Aesthetics of Religion

Alexandra K. Grieser, Jay Johnston, Alexandra K. Grieser, Jay Johnston

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783110460452
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.

PART IFields and Topics

Mikael Aktor

Grasping the Formless in Stones: The Petromorphic Gods of the Hindu Pañcāyatanapūjā

How do people perceive their gods? What are their aesthetic properties? The answers to these questions depend not only on the specific religious tradition, but also, more generally, on the medium by which gods are perceived, imagined or conceptualised. Literary genres like myth or theology constrain by linguistic means how gods are made known to listeners or readers, and different types of ritual involve different perceptions of gods depending on both the notions of the belief system and the preferred medium of the ritual. Protestant Christians perceive their god through the audible or readable word. During church services their body language displays their attention to listening (Morgan 2012, 174–175). Quakers likewise, listen attentively to the words of their god, but through silence rather than sound (Birkel 2004, 55–58; Searl 2005, 22).23 In Hinduism the gods can be highly audible, visible and tangible, but, still, the exact formats depend on both the ideas involved in the belief system and the ritual forms by which the gods are present for worshippers. In short, perceptions, conceptions and practices are inextricably intertwined.

1Genres of Gods

The scholar of religion, Tord Olsson, has examined how different textual genres and different spoken-word situations in Maasai religious media constrain the perceptions of the Maasai god (enkAi) in different ways. In mythic narratives enkAi interacts socially with humans in anthropomorphic terms. In hymns, often phrased as prayers, he is sometimes addressed in cosmic terms as the sky or the earth and sometimes in more personal terms as a god who may turn his eyes upon the worshipper. In exegetic speech situations a far more agnostic style dominates where, although the focus is on enkAi’s almighty powers, clear identifications are avoided (Olsson 1999, 78–79). This distinction is even clearer in ancient Egyptian and Greek texts. Egyptian mythic texts present gods in anthropomorphic and theriomorphic forms, but in other texts where gods reveal themselves directly to individuals they are perceived vaguely as a “divine fragrance”. Similarly, the perceptions of the gods are articulated on two different levels in the Homeric hymns: the mythic, “Olympian perspective”, in which the gods appear in human shape, and the invisible perspective, in which direct encounters with the gods are expressed in direct speech in the texts as the sighting of a vaguely perceived particular type of light (Olsson 1999, 88–90). A similar division is known from Babylonian and Assyrian material (Westh 2015, 410).

This distinction resonates with reflections in Hindu theology on the nature of gods vis à vis the possibility of offering worship to them. Śiva, for instance, is primarily worshipped in his form as the śivaliṅga, an aniconic cylindrical shaft rising from a rounded pedestal (Aktor 2015, 16–17), but, secondarily, his anthropomorphic images are also worshipped; these are often placed outside or along the side walls of the sanctum containing the liṅga. Another type of liṅga, the mukhaliṅga, has faces emerging from the shaft that represent different aspects of Śiva. From the point of view of the theological texts, Śiva is ultimately Paramaśiva (Highest Śiva), undifferentiated (niṣkala), transcendent and unfathomable; but, on another level, he is accessible to his worshippers as differentiated (sakala) and active. It is not that one level is true and another is false. Śiva is simultaneously differentiated and undifferentiated (sakalaniṣkala) (Davis 1991, 113–114). This distinction is to some extent carried over to the visual “supports” of Śiva: his primary form as the aniconic śivaliṅga and his anthropomorphic images. These forms are distinguished according to the same divide. The aniconic liṅga is “undifferentiated” (niṣkala), corresponding to Śiva in his highest Paramaśiva aspect, the anthropomorphic image is “differentiated” (sakala) corresponding to Śiva as Maheśvara (Great Lord) in his various mythological aspects as yogi, dancer, teacher etc., and the mukhaliṅga is a mixture of the two (Davis 1991, 121–122).

It seems here that the relation between aniconic and anthropomorphic forms is thought to express the parallel relation between the undifferentiated/transcendent and differentiated/active aspects of Śiva; but the difference is carried even further. Among aniconic śivaliṅgas a distinction is made between manmade sculpted artefacts (mānuṣaliṅga) and unmanufactured stones considered to be natural, “self-manifested” forms of Śiva (svayambhūliṅga). Such stones are placed in the sanctums of temples and worshipped as direct manifestations of Śiva. On the level of materiality, from the anthropomorphic to the aniconic, and further from the manufactured to the unmanufactured object of worship we might see the dialectic noted by Tord Olsson on the textual level between the gods’ culturally mediated well-recognized appearances and the vaguely articulated perceptions of divine transcendence which in certain religious environments are considered to be more in accordance with the essential nature of the gods.

One sub-class among the unmanufactured svayambhūliṅgas is that of the bāṇaliṅgas from Omkareshwar on the Narmada River, Madhya Pradesh. These even, oval stones originally acquired their shape as a consequence of the whirling and tumbling effect of a waterfall on the stones in an underwater cave at this point on the river, and they were therefore seen as natural liṅgas and thus direct manifestations of Śiva. However, since the opening of the Omkareshwar Dam in 2007 the waterfall has been submerged, and, as a consequence, the natural process that produced these stones has been terminated. Today, stones with a suitable shape from other parts of the river are processed using angle grinders, metal drums and polishing machines, and then distributed to pūjā shops selling items for worship and over the internet (Aktor 2015, 29–30). They are either placed individually on a pedestal (pīṭha) and worshipped singly as Śiva (see Figure 1) or clustered into a group of five to be used in the form of worship known as pañcāyatanapūjā.

Figure 1: An outdoor temple for Goddess Narmadā at the western point of Mandhata Island in the middle of River Narmada at Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh. Narmadā is both the physical river and the anthropomorphic goddess. In front, a person worshipping Śiva in the form of the bāṇaliṅga, which is decorated with Śiva’s forehead mark, three horizontal lines (tripuṇḍra), and the Sanskrit ligature OM, which is brahman in its sonomorphic manifestation. Photo by the author, December 2012.

2The Pañcāyatanapūjā

The pañcāyatanapūjā is the practice of worshipping five gods in the form of five stones. The five stones of the pañcāyatanapūjā are:

1. the bāṇaliṅga, an oval stone from the Narmada River near Omkareshwar, Madhya Pradesh, which is worshipped as a manifestation of Śiva;
2. the śālagrāma, an ammonite fossil from the Kali-Gandaki Gorge in the Mustang district of Nepal, which is worshipped as a manifestation of Viṣṇu;
3. the sphaṭika, a roundly-cut quartz crystal, traditionally sourced from near the town of Vallam, Tamil Nadu, which is worshipped as a manifestation of Sūrya (Sun);
4. the śoṇabhadra, a roughly rounded red jasper, traditionally sourced from the Son River at its confluence with the Ganges in Bihar, which is worshipped as a manifestation of Gaṇeśa;
5. the suvarṇamukhi, a pyrite (iron sulphide crystal), traditionally sourced from the Swarnamukhi River at Srikalahasti, Andhra Pradesh, which is worshipped as a manifestation of Devī, sometimes referred to as Ambikā (Mother) and sometimes by other names of the Hindu Great Goddess.

Apart from the quartz crystal and the pyrite (numbers 3 and 5 above), the exact geological identity of the stones may vary. The main criteria seem to be the visual appearance and the source locations traditionally ascribed to each of the stones. In the past, the five stones were handed down from generation to generation, but today people may have to buy them in a shop and their traditional source locations are no longer guaranteed, since not all the stones can still be found at the traditional sites (especially numbers 3–5) (Aktor 2016, 9–22).

The selection of these particular five stones is partly due to their aesthetic properties, partly due to their topographic properties. The bāṇaliṅga has a smooth oval shape and originates from a significant place (the Dharaji waterfall). The śālagrāma is marked as special due to its origin as an ammonite fossil with its circular patterns of slanting lines recognised iconographically as one of Viṣṇu’s weapons, the discus (cakra) (see Figure 2). It may also contain cavities with smaller fossils embedded in them.

The quantity of medieval textual material about the worship of these two stones suggests that such worship has ancient roots dating back prior to any textual mention of the pañcāyatanapūjā, which is not much earlier than the first part of the 17th century.24 The pañcāyatanapūjā, with the inclusion of the three re

Figure 2: An altar with śālagrāmas in Śrī Muktinātha Yajñaśālā, a small building within the Muktinātha Temple precinct, Muktinath, Mustang District, Nepal. Some śālagrāmas are decorated with Viṣṇu’s forehead mark, the U-shaped ūrdhvapuṇḍra. Photo by the author, September 2014.

maining stones, was therefore probably grafted on to these pre-existing practices. The sphaṭika is transparent and shines like a glass lens, the śoṇabhadra is clearly red with a smooth though sometimes uneven surface and the suvarṇamukhi is a cubic crystal with a metallic sheen. The source locations attributed to each add to their sacredness. Four of the stones are related to rivers, which in a Hindu context are sources of purification and spiritual transformation, and are often associated with river goddesses like Narmadā (number 1) and Gaṅgā into which both the Gandaki River (number 2) and the Son River (number 4) flow. Important pilgrimage sites are also located here. Bānṇaliṅgas originate from near Omkareshwar (number 1), which contains one of the twelve famous jyotirliṅgas (liṅgas of light associated with Śiva’s theophany in an endless column of light). Śālagrāmas are associated especially with Muktinath, an important vaiṣṇava pilgrimage site. The town of Vallam, associated with the sphaṭika is close to Thanjavur, whose Bṛhadīśvara Temple is one of the great pilgrimage sites of Tamil Nadu. The śoṇabhadra is sourced at the Gandaki-Ganges-Son River confluence (saṃgama), a sacred place in its own right, and Srikalahasti, the place associated with the suvarṇamukhi, is another important śaiva pilgrimage site.

Apart from these petromorphic forms, each of the five gods have other aniconic manifestations as well. The Aruṇācala hill at Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu is another manifestation of Śiva. The Narmada and Ganges Rivers are both physiomorphic manifestations of the goddesses, and both are worshipped as such with pūjā services performed on the bathing stairs (ghāṭs) leading down to the river. Both Śiva and the two river goddesses have anthropomorphic forms as well. The anthropomorphic form of Narmadā, sitting on her crocodile mount, is seen behind the bāṇaliṅga worshipped on Figure 1. The photo is of the outdoor Narmadā Temple at the western point of the island of Mandhata located in the middle of the Narmada River at Omkareshwar. At this site, the physiomorphic and the anthropomorphic forms of the goddess Narmadā are both present, as well as the aniconic form of Śiva in the form of the bāṇaliṅga.

3Gods in the Landscape and in the Mind

The term “physiomorphic” refers to manifestations in the landscape such as mountains, hills and rivers (Gaifman 2012, 39). “Topomorphic” might be an alternative term, since what make these sites religiously and ritually relevant is not so much that they are parts of the natural world apart from fauna and flora, but that they are, or that they mark, significant places in the landscape. Rocks, as immovable parts of the landscape, belong to this category too, but stones that can be picked up and removed do not. In archaeological terminology, such stones are “manuports”, that is, unmanufactured objects of nature that have been removed from their place of origin. As manuports they become markers of other landscapes and the topographical and geographical networks in which a given culture unfolds. Numbers 2, 4 and 5 in the list of pañcāyatana stones belong to this category. Number 1 did until bāṇaliṅgas produced in workshops started to replace the natural ones acquired from the Dharaji waterfall.

I think that their relation to the landscape is one explanation, among others, for the use of ritual stones like the five of the pañcāyatanapūjā. Bāṇaliṅgas and śālagrāmas are still specific indices of the sacred lan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• What is an Aesthetics of Religion? From the Senses to Meaning—and Back Again
• List of Figures
• PART I Fields and Topics
• PART II History and Politics
• PART III Comparison and Transfer
• PART IV Concepts and Theories
• PART V In Conversation: Essays About the Connectivity of an Aesthetics of Religion
• Authors Biographies
• Index