reconceptualising the land

I'm currently reading Diana Eck's latest book, India: A Sacred Geography. Eck is best known for having previously written a book about Indian images called Darshan. Darshan is a unique Indian religious concept which refers to, amongst other related things, the moment that the worshipper looks up at the image situated at the dark centre of the temple (often after a lengthy circumambulation that has taken them into increasingly smaller and darker physical space) and meets the eyes of God. When you think about the fact that the image is believed by a large majority not to be a 'symbol' of God (as in, the one God of the universe), but an actual manifestation of God who has descended into its material form, this is an unbelievably potent idea.

This time, however, Eck is looking at the idea of India as a sacred whole. The word 'sacred' is deeply problematic in an Indian context. It assumes a distinction between 'sacred' and 'non-sacred', which many would suggest is largely meaningless in an Indian context. Talking about pilgrimage centres (which are dotted all over India, North to South, East to West, joined together as a vast web of tracks over the entire continent), she says:

....there are so many tirthas [pilgrimage sites] in the sacred geography of India that the whole notion of 'sacred space' as somehow set aside from the profane is cast into question. In Hindu India, sacred space is so vastly multiplied that there is little left untouched by the presence of the sacred, reminding us that ultimately what is at stake is not the capacity of the gods to be present in the world, but rather the human capacity to apprehend that presence. In Varanasi, they say, there is not a place as big as a sesame seed that is not a tirtha, and the same is said of many of India's great tirthas, and perhaps of India itself.... The world is saturated with the sacred.

I'm not quite sure why this interests me so much. It suggests to me that Native American idea of the land as a living body which must not be defiled, which has to be respected. Indian practices call into question almost all of the assumptions that Judaeo-Christian cultures are based upon; not only the idea of human dominion over the earth etc. but also the assumed separation between God and human.

It's no longer possible to take the view of nineteenth century European historians of religion and glibly say, 'Oh, a pantheistic religion, like the Greeks, seeing gods everywhere', or 'Look, primitive peoples believing that nature spirits control the earth'... This is a completely different way of understanding being in the world. What exactly does it mean to understand that there is not a place as big as a sesame seed that is not sacred? What are we talking about using the word sacred to define something that has no opposite - where no non-sacred is possible? How does seeing things this way change the experience of being human (and what might the wider consequences be of shifting to this world view?)


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the body, the earth

http://www.art-and-archaeology.com/india/uda2.html


The most ancient (recorded) Indian hymns (c. 1200-900 BC) personify the earth as a goddess. Even before this, however, the earth itself is born from a goddess:

1. Let us now speak with wonder of the births of the gods - so that some one may see them when the hymns are chanted in a later age.

2. The lord of sacred speech, like a smith, fanned them together. In the earliest age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence. 

3. In the first age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence. After this the quarters of the sky were born from her who crouched with legs spread.

4. The earth was born from her who crouched with legs spread, and from the earth the quarters of the sky were born...


6. When you gods took your places there in the water with your hands joined together, a thick cloud of mist arose from you like dust from dancers.

7. When you gods like magicians caused the worlds to swell, you drew forth the sun that was hidden in the ocean.

(from The Rig Veda, translated by Wendy O'Flaherty, 1981

Note on 'legs spread': a position associated both with yoga and with a woman giving birth

The goddess of the earth at this stage is Pritvi, who has hymns written about her. David Kinsley suggests that ideas about Pritvi suggest 'the awesome stability of the earth itself and (it's)... apparently inexhaustible fecundity'.  Pritivi is a goddess, but also the earth in a literal sense.

According to Kinsley, 'an underlying implication of perceiving the earth as a great and powerful goddess is that the world as a whole, the cosmos itself, is to be understood as a great, living being, a cosmic organism'. James Lovelock 's concept of Gaia was not the first!  This makes me think of Native American writers, who also express the idea of the earth as a living body/being; seeing mining, for example, as desecration.

Later Hinduism continues with the idea of the earth as a goddess, in the form of Bhu. According to Kinsley, however, the earth as Bhu is no longer seen as a stable support for all creatures and a source of fertility, but is portrayed mythologically as being oppressed by demons and evil forces. In both of the images here she is being rescued by an incarnation of Vishnu:

From  Harle, 1986

There are other later goddesses who maintain the idea of support and fertility, but the goddess of the earth itself becomes oppressed. That's interesting. And, for me, not just an obscure fact about the history of a distant religion.  Here is our earth, in all her beauty and fecundity, in need of rescue. What's ancient about that as an idea?

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