Mapping Sacred Geography in Medieval India: The Case of the Twelve Jyotirliṅgas

Abstract

In his recent article "Who Invented Hinduism?" David Lorenzen (1999) surveys a debate over the origins of "Hinduism" as a category encompassing the diverse religious traditions on the Indian subcontinent.1 As part of postmodern and postcolonialist critiques of research in the field of Indology, there has emerged the view that "Hinduism" was essentially invented in the nineteenth century, when Europeans "imposed a single conceptual category on a heterogeneous collection of sects, doctrines, and customs that the Hindus themselves did not recognize as having anything essential in common" (Lorenzen 1999: 632). There is no doubt that the British used their own conceptual systems to understand Indian worship, including Protestant ideas about God and a European understanding of the very category of "religion." What Lorenzen opposes is the implication that premodern Indians lacked an awareness of their religious beliefs and practices as distinct from other traditions and that contact with the British was the reason for the rise of this self-awareness.2 Lorenzen thus highlights many earlier points of cross-cultural contact. He proposes, more specifically, that "a much sharper self-conscious identity [emerged] through the rivalry between Muslims and Hindus in the period between 1200 and 1500" (Lorenzen 1999: 631). While it is likely that British colonialism had much to do with crystallizing current concepts of "Hinduism" as a single pan-Indian "religion," with a unified set of doctrines and a "canon" of sacred literature, he suggests that the conceptualization of "pan-Indian" religious ideology did not arise solely with the British. Rather, this encounter was but one historical moment in a much broader story. This article will expand upon Lorenzen' s insights through a focus on medieval Indian sacred geographies. The impulse to map the sacred geography of a given god or goddess is already evident in the Mahdbhdrata,3 which reached its present form sometime before the sixth century CE.4 This practice becomes intensified in the medieval period, as evident in the Sanskrit Puranas. The medieval compilers of the Puranas promoted a number of local pilgrimage sites as well as linking local and regional sites to more widespread story-traditions, including those of the Mahdbhdrata and other Sanskrit epics (that is, Rdmdyana and Harivamsa).