Professional Documents
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377 12 Singh Rana P B 2012 Sacredscapes
377 12 Singh Rana P B 2012 Sacredscapes
[377-12]. Singh, Rana P.B. 2012. Sacredscapes and Manescape: The sacred
Geography of Gaya, India; in, Dutt, Ashok K.; Wadhwa, Vandana;
Thakur, Baleshwar, and Costa, Frank J. (eds.) Facets of Social
Geography: International and Indian Perspectives. Foundation
Books, Delhi, for Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd.: pp.
502-525 [chapter 27]. ISBN: 978-81-7596-801-1.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
27
Sacredscape and Manescape:
The Sacred Geography of Gaya, India
RANA P. B. SINGH
Mythology and Historical Geography
Gaya, a city in Bihar, is a famous pilgrimage centre. The literal
meaning of ‘Gaya’, ‘let’s go to another place’, refers to contact with the
other realm; it symbolises a destination linking this world of humanity and
the world of divinity (ancestral-world). According to one of the most
authoritative Sanskrit texts on pilgrimage and sacred places, the Tristhalisetu
(TS) meaning ‘Bridge to the Three Holy Cities’, dated circa sixteenth
century, of the three pillars of the ‘bridge to the realm of soul’, Gaya is the
eastern most. The others are Varanasi and Prayaga (Allahabad), both along
the River Ganga in the west. The name ‘Gaya’ was referred in the earlier
Vedic text, the Rig Veda, RV (10.63,64) as a sage and writer, while later in
the Atharva Veda, AV (1.14.4) Gaya was mentioned as a mystic and
sorcerer. The first clear indication of Gaya as holy place is metaphorically
eulogised in the RV (1.22.17): ‘Vishnu crossed this and placed his first foot
in three ways: the whole of it is encompassed in his steps’. The treatise
Nirukta, NrT (12.19), circa eighth century BCE, explains the above passage
in two ways. The first refers to three steps of Vishnu, viz. the earth, the
firmament, and the heavens, according to Shakapuni. The second according
to Aurnavabha the three steps are the three sacred places called Samarohana,
Vishnupad, and Gayashirsh. It is accepted that Nirukta’s author Yaska was
born long before birth of the Buddha (cf. Kane, 1973: 645). The
Mahabharata, MbH (3.87.11; 3.95.9) and the Vishnudharmasutra, VdS
(85.4) also mention Gaya as an altar (vedi). The ‘Forest Retreat Canto’ of the
MbH (3.85) described Gaya together with other holy places, and in another
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canto Gaya (MbH, 13.25.42) is mentioned with respect to Ashmaprastha
(modern Prestashila) where one gets release even from the sin of by killing a
Brahmin.
The vast corpus of puranic literature of the sixth to the eleventh century
consists of descriptions of Gaya (cf. AgP, 114-116; PdP, I, 38.2-21; GdP, I,
62-86; NdP, II, 44-47). In many instances the same verse is cited at several
places in different contexts. The most elaborate mythology of Gaya is
recorded in the Gaya Mahatmya, GM, a part of the Vayu Purana, VyP
(chapters 105-112; about 560 verses), dated circa the eighth to the ninth
century (cf. Kane, 1973: 651-652). The GM also cites verses from the
various Puranas and also the Mahabharata (for example 13.25-42). Two
other chapters of the Vayu Purana (70.97-108; 82.20-24) describe many
sacred spots and sites of Gaya. The glory of Gaya was already accepted in
the period of Mahabharata, especially for ancestral rites; says the
Mahabharata (3.87.10-12):
A man should aspire to have many sons; the reason is that one of them
may go to Gaya (and liberate the ancestors by offering them Pindas, rice
balls) or may perform an Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice) or may let loose a
Nila bull (cf. Dave, I, 1970: 32).
Before Vishnu and Shraddha gained importance in Gaya, Sun worship may
have been the dominant feature of the area. Widely scattered stone slabs
depicting the nine grahas with prominence of the Sun support this
possibility.
In the vicinity of the greater territory of Gaya (Gaya Mandala), there
exist fully nine temples of the Sun god at Deo (Devarka), Madanpur (Umga),
Hanspura (Deokunda), Madhusrava (Chyavanyashram), Ular, Belaur,
Baragaon, Aungari, and Pandarak (at bank of the River Ganga), all
impressive in their grandeur and architectural finesse. In Bihar the most
popular festival involves worshipping the Sun god as ‘mother’ (Chhatha).
These nine places with their historical monuments, settings associated with
great tanks and the folk mythologies attract devotees from all parts of Bihar
during spring and autumn.
The worship of the Sun god is described as a fasting ritual and festival in the
Mahabharata (3.16.31); people believe that this tradition has been
maintained since then. Since the Sun is the basis of all living beings on earth,
the sun’s energy might have been conceived as motherly power in the
animistic belief of the past. Most likely, the worship of sun as a goddess
started somewhere in the remote past because of this perception. It is also
argued that the fertility practices, like sun worship together with water
offering, had been common and later on adopted by the brahmanical
tradition. With the passage of time, the textual recognition of the festive
ritual honouring the children-protecting goddess (Shashthi) and the folk
tradition of Chhatha got integrated. The most popular festival in Bihar is
Chhatha – worship of Sun god as ‘mother’ (Chhathi Maiya) is celebrated
with great pomp and deep faith. This festival is held twice a year, that is in
the light-half (moon cycle) fortnights of Chaitra (March-April, spring), and
Karttika (October-November, autumn). Gaya is one among the primary
destinations for devout Hindus for celebrating Chhatha festival. Gaya’s Suraj
507
Kunda (‘sun’s water pool’) is the main site where over 50,000 devotees take
part in the autumn festival, and around 10,000 participate in the spring
festival.
The worship of Chhatha as ‘mother’ may be compared with the 16 mothers
description given in the Brahmavaivarta Purana (Prakriti section 1) that
mentions Katyayini who takes care of children. The wife of Skanda is also
referred as Shashthi who protects children from sickness (cf. SkP,
Maheshvara Khanda), and the festival in her honour is called
Skandashashthi. However, this festival is prescribed to be celebrated in the
month of Karttika and the main deity is Skanda. By this description it is
obvious that the Skandashashthi has no direct association with Chhatha.
According to the Gadadhara Paddhati (Kalasara, 83-84) this festival is
celebrated on the 6th dark half of the Chaitra, which again never corresponds
with the celebration of Chhatha in present times. The contemporary festival
of Chhatha is close to the description presented in the Hemadrivrata (1.608-
615) and Nirnayasindhu (134); both referring to the Bhavisyaottara Purana.
Another important motive of the Chhatha festival has been to get relief from
the skin diseases. The Sun god has very strong association with the power to
get relief from skin diseases, especially leprosy. Though protection of the
child and relief from the skin diseases are the primary motives, it is believed
that by attending these festivals there will be overall prosperity and progress
of the whole family.
The most popular Chhatha is of the autumn, whose initiation starts on
the 4th light half of the Karttika with a purificatory bath, taking vows,
having simple food, cleaning the house and preparation and arrangements of
the ritual items. The concluding ritual is performed on the 7th day by
offering the holy water to the Sun and distributing offered fruits and special
food stuff (prasada) among the friends and family members.
On the fourth day of waxing fortnight in the Hindu month of Karttika,
when the Sun passes through Sagittarius (dhanu rashi), that results into an
auspicious moment of crossing and considered to be the best time for taking
vow (sankalpa) for performing the Chhatha. On this auspicious time of the
day devotees take the vow by offering holy water (of the Ganga, or in the
name of the Ganga) six times to the Sun god. Devotees eat only once in a
day and request the Sun god to give them vigour and energy for successful
completion of the Chhatha. On the fifth day the devotees taking the vow fast
for the whole day, not even taking a drink of water. Early evening they again
have holy dip and perform some rituals; and finally take plain chapati
(Indian bread) and khir (rice cooked in milk), considered to be pure food.
508
Many of the devotees never eat at all. They believe they receive more merit
by this austerity. As the intensity of their hardship increases, the merit
received also increases.
The sixth day is the hardest day of fasting with no food and no water at
all for 24 hours. Devotees and family members are busy in preparation and
arrangements for the main puja (rituals). In the evening they arrange sacred
fruits (e.g. coconut, banana, citrus, custard apple, apple, sugarcane, guava),
sacred food stuff (made of hard bread fried in clarified butter) and colourful
new clothes, especially saris and shawls in baskets made of bamboo. At the
ghat near the water site they draw a small design depicting the cosmos using
cow dung and holy water. Then begins the group song in honour of Sun god
as ‘Mother’ or Chhathi Maiya. The devotees take special vows (manauti),
set the koshi lamps (elephant-shaped pot made of mud with 21 oil lamp on
the top) and light them. Attached to these lamps are 14 other cups that are
filled with germinated gram and fruits. After watching the sun set, they
return home carrying everything back to their homes, or wherever they are
staying, for this puja. The devotees stay awoke all through the night, slowly
murmuring religious songs and listening to glorifying religious tales related
to Chhathi Maiya.
The seventh day of the ritual starts in the early morning, around 4’O
clock, by rearranging all the items at the ghat that they carried back the
previous day. They again organise their items from in their own mini-cosmic
design. The Chhatha festival finally comes to end with the devotees and
their families standing in the water, offering holy water to the rising Sun,
offering fruits and other prasad (sacred sweets) items and group chanting
and singing religious songs together. In the last prayer the devotees request
the Sun god ‘Mother’ to bless them with life and energy so that they can
come again next year to perform this festivals. In Bihar, almost every Hindu
performs this festival, irrespective of caste, creed, or social and economic
status.
Sacred Topography
Territorial Layers
Fig. 27.1: Gaya Mandala; Gaya is the centre and Belaur is the radial point.
Sacred Centres
According to various texts the number of holy spots varies and in many
cases are cited by different names too. The VyP mentions 324 holy spots and
images that correspond with the numerical cosmogony, i.e. 12 zodiacs X 9
planets X 3 mythical realms. By taking the AgP, GdP and VyP altogether,
the total number of holy spots comes to 432; this number may be compared
with the numerical symbol of 12 zodiacs X 12 months X 3 mythical realms.
According to the glorifying mythologies all the sacred spots and holy images
of the world get their manifestation in the holy territory of Gaya Kshetra.
This is comparable to cosmogonic frame of Varanasi Mandala, Kshetra, and
the Puri where exists 324 forms of Shiva, and other holy numbers like 144,
108, 72,...,etc also correspond to the various system of numerical symbolism
(cf. Singh, 1993: 59-60). Many of these holy spots have vanished, and now
only forty-five. These spots are known as vedis (altars) where the pindas
(balls) are offered in a systematic order. The offering starts at the bank of
Punpun river, and closes at the holy banyan tree, Akshayavata. The final
donation is given to the overseer priest at the Gayatri Ghat. The forty-five
active sites are easily arranged spatially into eight sacred clusters, where in
each cluster a sacred centre interlinks the associated images, and therefore
the cluster is known by its name. Usually such sacred clusters are under a
single sect of priests; of course it is not to be generalised that a sacred cluster
is characterised by strictly a single set of sectarian deities (cf. Vidyarthi,
1978: 7). Of the 324 sacred centres and spots described in the VyP, 84 are
easily identified (see Table 27.1).
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Uttaramanas
The holy tank of Uttaramanas is assumed to be an ancient pool (cf.
MbH, 12.152.13; MtP, 121.69) which in course of time dried and was filled
with silt. However, by mid 11th century it was renovated, made broader and
deeper by King Vishvarupa’s son, Yakshapala, as mentioned in an
inscription of 1040 (Kielhorn, 1887:63). This was misinterpreted by Barua
518
(1975,II: 67) that this water pool was made by Yakshapala and later on
added in the Gaya Mahatmya, GM. Kane (1973:651) opines that the spot
was already famous as a site of ancestral rite by 8th century (cf. AgP,
115.10; VyP, 82.21). At the water pool of Uttaramanas three other holy
spots are manifested, viz. Udichi in the northwest corner, Dakshinamanas in
the southwest corner, and Kankhal at the centre. The sacrificers are advised
to offer rice-balls at the four above sites, followed by bank of the Phalgu
river. Altogether these five are known as Panchatirthi (cf. TS, 360; VyP,
111.1).
Says Devereux (1996: 158), ‘Other people in other times and places have
mapped the world quite differently from the way we have, and no less
truthfully in their own terms’. The maps have the inherent quality of
sensuous feelings and cognition. Such notional maps showing the mythology
and sacredness in space and pictorial symbolism are true representative of
cultural system when deep sense of faith works in the formation of spiritual-
mental topography fitting into the setting of physical topography – may be
termed as faithscape (cf. Singh, 1995a: 97). Such maps produce a visual
impression to remember the mythology, and further to convince the pilgrim
or sacrificer to develop a sense of feeling. Like other similar maps for
several sacred cities of India, the pilgrimage cognitive map of Holy Gaya is
an example of cartography where faithscape is portrayed through the means
of pictorial signs and mythological support concerning sacred topography
(cf. Dubey and Singh, 1994: 324-326). These pilgrimage-cognitive maps
show visitors the mythical shape of the city and give them an image to help
them remember the experience when they return home. These maps are also
visual texts which can be read in order to gain a better understanding of the
sacredscape of a holy place, and also in wider perspective Hindu
mythologies. By mapping the religious and mythological features of the holy
city in the frame of cosmic design, these maps also help to expand the
cosmogonic context leading to the emergence of pilgrimage mandala.
Avoiding the sense of distance, the cognitive map of Gaya highlights
various symbolic representations of mythology and topography. The Phalgu
river is prominently shown as base on whose bank the holy Gayasur was
lying down and on his body a fire altar was made where the Trinity of Hindu
pantheon, i.e. Brahma (‘creator’), Vishnu (‘preserver’), and Shiva
(‘destroyer’) had performed sacrifice. All the important hills associated with
ancestral rites are shown prominently while marking the divinities’ images
and devotees. The directional and locational contexts are also given some
consideration. All the important sacred centres visited during the course of
ancestral rituals are well marked, including the centres at Bodh Gaya.
The mythic story of demon Gayasur and Vishnu is prominently
shown with sketches that help the devotees to understand the meanings and
messages manifested there. By performing ancestral rites at those sacred
centres sacrificers become a part of communication between the worlds of
humanity and divinity. Sacrificers and pilgrims seek to realise the sense of
interconnectedness among the two. The map also suggests the procedures of
520
pilgrimage for seven days and the cluster of holy centres to be visited on
respective days in the sequence of time and space, from north to south--
starting at Prestashila and concluding at Akshayavata or Bodhi Tree (Bodh
Gaya).
Epilogue
The vitality and spiritual magnetism of a major pilgrimage centre
such as Gaya may have fostered a transformation of the pilgrimage system to
include ancestral rites, which have been now overtaken solar symbolism and
rituals. In the earlier phases of evolution and manifestation of the fire
element of the sun, the upward aspect of the hills, the liquid attribute of the
river, and the pillar imputation of the tree together interlinked to
cosmological frame resulting to the formation of the sacred geography. The
sacred geography is the basic frame of cosmic geometries and may be
interpreted through the locational alignments, interrelated correspondences,
and celestial occurrences like winter and solar solstices. These attributes are
always made alive and awakened by the sacred performances, like ancestral
rites and rituals held at the conjunction of sacred time in a sacred place and
at a sacred spot. That is how a unique environment is evolved where
sacrality, spatiality and temporality meet -- this wholeness is referred as
‘faithscape’. In Gaya the complexity of reference points for territorial
delimitation, temporal phases of rituals, their locational association, and the
sacred routes mobilising the ritual functionality -- altogether converged into
a system that makes an order. Complexity becomes an order in the
maintenance and continuity of the tradition.
Pilgrimage is a journey, and a pilgrimage place is an archetype of
universality of patterning where wholeness gets manifested to have the
power of transformation value. In the context of Jungian thought pilgrimage
is a psyche reality of experience (cf. Clift and Clift, 1996: 83). Pilgrimage is
a way of healing the body, and healing the soul through cleaning the body by
walking and rituals, and revealing the soul by realisation and deep
experiences of the spirit inherent to the mother earth. For pilgrims the
experience of pilgrimage is mostly deep which starts from the visual realm
of exteriorisation and ultimately reach to the feeling of interiorisation. The
visual landscape, the empowered sacred sites and spots, the associated
wakening rituals, the faith carrier pilgrims (e.g. at Gaya) ― all speak for
themselves in the silent voice of manifested sacrality, what Eliade (1958)
calls ‘hierophany’.
By faith and rituals and by symbolic behaviour and involvement, a
521
pilgrim is able to transform himself or herself. Pilgrimage is a process of
faith-healing and soul mapping. The quest to know what happened at the
site, how sacredness is inherent there, why miracles happen there, why we
pay respect or give thanks, why divine spirit is more active there, etc. Such
questions awaken our inner call and kindle a desire to make a pilgrimage.
With this curiosity many pilgrims follow the path on which their predecessor
pilgrims walked in search of wonder, miracle, peace and divine experience.
Modern tourism often erodes the penitential dimension of pilgrimages
(Preston, 1992: 36); it is our dharma (moral duty) to save our heritage where
the spirit of humanity meets divinity (cf. Singh, 1995b, also 2000).
The very richness of solar symbolism at Gaya and intensity and openness
of the pilgrimage system may have provided the means for amplifying new
energy and ideas by being part of the realm of end of life where the ancestors
live. This realisation is a new beginning in itself. This dynamic nature of
Gaya has a great vitality, making it a ‘theosphere’ of opening to self-
transformation, as is the case in many self-organising systems.
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The Author
Prof. Rana P.B. Singh
Professor of Cultural Geography & Heritage Studies, Banaras Hindu
University, New F - 7 Jodhpur Colony, Varanasi, UP 221005. INDIA.
Email: ranapbs@gmail.com
§ Rana is researching in the fields of heritage planning, pilgrimages and
settlement systems in Varanasi region since over last three decades as
promoter, collaborator and organiser. On these topics he lectured at centres
in all parts of the world. His publications include over 215 papers and 40
books on these subjects, including Banaras, the Heritage City of India:
Geography, History, and Bibliography (IB 2009), and the eight books under
‘Planet Earth & Cultural Understanding Series’: ‒ five from Cambridge
Scholars Publishing UK: Uprooting Geographic Thoughts in India (2009),
Geographical Thoughts in India: Snapshots and Vision for the 21st Century
(2009), Cosmic Order & Cultural Astronomy (2009), Banaras, Making of
India’s Heritage City (2009), Sacred Geography of Goddesses in South Asia
(2010), and ‒ three from Shubhi Publications (New Delhi, India):
Heritagescapes and Cultural Landscapes (2011), Sacredscapes and
Pilgrimage Systems (2011), and Holy Places and Pilgrimages: Essays on
India (2011).