AN
OVERVIEW India is a
vast country, peopled with diverse and ancient civilizations, and its religious
geography is highly complex. To grasp the complexity of the situation,
it is important
to consider two aspects of Indian life: its characteristic of being an
ethnic and cultural mosaic and the ancient rural foundations of many of
its religious
and cultural
patterns. The process of racial and cultural mixture that began in India
more than 5000 years ago has been continuous into historical times. Although
isolated from the rest of Asia by oceans on three sides and impassable
mountain ranges to the north, India has experienced a near-constant influx
of differing cultural influences, coming mostly by way of the far northwest.
India in the third millennium BC was inhabited in the tropical south by
a people called the Dravidians, in the central and northeastern regions
by aboriginal hill and forest tribes, and in the northwest by the highly
advanced Indus Valley civilization known as the Harappan culture. The
religion of
the city-building Harappan peoples seems to have been a fertility cult
centered on the Great Mother, while the rural Dravidians and the various
tribal cultures worshipped a wide variety of nature spirits, both benevolent
and demonic. Around 1800 BC a nomadic people from the steppes of Central
Asia entered northwest India. Known as the Aryans, they brought with them
a sophisticated religion called Vedism, or Brahmanism, which worshipped
such powerful gods as Indra, the god of rain; Agni, the god of fire and
Surya, the sun god. Continuing waves of Aryan invaders entered northwest
India until about 600 BC. During this time the religion of Vedism developed
an increasingly complex form with esoteric rituals and magical Sanskrit
chants codified in the sacred texts known as the Vedas.
The
religion identified as Hinduism did not appear until the centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era.
Hinduism is
the aggregation of innumerable religious cults, beliefs, customs, and practices
deriving from the Vedism of the Aryans
the Great Mother
fertility cults of the Harappan peoples and the animistic, shamanistic,
and devotional practices of the widely
varying, rural-dwelling
indigenous cultures of south, central, and eastern India. Adding to and
further enriching this mix were
the concurrently
developing religions of Buddhism and Jainism. Indian culture has thus developed
a fascinating collection of
religious beliefs
and customs that range from simple animistic worship of nature spirits
in a common rock or tree to the
complex, highly
codified Brahmanic rituals practiced at the great pilgrimage centers.
In
India we find the oldest continually operating pilgrimage tradition in
the entire world. The practice of pilgrimage
in India is
so deeply embedded in the cultural psyche and the number of pilgrimage
sites is so large that the entire subcontinent
may actually
be regarded as one grand and continuous sacred space. Our earliest sources
of information on the matter of sacred space
come from the
Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda. While the act of pilgrimage is not specifically
discussed in these texts, mountain valleys
and the confluences
of rivers are spoken of with reverence, and the merits of travel to such
places are mentioned. Following the Vedic
period the
practice of pilgrimage seems to have become quite common, as is evident
from sections of the great epic, the Mahabharata
(5000 BC),
which mentions more than 300 sacred sites spanning the entire continent.
It is highly probable that most of these sites had long
been considered
sacred by the aboriginal inhabitants of the region, but came to be listed
in the Mahabharata only as these regions
came under
the influence of Aryanization. By the time of the writing of the Puranas
(sacred texts of the fourth to eleventh centuries AD),
the number
of sacred sites listed had grown considerably, reflecting both the ongoing
assimilation of pre-Aryan sacred places
and the increased
importance of pilgrimage as a customary religious practice.
Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas, and the action
of going on a pilgrimage tirtha-yatra.
The Vedic word
tirtha means river ford, steps to a river, or place of pilgrimage. In Vedic
times the word may have concerned
only those
sacred places associated with water, but by the time of the Mahabharata,
tirtha had come to denote any holy place,
be it a lake,
mountain, forest, or cave. Tirthas are more than physical locations, however.
Devout Hindus believe them to be
spiritual fords,
the meeting place of heaven and earth, the locations where one crosses
over the river of samsara
(the endless
cycle of birth, death and rebirth) to reach the distant shore of liberation.
Writing in Banaras: City of Light,
Diana Eck speaks
of tirthas as being primarily associated with the great acts and appearances
of the gods and heroes of Indian
myth and legend.
As a threshold between heaven and earth, the tirtha is not only a place
for the upward crossings of people's
prayers and
rites, it is also a place for the downward crossings of the gods. These
divine descents are the well-known avatars
of the Hindu
tradition. Indeed, the words tirtha and avatara come from related verbal
roots....one might say that the
avataras descend,
opening the doors of the tirthas so that men and women may ascend in their
rites and prayers.
Although tirthas
are primarily those places where a god or goddess or some spirit has dwelled
or is still dwelling, there
is another
reason certain places may be accorded sanctity in the Hindu tradition.
Saintly individuals who lead exemplary
lives imbue
their environments with the holiness that accrues from their spiritual
practices. Devotees who had visited the saints
while they
were alive often continued to seek inspiration in the same places after
the saint had died. Over many centuries,
folk tales
about the lives of the saints attained legendary proportions, attracting
pilgrims from great distances. If miracles
were reported
at the shrine, the saint's legends would spread across the entire country,
attracting still more pilgrims.
In India all temples are sacred places and thus religious visitors to the
temples may be described as pilgrims.
However, for
a temple to be considered a true pilgrimage shrine it must have a long-term
history of attracting pilgrims
from a geographic
area far beyond its immediate region. Given this condition, the number
of pilgrimage sites in India is still
extremely large;
one text, the Kalyana Tirthanka, describes 1,820 shrines of importance.
Based on our research and pilgrimage
in India, We
have selected a smaller number of shrines as primary pilgrimage sites.
Those sites include the Four Dhams
(divine abodes
at the four compass points); the Seven Sacred Cities and their primary
temples; the Jyotir, Svayambhu,
and Pancha
Bhutha Linga temples; the Shakti Pitha temples; the Kumbha Mela sites;
certain Vaishnava sites;
the Nava Graha
Sthalas (temples of the planets); the seven sacred rivers; the four Mutts
of Sri Adi Sankaracharya
(Badrinath/Joshimath,
Puri, Sringeri, and Dwarka); and certain others.
Before
proceeding to the tours section it is important to say a few words
about the matter of the large number
& extraordinary
diversity of deities in the Hindu tradition and about the iconic and aniconic
forms in which those deities are found.
The personification
of the mysterious forces of the universe into the anthropomorphic deities
of the Hindu tradition involves
both a convergence
into certain supreme deities (the main three deities today are the gods
Shiva and Vishnu and the goddess
Shakti) and
a splintering into a myriad of lesser deities. No Hindu seriously
believes in the multiplicity of gods but rather is
aware that
each of the many gods and goddesses are merely aspects of the One God (who
is also the god of all other religions)
The majority
of Hindus ally their beliefs with one or the other of the three cults,
worshipping Shiva, Vishnu, or Shakti as the
highest principle.
In doing so they do not deny the existence of the other two deities but
regard them as complementary,
though minor,
expressions of the same divine power. Hinduism is thus, in its essence,
monotheistic; a Hindu's worship of a
particular
personal deity is always done with the awareness that all deities are simply
representations of one unconditioned,
transcendental,
supreme existence, known as Brahma. In the Bhagavad Gita (a classic
text of Indian spirituality),
Arjuna asks
Lord Krishna which of two modes of spiritual practice is better: the worship
of the Reality as an impersonal
abstract goal,
or as a personal god. Krishna replies that while both ways lead to spiritual
freedom,
the former
way is very difficult and the latter easier because of the personal factor
involved in it.
The
primary intention of a pilgrim's visit to a pilgrimage site is to receive
the darshan of the deity resident
in the temple's
inner sanctum or open-air shrine. The word darshan, difficult to translate
into English, generally means
the pilgrim's
having a sight and/or experience of the deity. Hindus believe that the
deity is actually manifest in the
image, statue,
or icon of the temple. To receive the darshan of the deity is to have a
spiritual communion with it.
The image of
the deity may either be an iconic, or representational, image that bears
some resemblance to its
mythic subject,
or an aniconic form that merely symbolizes the deity. In a large number
of celebrated shrines in India
no beautiful
statues of the gods and goddesses are found, but only aniconic blocks of
stone or stumps of wood.
This tradition
of aniconic images derives from the rural folk religions of ancient India
and bears witness to the great antiquity
of the sanctity
of certain places. The shrine in its initial phase may have been only a
crude little hut covering a stone that
both represented
and contained some spirit of the natural world. As millennia passed and
the small rural village grew slowly
into a larger
and larger town, both the myths concerning the stone and the shrine surrounding
that stone were richly
elaborated.
It is therefore important when studying or visiting the often monumental
pilgrimage shrines of India to
remember that
they had their architectural genesis in the simple nature-sanctuaries of
the pre-Aryan rural folk,
and that they
had their mythological genesis in an ancient peoples' felt experience of
the varied characteristics
or qualities
of the earth spirit resident at a particular place.
The
kind of cosmopolitan existence India has is best reflected in its pilgrim
centres.
Religion is
the heartbeat of the nation and the followers of all the major religious
and sects,
viz. Hinduism,
Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Zororastrianism have lived here for centuries.
Together has come up temples,
mosques, gurudwaras,
churches, synagogues and religious and spiritual centres. Hinduism, Jainism,
Buddhism, Sikhism and
countless minor
cults and religious sects were born in India. Their religious and spiritual
centres dot the country as much as
those of the
faiths of Islam and Christianity which came from outside. There is a very
long list of temples, mosques
and tombs,
churches and gurudwaras spread all over the India.
We at C'MORE
have choosen a few pilgrimage itineraries keeping in mind the religious
sentiments of all.
However Our
Tours are not affiliated with any particular spiritual path. All are welcome!
Please
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AN
OVERVIEW
The
religion identified as Hinduism did not appear until the centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era.
In
India we find the oldest continually operating pilgrimage tradition in
the entire world. The practice of pilgrimage
Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas, and the action
of going on a pilgrimage tirtha-yatra.
In India all temples are sacred places and thus religious visitors to the
temples may be described as pilgrims.
Before
proceeding to the tours section it is important to say a few words
about the matter of the large number
The
primary intention of a pilgrim's visit to a pilgrimage site is to receive
the darshan of the deity resident
The
kind of cosmopolitan existence India has is best reflected in its pilgrim
centres.
to take you on your personal spiritual Yatra
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