The imagined landscape: Patterns in the construction of Hindu sacred geography

Abstract

This is a study of the grammar of signification in the 'imagined landscape' of India, a landscape constructed of the pilgrimage places (tirthas) and pilgrimage networks that have long served to create a complex sense of place—locally, regionally, and nationally. Here I provide an overview of the patterns of signification that have generated this symbolic landscape characterised by its polycentricity, pluralism, and duplication. I look at the intricate interrelation of myth and landscape, in which myth 'takes place' in thousands of shrines and in the culturally-created mental 'map' of Bharata. The symbolic language of the body-cosmos, the avatarana from heaven to earth, the multiple patterns of four-dhams and self-manifest svayambhu images—all contribute to the shaping of this imagined landscape.