Hindu Pilgrimages in India

India is a vast country, peopled with diverse and ancient civilizations, and its religious geography is highly complex. India is the land of gods and diverse religions where lies the serenity of its heritage. 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 by way of the northwest and the southeast . 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 Harappan culture possessed a sophisticated religion called Vedism, which worshipped powerful gods such as Indra, the god of rain; Agni, the god of fire; and Surya, the sun god. During the millennia of the Harappan culture the religion of Vedism developed an increasingly complex form with esoteric rituals and magical chants, and these were later codified in the sacred Hindu texts known as the Vedas.

The religion identified as Hinduism did not actually appear until the centuries preceding the Christian era. Hinduism is an aggregation of the religious beliefs and practices deriving from the Vedism and 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 Jainism and Buddhism. 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. Our earliest sources of information on the matter of sacred space come from the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda. 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 (350 BC), which mentions more than 300 sacred sites spanning the sub-continent. It is probable that most of these sites had long been considered sacred by the aboriginal inhabitants of the region and only later came to be listed in the Mahabharata as different regions came under the influence of Hinduism. By the time of the writing of the Puranas (sacred texts of the 2nd to 15th centuries AD), the number of sacred sites listed had grown considerably, reflecting both the ongoing assimilation of aboriginal sacred places and the increased importance of pilgrimage as a customary religious practice.

Hindus call the sacred places to which they travel tirthas. The Sanskrit 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. 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.

India being the land of Gods has approximately 150 pilgrimage sites which are most rated by the pilgrims. These include the Four Dhams or 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; major Vaishnava sites; the Nava Graha Sthalas (temples of the planets); the seven sacred rivers (Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, Godavari, Narmada, Kaveri, and the Sarayu); the four Mutts of Sri Adi Sankaracharya (Badrinath/Joshimath, Puri, Sringeri, and Dwarka); the Arupadaividu (the six sacred places of Lord Kumara).

In discussing pilgrimage places in the Hindu tradition, it is important to say a few words about the number and diversity of deities in Hinduism and about the iconic and an iconic form 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. Each of the greater and lesser deities is understood as a sort of window or lens through which the whole of reality may be glimpsed.

In a large number of celebrated shrines in India there are no beautiful statues of the gods and goddesses to be found, rather only iconic blocks of stone or stumps of wood. This tradition of iconic 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 slowly grew 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 monumental pilgrimage shrines of India to remember that many of them had their architectural genesis in the simple nature sanctuaries of the archaic rural folk.

By Monika Garg

Monika

http://www.indiandiscovery.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Monika_Garg