Pilgrimage Books
Amsterdam University Press Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas
Book SynopsisFor roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams, has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worshippers. Through their lives, movements, and materiality, Shaligrams then reveal fascinating new dimensions of religious practice, pilgrimage, and politics. But as social, environmental, and national conflicts in the politically-contentious region of Mustang continue to escalate, the geologic, mythic, and religious movements of Shaligrams have come to act as parallels to the mobility of people through both space and time. Shaligram mobility therefore traverses through multiple social worlds, multiple religions, and multiple nations revealing Shaligram practitioners as a distinct, alternative, community struggling for a place in a world on the edge.Trade Review"In Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, the author’s careful treatment of the subject matter allows the reader to consider the lives of stone persons alongside our own and personhoods that derive from vast natural cycles beyond human control. To do so was no easy task, I’m sure, and the result is an important addition to interdisciplinary object studies."- Donna Yates, Journal of Material Religion, July 2021 "Walters’ book represents almost a decade of in-depth study in India and Nepal in search of the meaning of shaligram worship. [...] Her meticulously researched book provides deep insight into the culture of these sacred fossils and of the age-old pilgrimage to Muktinath. Shaligram Pilgrimage is the most comprehensive study of the “living fossils” written to date."- Don Messerschmidt, Himal Southasian, July 2021Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Note on Transliteration Chapter 1 - Living Fossils Chapter 2 - Spiral Notebooks Chapter 3 - Picked Up Pieces Chapter 4 - A Mirror to Our Being Chapter 5 - A Bridge to Everywhere Chapter 6 - Turning to Stone Chapter 7 - The River Road Chapter 8 - Ashes and Immortality Conclusion - Touch Stones Primary Sources Bibliography Index
£107.35
Oxford University Press,Pakistan 'We are Lovers of the Qalandar': Piety, Pilgrimage, and Ritual in Pakistani Sufi Islam
Book SynopsisThis book is about Pakistan's most popular Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar whose shrine in Sehwan Sharif is one of the most fascinating sanctuaries in the Muslim world. At the time of pilgrimage, this flourishing cult centre becomes a vibrant place of ecstatic religiosity marked by intense forms of devotion. The present ethnographic study is organized around three themes: piety, pilgrimage, and ritual. Thus, its focus is first on visual culture and 'material religion' as well as various aspects of religious aesthetics which highlight how sacred spaces are constructed and shaped. Secondly, it deals with the year-round pilgrimage, mainly investigating pilgrims from Punjab (including a unique life history of a female 'Sufi lineage' from Lahore), but also discussing remarkable ritual agents in the cult. The third theme is the spectacular trance dance known as dhamāl. On February 16, 2017, a suicide bomber executed a horrible massacre among the dancing devotees. This work, which is the fruit of the author's field-research between 2003 and 2015 in Sindh and Punjab, aims to contribute to a 'Sufism observed' which often seems to be neglected in mainly text-based Sufi studies. It is an academic companion to his earlier At the Shrine of the Red Sufi (OUP, 2011).Trade Review"We are Lovers of the Qalandar" is a vital addition to the scholarship of Pakistani Sufism and the anthropology of Islam. Frembgen's meticulous, granular ethnography is nuanced by his attention to broader historical, literary, and theoretical source materials...this book will serve as a useful resource for graduate and undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology, Islamic studies, Sufism, South Asia, and material culture and religion. It will also appeal to a broad readership searching for a more informed account of Islam and Sufism beyond the reductive, one-dimensional caricatures that too often (mis)inform journalistic and mass media reporting. * Robert Rozehnal, Lehigh University, Journal of Sufi Studies *We are Lovers of the Qalandar is a profoundly rich contribution to the field of South Asian Sufism, Anthropology of Art, and Islam. It is a novel addition to the visual material theory of Sufi tradition in Islam. * M. Rafique Wassan, Anthropos *
£20.52
