Abstract

The meaning of a symbol is not intrinsic and should best be seen in relation to the symbolic order underlying it. In this article we explore the ritual complexities pertaining to the body’s most lowly and dirty part: the feet. On entering sacred ground persons are admonished to take off their footwear. In many parts of Asia pointing one’s feet in the direction of an altar, one’s teacher or one’s elders is considered disrespectful. Divine feet, however, are in many ways focal points of devotion. By reverently bowing down and touching the feet of a deity’s statue, the believer acts out a specific type of expressive performance. The core of this article consists of a closer look at ritualized behavior in front of a particular type of divine feet: the natural ‘footprint’ (viṣṇupāda) at Gayā, in the state of Bihar, India. By studying its ‘storied’ meaning we aspire to a deepened understanding of the ‘divine footprint’ in both its embodiedness and embeddedness. Through a combination of approaches—textual studies, ritual studies, ethnography—we emplace the ritual object in a setting in which regional, pan-Indian, and even cosmogonic myths are interlocked. We conclude that by an exclusive focus on a single ritual object—as encountered in a particular location—an object lesson about feet, footsteps, foot-soles, and footprints opens up a particular ‘grammar of devotion’ in terms of both absence and presence.

Highlights

  • The narratives told about places of pilgrimage in India have a variety of sources

  • May be no more than cryptic fragments, they are cherished as authenticating perspectives on myths, consist of (1) written references made to a particular event or place in ancient texts

  • May be no more than cryptic fragments, they are cherished as authenticating perspectives on myths, (2) On a secondary level a place of pilgrimage may be mentioned and ‘storied’ in the great epics, miracles, divine agency, and the special power with which a specific location is said to be imbued

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Summary

The Object and Its Emplacement

The object is an octagonal basin, encased in silver. It stands on a low pedestal in the center of the shrine. Some devotees make gestures of reverence, touch the basin, hold out a baby to receive a blessing, and scatter rose petals Mourners throng around it and have their priest perform ancestor rituals. It is only when temple assistants briskly remove all the stuff that for a moment the inside of the basin becomes visible and shows, vaguely, an uneven rock surface with a slight indentation in the center.

Introduction
Of Feet and Footsteps
Of Divine Footprints
Scene Two
16 Man threeinto
Scene Three
The Footprint
The River
Gayā—rituals
The Tree
The Hills
Discussion
Full Text
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