Exploring Society I · Chapter 8 — How the Land Becomes Sacred

Think of a place where you automatically lower your voice and take off your shoes: a temple, a gurdwara, a mosque, a church or even a big old tree in your village. Something about that place makes people feel respect. That feeling is what this chapter calls sacredness.

Meaning. Here, something is sacred when people find in it a deep religious or spiritual meaning and treat it as holy, worthy of reverence. It may be a building, a natural feature such as a river or hill, a special journey called a pilgrimage, the route of that journey, or even the land itself. So sacredness is linked not only with religion, but also with geography and tradition.

Shrines of faiths that began outside India. A shrine is a place regarded as holy because it is linked with the divine, a sacred relic or a spiritual figure. India has shrines of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. People of other faiths also visit many of them, for example the Dargah Sharif at Ajmer in Rajasthan and the Velankanni Church in Tamil Nadu.

Faiths that began in India. These have even more sacred places.

• Buddhism: places the Buddha visited or where his relics (parts of his body or belongings kept for reverence) are kept, such as the Great Stūpa at Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh) and the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya (Bihar), where by tradition he attained enlightenment. Bodh Gaya now receives more than four million visitors a year.
• Sikhism: the takhts, seats of spiritual authority linked with the Sikh Gurus, such as the Akal Takht at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Takht Sri Patna Sahib in Patna and Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib at Anandpur. Sikhs hope to visit them at least once in life. Sikh tradition also records that Guru Nanak visited places such as Haridwar, Prayag, Mathura, Varanasi, Ayodhya and Puri, as well as some Muslim shrines.
• Jainism and Hinduism: countless sites, which we study in the next topics.

Why it matters. Almost every religion and school of thought in India has its own sacred places, and people of different faiths often visit each other’s shrines. The Indian landscape is dotted with places that hold deep meaning for someone.

Before trains and buses, a family from a village near Lucknow might walk for months to reach a holy place in the far south. Why would anyone do this? To answer, we need two words: tīrtha and tīrthayātrā.

Tīrtha. Literally, a tīrtha is a place where one can cross a river or other body of water. As a symbol, it is a place where a person can ‘cross over’ from ordinary worldly life to a higher, spiritual life. A tīrthayātrā is a pilgrimage to such places.

Two journeys in one. A pilgrimage is a physical journey across the land, but it is also an inner journey, with rules of good conduct such as simple food, patience and prayer. For at least 3,000 years, without modern transport, Indians have travelled across the Subcontinent in this way. Because of this, the whole land came to be seen as sacred.

A modern example. The historian Dharampal once met a group of about twelve villagers from near Lucknow on a train. They had spent three months on pilgrimage as far as Rameswaram, carrying their own flour, ghee and sugar. They were only changing trains in Delhi, because they still had to reach Haridwar before going home. This shows how strong the urge to visit tīrthas can be.

Jain tīrthas. In Jainism the Tīrthankaras are the great teachers who ‘make the crossing’ and guide others. Places where they attained liberation, and trees, ponds and hills where they meditated, are sacred. Examples are Mount Abu, Girnar and the Śhatruñjaya hill in Gujarat.

Hard paths with meaning.

• Sabarimala (Kerala), the hilltop shrine of Ayyappa, draws over ten million devotees a year. It was traditionally reached only by a hard trek through hills and forests. The difficult outer path stands for the difficult inner path.
• The Pandharpur wārī in Maharashtra is about 800 years old. Every year pilgrims walk together for 21 days to the Vithoba temple at Pandharpur. ‘Wārī’ means a pilgrimage held regularly.

What pilgrims met on the way. A pilgrim going from Madurai to Varanasi would cross many regions with different languages, foods and clothes, and would need places to stay and ways to communicate. The journey itself was an education.

In many Indian homes people touch the floor and ask forgiveness before stepping on it in the morning. Behind this small habit is a big idea: the Earth itself is sacred.

A divine presence in all of Nature. In Hinduism and in many folk and tribal belief systems, parts of Nature such as mountains, rivers, trees, plants, animals and sometimes stones are treated as sacred. Many rivers are honoured as goddesses (devīs), and some trees, plants and animals are seen as especially holy. In the end, the whole planet is sacred as Bhūdevī, Mother Earth. A famous sculpture at the Belur temple in Karnataka shows Viṣhṇu, in his boar avatar, rescuing Bhūdevī from a demon.

Examples from tribal and local traditions.

• Niyam Dongar, a hill in the Niyamgiri range of Odisha, is sacred to the Dongria Khond people. They believe it is the home of Niyam Raja, the deity who provides everything they need. Cutting trees there is forbidden, because it would show disrespect.
• In the early 2000s the Government of Sikkim listed many sacred mountains, caves, lakes, rocks and hot springs to be protected from any damage.
• The Todas of the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu link many mountain peaks with their gods. They also treat many plants, Shola forests, wetlands, particular stones and single trees as sacred.

Why this matters for the environment. When people believe a hill is the home of a god, they do not cut its trees or dig it up. When a river is a mother, people are expected to keep it clean. Belief and protection go together. In this way sacredness has helped to conserve forests, water and wildlife for centuries.

Compare two views. One person looks at a forested hill and sees timber and minerals to sell. Another sees the home of a deity that gives water and food. The first view may lead to cutting and mining; the second leads to care. The way we see Nature shapes the way we treat it.

Imagine a game in which you must collect four stamps, one from each corner of India. To finish it you would cross mountains, plains, deserts and coasts. Some pilgrimage networks in India work almost like this, and that is what makes the whole land sacred.

Chār dhām. Many Hindus hope to make the chār dhām yātrā, a pilgrimage to four abodes that lie near the four corners of India: Badrinath in the north, Puri in the east, Rameswaram in the south and Dwarka in the west. They seem to have been chosen on purpose to cover the country.

Other networks.

• The 12 jyotirlingas are shrines of Śhiva spread across India, each with its own story and name.
• The 51 Shakti pīṭhas cover the whole map, including places in present-day Bangladesh and Pakistan.
• Many smaller regional networks also exist.

The story of the Shakti pīṭhas. The goddess Satī and her husband Śhiva were insulted by her father, and Satī gave up her life in the fire. Grieving and angry, Śhiva carried her body and would not let the last rites be done. His anger threatened the universe, so Viṣhṇu used his chakra to cut the body, and its parts fell at many places. Each place became a Shakti pīṭha. The meaning is clear: the whole land is the body of the divine mother.

Sacred geography. When networks like these crisscross the length and breadth of India, the result is a sacred geography. The land itself becomes sacred, not just individual temples.

Cultural integration. Pilgrims meeting many languages, foods and customs on the way also noticed what they shared. People travelled for other reasons too: merchants to trade, teachers to debate and spread ideas, students to learn from great teachers. Their routes often met. Ideas, goods and stories were exchanged, new ideas grew and old ones changed. Over many centuries this became a major force in the cultural integration of the Subcontinent. In 1961 Jawaharlal Nehru wrote that what drew people from north to south and south to north on these journeys was the feeling of one country and one culture.

Ask your grandparents what they call the Ganga. Very likely they say ‘Ganga ji’ or ‘Ganga Maiya’, as if speaking of a respected elder. Rivers in India are not just water; they are honoured as mothers.

Sacred ecology. Tīrthas usually stand on a riverbank or lake shore, in a forest or on a mountain. So the natural landscape becomes a sacred space, a puṇyakṣhetra. Geography, culture and spirituality come together in such places, and this view has helped people protect Nature, since humans are seen as part of it.

Rivers since Vedic times. The nadīstuti sūkta of the Ṛigveda is a hymn in praise of rivers that names 19 rivers of the ancient northwest. Even today, a common prayer used in rituals invites seven great rivers, the Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri, to be present in the water being used. These rivers were lifelines of Indian civilisation, and their sources, tributaries and towns are pilgrimage places too.

Confluences and the Kumbh Mela. A sangam is a place where rivers meet. Prayag (Prayagraj) is the meeting point of the Ganga, the Yamuna and the unseen Sarasvati. The Kumbh Mela comes from the story of the churning of the ocean (amṛita manthana): gods and demons churned the cosmic ocean for amṛita, the nectar of immortality. Viṣhṇu, as Mohini, took the pot (kumbha) away from the demons, and a few drops fell at Haridwar, Prayagraj, Nashik and Ujjain. The Kumbh Mela is held at these four places, and bathing there at the set time is thought very auspicious. UNESCO lists the Kumbh Mela as intangible cultural heritage.

Mountains. Around the world, mountains are linked with gods and heroes, and their height makes them seem a gateway between earth and heaven. That is why many tīrthas sit on hilltops: Mount Kailash, Vaishno Devi near Katra, Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu and the Tirumala hills of Lord Balaji. The hard climb tested the body and the mind. Today roads reach many of them, but the idea of the climb as a spiritual effort remains.

Walk through an Indian village and you will often find a big tree with red threads tied around it, turmeric and kumkum on its trunk and a small lamp at its foot. Trees have been honoured in India for thousands of years.

The peepul tree. The peepul or pipal (aśhvattha in Sanskrit), also called the bo or bodhi tree, is sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Its scientific name, Ficus religiosa, means ‘sacred fig’. The tree at the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya is said to descend from the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. Peepul leaves appear even on a seal from Mohenjo-daro, so the tree has been important for millennia. It is also useful: its leaves are used for some skin problems, its bark for stomach problems, and because it stays green almost all year, it feeds and shelters many birds and animals.

The epics in every village. The Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata describe pilgrimages, sacred rivers, forests and mountains. In almost every region, local and tribal traditions say that Rāma or the Pāṇḍavas passed through their area, and shrines mark such places, such as a shrine in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. In this way many communities made the epics their own.

Sacred groves. Many rural and tribal communities chose to protect certain forests from hunting, tree felling and mining because they saw them as the homes of deities. These are called sacred groves. Because no one harmed them, they now shelter rich biodiversity, and many have small ponds or springs that help conserve water.

Bats, gods and people. A local chronicle from Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu says the deities of the groves protect fruit bats, and seeing one is lucky. Bats pollinate flowers and spread seeds, so protecting them keeps the forest healthy. Deity, ecosystem and people support one another.

A warning. India once had many thousands of sacred groves, but their number is falling as land is taken for farming and industry. Many communities still protect them.

Visit any big temple town today and you will find shops selling flowers, sweets, lamps, cloth and souvenirs, plus hotels, buses and guides. Pilgrimage has always been tied to the economy.

Pilgrims and traders. Pilgrims needed food, clothes, utensils and shelter, and traders supplied them. So pilgrimage routes and trade routes often overlapped. Some traders were pilgrims too, carrying goods to distant towns while visiting shrines. Recall two great ancient routes:

• Uttarapatha, linking the northwest with the eastern parts of the Subcontinent;
• Dakṣhinapatha, running from Kaushāmbī through Ujjayinī (Ujjain) to Pratiṣhṭhāna (Paithan).

Goods on these routes included shells, pearls, precious stones, gold, diamonds, coins, cotton, spices and sandalwood. If you trace the trade-route map and place it over the map of tīrthas, many lines and places match.

Sacred geography around the world. India is not alone. Ancient Greece had sacred mountains and groves, and Native Americans saw Nature as sacred. The Maori of New Zealand regard the mountain Taranaki Maunga as their ancestor. After their long efforts, a law recently gave the mountain the rights and responsibilities of a person, and community elders speak for it. This helps protect it from harm.

The sacred under strain. Many sacred rivers, such as the Yamuna, the Mahanadi and the Kaveri, are badly polluted, and many sacred places have been damaged. The old harmony between people and sacred land, which kept shared values alive across the Subcontinent for thousands of years, is under great pressure.

Whose job is it? Our Constitution reminds every citizen that it is our duty to protect our natural environment and value our heritage. When a river is drained almost to nothing or a sacred hill is threatened, communities have spoken up to protect both their environment and their beliefs. In a world worried about sustainability, the idea that land, rivers and forests are sacred has much to offer.

A thought to discuss. The environmental thinker David Suzuki said that the way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If we see a forest as a sacred grove rather than just timber, we will treat it differently.