Author: Diana L. Eck Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0307832953 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 382
Book Description
The sacred city of Banāras on the River Ganges is one of the oldest living cities in the world—as old as Jerusalem, Athens, and Peking. It is the place where Shiva, the Lord of All, is said to have made his permanent home since the dawn of creation. There are few cities in India as traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as Banāras. In this eloquent, finely observed study, Diana Eck shows how the city over the centuries has become a lens through which the Hindu vision of the world is precisely focused. She reveals the spiritual and historical resonance of this holy place where great sages such as the Buddha and Shankara were taught, where ashrams, palaces, and universities were built, where God has been imagined and imagined in a thousand ways. She describes the rites of its temples, the busy life of its riverfront, and the exuberance of its festivals. She tells how people travel from all over India to Banāras for the privilege of dying a good death here, for they believe that on the banks of the River Ganges where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength,” it is possible to be released from the earthly round forever. In her account of the sacred history, geography, and art of the city, its elaborate and thriving rituals, its myths and literature, and its importance to pilgrims and seekers, Diana Eck uses her wealth of scholarship to make the Hindu tradition come powerfully alive so that we come to understand the meaning of this sacred city to the millions of believers who have been coming here for over 2,500 years.
Author: Rana Singh Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443815799 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 435
Book Description
Narrating the making of the Hindus’ most sacred and heritage city of India (Banaras) this book will serve as lead reference and insightful reading for understanding the cultural complexities, archetypal connotations, ritualscapes and vivid heritagescapes that maintain India’s pride of history and culture.
Author: Michael S. Dodson Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000365646 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
The book presents a rich and surprising account of the recent history of the north Indian city of Banaras. Supplementing traditional accounts, which have focused upon the city’s religious imaginary, this volume brings together essays written by acknowledged experts in north Indian culture and history to examine the construction of diverse urban identities in, and after, the British colonial period. Drawing on fields such as archaeology, literature, history, and architecture, these accounts of Banaras understand the narratives which inscribe the city as having been forged substantially in the experiences of British rule. But while British rule transformed the city in many respects, the essays also emphasize the importance of Indian agency in these processes. The book also examines the essential ambiguity of modernization schemes in the city as well as the contingency of elements of religious narrative. The introduction, moreover, attempts to resituate Banaras into a wider tradition of urban studies in South Asia. The book will be of interest to not only scholars and students of north Indian culture and urban history, but also anyone looking to gain a deeper appreciation of this remarkable, and complex, city.
Author: Vertul Singh Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited ISBN: 9357088709 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 415
Book Description
Banaras has been home to sages, artists, poets, musicians and seekers from all parts of India. The ancient canon of texts passed down orally by the sages was written and transcribed in the lanes and by-lanes of this city. Over the centuries, the art of grafting and subsuming the religious and cultural ethos became the hallmark of Banaras. In this book, Vertul Singh presents a kaleidoscopic view of Banaras that charts a narrative spanning from the present-day city and its origins as Kashi to the fin de siècle of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which witnessed the city’s inclusionary development as a cultural and pilgrimage centre, an opulent trading hub and a basilica of political power. Weaving facts, interesting anecdotes and untold stories to make a rich tapestry, this book is an insider’s account and an unparalleled portrait of the city.
Author: Nita Kumar Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400886996 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
Nita Kumar offers an evocative and sensitive portrayal of rarely explored aspects of Hindu culture through her analysis of the way leisure time is used by Hindu and Muslim artisans of Banaras--the weavers, metalworkers, and woodworkers. Music, festivals, the place of physical culture, and the importance of going "to the outer side" all are examined as Kumar looks at changes that have occurred in leisure-time activities over the last century. The discussion raises questions of the cultural and conceptual aspects of working-class life, the role of fun and play in Indian thought, the importance of public activities in terms of personal identity, and the meaning of an Indian city to its residents. This analysis turns away from the usual models of Hindu-Muslim conflict by seeing divisions based on occupation, income level, education, and urban neighborhood as more relevant for the construction of identity than those based on religion or community. Kumar draws her information from police station records, Hindi newspapers and periodicals, publications of local individuals and organizations, oral history, and ethnographic data. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Mahesh Gogate Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000905330 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 182
Book Description
This book on urban water bodies, catchment areas and drainage pattern is set against the backdrop of the unprecedented heavy rainfall that severely deluged metropolitan cities and other parts of India in recent years. The recurring natural catastrophes in water-stressed cities of India and alarming rate of diminishing water bodies, wetlads and catchment areas needs a re-visit to an entire urban water-cycle. This book, thus, discusses how the processes and implementation of colonial urban development policies and projects have radically transformed the water bodies and their catchment areas – traditional water holding systems of Varanasi city. In this imperative colonial process, through the case study of Varanasi, the book mainly engages with the reasons behind the elimination of the temple tanks and ponds after the annexation of Varanasi by the British from 1775 till 1947. The book investigates the colonial notion of ‘dry city’, and how this notion crafted the process of separating land and water bodies, which arguably resulted in the reclamation and draining of water bodies, and also gave rise to water pollution. Additionally, the book analyzes the elimination of water bodies and loss of catchment areas through the ongoing processes of restoring the ancient city’s natural and cultural heritage. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
Author: Martin Gaenszle Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag ISBN: 9783447051873 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
The city of Banaras is widely known as a unique, impressive and particularly ancient historical place. But for many it is above all a universal, cosmic, and in a sense timeless sacred space. Both of these seemingly contrasting depictions contribute to how the city is experienced by its inhabitants or visitors, and there is a great variety of sometimes competing views: Kasi the Luminous, the ancient Crossing, the city of Death, the place of Hindu-Muslim encounter and syncretism, the cosmopolitan centre of learning, etc. The present volume deals with the multiple ways this urban site is visualized, imagined, and culturally represented by different actors and groups. The forms of visualizations are manifold and include buildings, paintings, drawings, panoramas, photographs, traditional and modern maps, as well as verbal and mental images. The major focus will thus be on visual media, which are of special significance for the representation of space. But this cannot be divorced from other forms of expressions which are part of the local life-world ("Lebenswelt"). The contributions look at local as well as exogenous constructions of the rich topography of Kasi and show that these imaginations and constructions are not static but always embedded in social and cultural practices of representation, often contested and never complete.
Author: Gol Publisher: ISBN: 9788186569146 Category : Comics & Graphic Novels Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
A fascinating and high quality comic depicting the city ofBanaras (Varanasi) in all its aspects. In a series of wonderfuland colourful scenes, the history, mythology and culture ofthis ancient city are elaborated in a simple but profound way.The best introduction to the city of Banaras. Includes a chronology,a glossary and a bibliography. For adults and childrenequally. Gol is a renowned artist specialized in historical comic.
Author: Ravi Nandan Singh Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192679341 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
Ethnographies fatefully rely on chance encounters and mysteriously so such encounters come true. "Dead in Banaras" is an instance of just such a fateful chance encounter. In its inception it set out to follow the 'dead' across multiple social locations of crematoria, hospital, morgue and the aghorashram in order to assemble a contemporary moment in the funerary iconicity of the well known North Indian city of Banaras. The crematoria in plural because the open-air manual pyres and close-door electric furnaces sit side by side within the symbolic inside of the city. Hospital and morgue became chosen destinations because in the local moral world the city is a medical metropolis anchored by a famed university hospital and storied through real life dramatic narratives of medical emergency, saving and untimely death. Aghorashram on the other hand as an urban Shaivite clinic and hermitage for sexual and reproductive cures works with funerary substances as pharmacopeia. Then, early on in fieldwork, these funerary journeys of the' dead' had a chance encounter with my father's death in the city. The same set of places henceforth spoke through a sensory logic of my father's death. Dead in Banaras is then both an ethnography of being in the dead centre of a city and an autobiographical funeral travelling (Shav Yatra) that narrates the city through a mourner's logic of using the pyre to illuminate the dead as a multiplicity.
Author: Diana L. Eck
Author: Rana Singh
Author: Michael S. Dodson
Author: Vertul Singh
Author: Nita Kumar
Author: Winand M. Callewaert
Author: Mahesh Gogate
Author: Martin Gaenszle
Author: Gol
Author: Ravi Nandan Singh