India: A Sacred Geography [Hardcover]

Diana L Eck (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 27, 2012

In India: A Sacred Geography, renowned Harvard scholar Diana Eck offers an extraordinary spiritual journey through the pilgrimage places of the world's most religiously vibrant culture and reveals that it is, in fact, through these sacred pilgrimages that India’s very sense of nation has emerged.
 
No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes of Indian culture. Every place in this vast landscape has its story, and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place. Likewise, these places are inextricably tied to one another—not simply in the past, but in the present—through the local, regional, and transregional practices of pilgrimage.
 
India: A Sacred Geography tells the story of the pilgrim’s India. In these pages, Diana Eck takes the reader on an extraordinary spiritual journey through the living landscape of this fascinating country –its mountains, rivers, and seacoasts, its ancient and powerful temples and shrines.  Seeking to fully understand the sacred places of pilgrimage from the ground up, with their stories, connections and layers of meaning, she acutely examines Hindu religious ideas and narratives and shows how they have been deeply inscribed in the land itself.  Ultimately, Eck shows us that from these networks of pilgrimage places, India’s very sense of region and nation has emerged. This is the astonishing and fascinating picture of a land linked for centuries not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims.
 
India: A Sacred Geography offers a unique perspective on India, both as a complex religious culture and as a nation. Based on her extensive knowledge and her many decades of wide-ranging travel and research, Eck's piercing insights and a sweeping grasp of history ensure that this work will be in demand for many years to come.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“No major civilization has made sacred the very ground of its being as India has done, and no one has described this sacred organism with the down-to-earth humanity of Diana Eck.  This is magnificent introduction to India by one of the leading lights in the study of religion today.”-- John Stratton Hawley, author of The Memory of Love: Surdas Sings to Krishna.

In this lucid, learned and luminous book, Diana Eck introduces the Western reader to the sacred landscape of India. She leads us into an unfamiliar world, with myths and symbols that seem initially strange, but by the end of this rich journey we find that we have encountered unexpected regions within ourselves.”—Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God and Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

“Reading [Diana Eck’s] new book was like listening to an old, wise friend, whose love and admiration of India and its people shines on every page.”  --Phil Semler, San Francisco Book Review (5/5 stars)

 
 
Praise for Diana Eck’s Banaras
 
“In Banaras, Diana Eck... has written a notable book about this greatest of Indian pilgrimage sites.... Her brilliant, comprehensive book seems likely to remain for a long time the definitive work on this great Indian city.”--Washington Post

“The most beautiful book... on India.”--Journal of the American Academy of Religion

“Eck is a master of tone here. She begins as dry scholar, allows her personal voice to emerge and then, through judicious use of lyric quotations, advances to a striking level of exaltation and triumph.... To take us gently off this high, Eck buttresses us-and her arguments-with a truly amazing display of addenda; glossaries, calendars and appendices. One ends filled with admiration and awe, not just for the vision given us, but for the scholarship and dedication that made it possible.” --Los Angeles Times

About the Author

DIANA L. ECK is professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University and is Master of Lowell House and Director of the Pluralism Project. Her book Banaras, City of Light, remains a classic in the field, and Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras won the prestigious Grawemeyer Book Award. In 1998, President Clinton awarded her the National Humanities Medal for the work of the Pluralism Project in the investigation of America's changing religious landscape.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1 edition (March 27, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385531907
• ISBN-13: 978-0385531900
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #116,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > History > World > Religious > Hinduism
  • #23 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Eastern > Indian
  • #81 in Books > History > Asia > India

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indian Pilgrimage May 9, 2012

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In the range of its learning and in its sweep, passion, and insight, Diana Eck's new book, "India: A Sacred Georgraphy" (2012) is a grand meditation on India and religious life. A professor of comparative literature and Indian studies at Harvard University, Eck has written widely on Indian religion and on American religious pluralism. In 1998, then President Clinton awarded Eck the National Humanities Medal for her work as director of the Pluralism Project in the invesitigation of America's changing religious landscape.

The overriding theme of Eck's study is pilgrimage. She offers a story of pilgrimage to India's many sacred places that is at once mythical, romantic and factual. Eck herself has spent decades in India exploring the sites her book discusses in extraordinary detail. Her pilgrimage extends over millenia and to the millions of people who make pilgrimages to Indian sacred sites each year. As I read, I realized that the pilgrimage was also Eck's own, and it ultimately becomes that of the reader.

Eck writes that she had the idea of writing this book of broad pilgrimages and sites upon writing an earlier book on the city of Benares. Eck came to realize that Benares was not a single sacred city in the manner of, for example, Jerusalem or Mecca, but was instead part of a vast network of Indian sacred places which she set about to explore. Eck argues that pilgrimage rather than sacrifice of the study of sacred texts is the primary expression of Hinduism and that Hinduism and religion, in turn hold the key to understanding the heart of India. The ancient myths of India constitute, for Eck, an "imagined landscape" which has been "constituted not by priests and their literature, though there is plenty of literature to be sure, but by countless millions of pilgrims who have generated a powerful sense of land, location, and belonging through journeys to their hearts' destinations."

Most importantly, Eck finds links in the ancient Indian myths between the transcendent and divine and the specifics of place. She also finds an emphasis of the pluralism of religious vision. In comparing Indian with some Western religious visions, Eck writes:

"[T]he places praised are not unique, but ultimately numberless, limited not by the capacity of the divine to be present at any one of them, but by the capacity of human beings to discover and to apprehend the divine presence at all of them. The dissonance, of course, arises from a discourse of exclusivity and uniqueness, more typical of the monotheistic traditions of the West, now arising in a Hindu context in which patterns of relgious meaning have traditionally been constructed on the mythic presuppositions of divine plurality and plentitude."

In her study, Eck commingles a description of geography, contemporary pilgirmages, and in some cases contemporary Indian politics, with the great Indian myths. She draws from a wealth of sources from religious texts to commentators and poets, to legends and popular accounts. When Eck writes of places, concepts, and contemporary matters, she is clear and analytical. The myths themselves tend to be obscure, fantastic, and to blend into each other with their many variants. Eck recognizes the difficulty of the many myths and writes skillfully to produce the effect of plentitude and mystery. The reader would be advised not to linger over each story or to attempt to sort out confusions.

In early chapters, Eck examines the Indian geographical and religious landscape and its relation to myth. She discusses mythmaking as the key factor that unifies the Indian subcontinent, a unity that frequently eluded many earlier observers. She then offers long, chapter exploring India's many gods, the sites sacred to them, the myths surrounding them, and the visits that multitudes of pilgrims continue to make to the site as expressive of their own religious needs. Thus Eck describes the Ganges River and other sacred rivers, the myths and sacred places and pilgrimage sites of Shiva, Vishnu, and Devi, and of Krisna and Rama. The interrelationship of geography, myth, and pilgrimage offers a feel for Indian religious life throughout the ages. It is a travel through place and a travel through time and story.

The termininology of this book will be unfamiliar to most readers. There is a glossary at the end, together with a bibliography that begs for exploration. For the most part, I read the book through and puzzled out the content of unfamiliar words without turning to the glossary until I had concluded. Other readers may want to use the glossary first or with their reading. Each chapter of the book is introduced by a map outlining the various sites to be visited and discussed.

I have never been to India, but Eck's book reminded me, among many other things, that it is possible to travel and understand through the mind, heart, and creativity. With its emphasis of the varieties of place, the focus of the book is internalized. Eck concludes with a quotations from an Indian poet named Dasimayya who wrote that for one who was awake to Shiva, "his own front yard is the true Benares." A fourteenth century poet from Kashmir named Lalla wrote: "I, Lalla, went out far in search of Shiva, the omnipresent lord; having wandered, I found him in my own body, sitting in his house."

Robin Friedman

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Landscape of the heart and spirit May 28, 2012

By GregJS

Format:Hardcover

India's culture, traditions, history, lands, and religions are way too complex to ever get your arms all the way around. But if you've ever wished for something to help you at least get a bit of handle on it all, Diana Eck's wonderful tour through the sacred geography of India is a great place to turn. Actually, it is several tours. You will crisscross this land repeatedly as you visit sites and specific features of the landscape associated with the traditions and stories of:

* Siva
* Shakti
* Vishnu
* Krishna
* Rama
* rivers in general
* the lands of India as a whole

In these traditions, even the smallest details of the landscape - specific rocks, springs, trees, etcetera - can be imbued with cosmic significance. Many of these traditions/stories overlap at various points and features of the geography, which only adds to their richness. There is some kind of intuitive genius at work in how, together, these stories form a huge interconnected web, making the entire land a kind of 3-D, interactive scripture that answers the human longing for a life of larger, deeper meaning. Overall, the geographical approach to these traditions brings them - and the land they relate to - alive in a unique way that will stay with me and that makes me more thoughtful about the ways that spiritually sensitive and open humans can relate to the land they inhabit so as to reinforce that sensitivity and openness.

One of the most fascinating things brought out in Eck's presentation is that many sacred sites are repeated throughout India. As she puts it, there is a "distinctively Hindu tradition of multiplicity: Any place that is truly important is important enough to be duplicated and sited in multiple places." Hence, there can be several places all over India designated, as, say, the source of the Ganges river; or as the birthplace of one or another deity. This may be one of the more difficult concepts for a westerner to comprehend. To our much more literal mentality, this may seem to be "proof" that these mythical stories are just "made-up nonsense." We do tend to look down with self-righteous pity on those "simple" people who continue to believe in and live by such stories. But a larger theme running though the book is that, "Myths are `real' and `true' in quite another way: They are true stories by which cultures pattern their distinctive values and by which people live their lives." In other words, in this mythical world, the "truth" of a story has nothing to do with the historical-archeological-scientific evidence that backs it up, but with the psycho-spiritual effect that it has on the person who wholeheartedly enters into the story and lives accordingly. Although here Eck happens to be addressing the relatively recent, politicized, violently literal-minded conflict over "the" supposed birth site of Rama in the city of Ayodhya, I see a valuable lesson here for westerners too - both for our secular-scientific types who dismiss all religion as nonsense as well as for our religionists who seem to care more about "proving" that their religion's stories are literally true than simply living those truths in their daily lives.

The one drawback I would point to is precisely that the book is written in that secular, scholarly, sometimes dry voice of the modern west - which is fine for intellectually discussing these themes, but which is not the voice that best communicates the underlying spiritual awareness that gives rise to "true myths" and that can enter into them and keep them alive over the millennia. But this is 5-star quality scholarly writing, so even with this one criticism, I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Hindu traditions in particular or spiritual traditions in general.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A splendid book August 8, 2012

By Charles Poncet

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Diana Eck's latest book is in the line of her first, rightly celebrated, description of Kashi (Benares) as the "City of Light", but with twenty or thirty years of research added. Admittedly, this is not a book for beginners. It presupposes at least some basic knowledge of the Indian "Weltanschaung" : if you have no idea who Krishna, Rama or Shiva are, you are unlikely to be able to enjoy Diana Eck's superbly perceptive description of what she calls the sacred geography of India. She means by that the subtle connexion between the geographical landscape, the history of certain famous places - Ayodhya for instance - and the underlying religious visions of a sub-continent where ever year tens of millions of pilgrims travel to what we would call holy places. Diana Eck talks from experience: it is obvious from her descriptions that she has been there and the reader is thus treated to a superb mixture of impressive erudition with practical experience. Furthermore the author is very good at describing what she saw: her writing is clear and elegant, never repetitive, yet precise. The book is divided by divinities, so to speak: Shiva's pilgrimages and sacred lanscape, Vishnu, Devi, Krishna, Rama, etc. Diana Eck deals splendidly with the complexity - and the sheer volume - of information available. She is sometimes a little light footed where one would have expected less diplomacy: for example, the scandalous neglect of the Indian government(s) for their "sacred" rivers, most of which are sewers, totally poluted, filled with human and industrial waste, endangering the life of the worshippers who bathe in them is evoked several times, but one would have expected a stronger call for action. But these are minor deficiencies in an otherwise superb book. Anyone with an interest in India should read it and it is sure to remain THE reference on this subject for many years.