Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 Living Fossils: Impressions of a Once and Future World
- 2 Spiral Notebooks: A Multi-Local Shaligram Ethnography
- 3 Picked-Up Pieces: Constructing a History of Mustang
- 4 A Mirror to Our Being: Locating Muktinath, Finding Śālagrāma
- 5 A Bridge to Everywhere: The Birth/Place of Shaligrams
- 6 Turning to Stone: The Shaligram Mythic Complex
- 7 River Roads: Mobility, Identity, and Pilgrimage
- 8 Ashes and Immortality: Death and the Digital (After)Life
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - A Bridge to Everywhere: The Birth/Place of Shaligrams
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- 1 Living Fossils: Impressions of a Once and Future World
- 2 Spiral Notebooks: A Multi-Local Shaligram Ethnography
- 3 Picked-Up Pieces: Constructing a History of Mustang
- 4 A Mirror to Our Being: Locating Muktinath, Finding Śālagrāma
- 5 A Bridge to Everywhere: The Birth/Place of Shaligrams
- 6 Turning to Stone: The Shaligram Mythic Complex
- 7 River Roads: Mobility, Identity, and Pilgrimage
- 8 Ashes and Immortality: Death and the Digital (After)Life
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Shaligrams blur the boundaries between being and object and may be either or both. For this reason, Shaligrams are treated as manifest deities with their own will and agency and as ritual objects who organize community participation around ritual events and social norms. Furthermore, Shaligram practitioners do not typically view juxtapositions of “deity” and “fossil” or “stone” and “body” as incommensurate with one another. Rather, religion and science are leveraged as two narrative frameworks that present possibilities for different ways of knowing. This results in an understanding of Shaligrams as ammonites, Shaligrams as persons, and Shaligrams as deities that views each as one part of a larger reality.
Keywords: Tirtha, darshan, dham, ontology, personhood
Ato’dhisthana Vargesu Suryadisviva Murtisu
Salagrama Silaiva Syad Adhisthanottamam Hareh
“The Lord resides in many places in which he may be worshipped, but of all the places Salagrama is the best.”
− from Garuda Purana, Ch. 9, 1-23Early one morning, late in the summer of 2016, I awoke just before sunrise and set out for the Kali Gandaki River. Clad in thick canvas pants and a pair of rubber water shoes, I made it a point to tie my Australian field hat securely to my head with a chinstrap before venturing out into Kagbeni’s lively pre-dawn streets. Since the wind was always threatening to steal the hat every time I turned my head, I figured that the discomfort of a spare bit of leather was a small price to pay against an afternoon burnt red in the glaring Himalayan sun. A mother and daughter in chubas , traditional Tibetan dresses, passed me cautiously, hunched over their hand brooms as they swept the previous day's goat droppings from the cobblestones and out into the adjacent fields. An older Mustangi man, passing by with his caravan of mules and donkeys laden with rice and kerosene, shouted out a compliment. “Just like cowboys!” he yelled, touching his own imaginary brim. It was a typical morning in Kagbeni, filled with young women chatting on their way to fetch water from the village taps, small children playing in doorways, and the clink of copper cookware banging out breakfast in nearby guesthouse kitchens. I turned west and headed towards the roar of the water.
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- Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas , pp. 139 - 168Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020