Organizer and Chair: Alison M. Shah, University of Colorado, Denver
Discussant: Richard H. Davis, Bard College
Religions claim histories in particular places and
help to define imagined communities. But collective identities are dynamic
and are reshaped by their changing salience in relation to other communities
as well as through contestation from within. Powerful leaders adapt religious
buildings and reinterpret inherited building traditions to ground new directions
in a group’s social development.
This panel takes up the rich topic of changing uses of religious buildings
in India. Bringing together a diverse set of disciplinary approaches including
religious studies, folklore, art history, and history, we probe the histories
embedded in transformations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic sites.
Our papers range from north to south India and across the Deccan plateau, from
reuse of long-neglected, ancient buildings in contemporary global religious
communities to subtle shifts of building practices within a single urban patronage
trend. This breadth allows us to explore, in a variety of political environments
and material forms, the flexibility of devotional buildings and their ties
to social movements. Taking up questions that develop within particular disciplines,
we ask: How do issues of authenticity get linked to community formation and
prestige-building? How is the past visually made present or absent in reuse
of inherited forms? How does local patronage intersect with imagined sectarian
boundaries? How do devotional practices at buildings shape social struggles?
Through these studies, we aim to open discussions of the relationships between
socially charged religious spaces and their physical built forms and to explore
ways to recover the political networks religious buildings hold.
Catherine Becker, University of Illinois, Chicago
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, archaeological excavations
at Amaravati, a Buddhist site in Andhra Pradesh, resulted in the almost total
obliteration of the massive stupa, which experienced its peak period of patronage
during the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E., and in the relocation of the site’s
lavish limestone relief carvings to numerous museum collections. In The Discovery
of Ancient India, Upinder Singh has rightly described this process as the “dismembering
of the Amaravati Stupa” (249). However, in January 2006, the stupa and
its environs hosted over 100,000 Buddhist pilgrims on the occasion of His Holiness,
the 14th Dalai Lama’s performance of a Kalachakra Initiation. The “ruined” stupa
at Amaravati was returned to worship, receiving a subtle facelift in preparation
for renewed devotion. These relatively minor physical changes, such as the propping
of fragmentary limestone drum slabs around the stupa, suggest that the Amaravati
stupa was never fully transformed from a “dead” archaeological ruin
into an “active” site of devotion. Rather, its manifestly ruined
state allowed the stupa to be malleable in terms of the new functions and meanings
it could accommodate. Indeed, the physical and performative “re-membering” of
the Amaravati stupa during the Kalachakra Initiation utilized the monument’s
ruination to add poignancy to a multitude of new religious, political and commercial
concerns, including the articulation of a global Buddhist community, the reunion
of a displaced Tibetan diaspora, and the marketing of Andhra’s ancient
cultural heritage.
Leslie C. Orr, Concordia University
In this paper, I seek to explore the shifts in patterns of use that took
place at sacred sites in Tamilnadu from early to late medieval times. A well-known
example of such a change is the elaboration of worship of consort goddesses
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in temples dedicated to Siva and
Visnu. In this case, a change in the focus of worship was marked by the construction
of new shrines, but sometimes there was a pre-existing potential for a shift
in devotees' attentions--inasmuch as several deities already inhabited the
sacred space, as we see in some of the earliest surviving temples in the Tamil
country from the seventh and eighth centuries. Basing myself on epigraphical
and architectural and art historical evidence, I will examine the processes
of shifting emphases and meanings through several case studies, including: the
case of the temple at Chitaral, now identified as a Hindu goddess temple, in
whose rock-cut interior are ninth-century images of Jain Tirthankaras; the Tiruvannamalai
temple, which was witness to the early dislodging of the group of seven goddesses
from the temple compound, as well as later “grass-roots” constructions
of shrines in front of gopuras and around pillars; and the Siva temple at Pollacci,
which was itself ignored by thirteenth-century patrons while the Subrahmanya
shrine was being refurbished and enlarged. I will conclude by considering
contemporary re-shapings and new understandings of South Indian temples as public
spaces and as monuments.
Alison M. Shah, University of Colorado, Denver
Sufi shrines traditionally mark a holy man’s eternal presence in a specific
landscape and provide destinations for spiritual devotion and worldly reward.
At the turn of the twentieth century, a novel act of patronage wed new technological
capacity to old ideas of Sufi spiritual centers. A door from the shrine of Baba
Farid in Punjab was shipped by rail and installed in the most popular Sufi shrine
in Hyderabad city. This act at once changed the meaning of the original door
and shaped new uses for the Hyderabadi building. This paper explores the politics
of the door’s new identity by analyzing interactions between changing
uses of material forms and struggles for social power in Hyderabad. As the city’s
traditional elites struggled with the dramatic political developments of administration
modernization, members of the old courtier class invested in Sufi shrine complexes.
Over time, shrine patronage spread to the new bureaucratic elites seeking to
establish themselves in Hyderabad. Through competing claims for power made by
investments in shrines, the control of charisma became increasingly politically
charged. The door of Baba Farid was used to position the Punjabi saint’s
charisma for both social and spiritual heritage. Baba Farid was the spiritual
ancestor of the Hyderabadi Chishti saint, but, equally importantly, he was the
biological ancestor of the nobleman who was the shrine's patron. The role of
wider social movements suggests how Islam’s cultural heritage can define
identities that are neither exclusively nor explicitly Muslim.
M. Whitney Kelting, Northeastern University
Contemporary Jain communities in Maharashtra are using two complementary
strategies for building Jain spaces. The construction of monumental Jain
temple complexes along the route of the new super-highways visually marks these
sites of modernity as Jain spaces. By calling themselves "tirtha," communities
claim the sites as historically Jain, thus indicating a long history for Jains
in the region. At the same time, local Maharashtrian sites are also written
into Jain mythology and those narratives are inscribed on Maharashtra’s
landscape through temple painting and sculpture. These two strategies work together
to argue for a link between Jain presence and economic prosperity in Maharashtra;
in a sense, these Jain spaces claim this community’s key role in the well-being
of the state. I will discuss the new directions of patronage and the issues
of claims of authenticity that arise at two Jain temple complexes: Sri Parsvanath
Mahatirtha, near Lonovala, and Sri Munisuvrata in Kalyan, near Bombay, in
order to set the contemporary temple building in the context of the on-going
project of claiming Maharashtra as a Jain space.
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