banaras is the main attraction for foreign and domestic visitors both, but the perceptual levels differ that results to variation in their behaviour. Their behaviour towards the city and host population will be discussed here in various contexts based on their the observation and interviews conducted in these purviews. During 2001 and 2002 detailed behavioural surveys of 150 each of foreign and domestic tourists were conducted, in addition to other related attributes. Finally the results are examined on the line of prospects of growth of tourism in this city.

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Panel No. 46

Panel Title: Spirit and Power of Sacred Places, and Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

SESSION I (Tuesday 6 July, 13-18)

SESSION II: Wednesday 7 July, 13–17