Connected Places Religion/Culture/Critique Series editor: Elizabeth A. Castelli

How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film By Erin Runions (2003) Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making Edited by Brent S. Plate (2003) Connected Places

Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India

ANNE FELDHAUS CONNECTED PLACES © Feldhaus, 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-6323-9 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52737-3 ISBN 978-1-4039-8134-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781403981349

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feldhaus, Anne. Connected places : region, pilgrimage, and geographical imagination in India / Anne Feldhaus p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Maharashtra (India)—History 2. Hindu pilgrims and pilgrimages— India—Maharashtra. I. Title. DS485.M348F45 2003 954Ј.7923—dc21 2003045977 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December, 2003 10987654321 for Patrick and Suman Viju and Dilip James and Miko This page intentionally left blank Contents

List of Maps viii List of Figures ix Series Editor’s Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation xvii

Introduction 1 1. Rivers and Regional Consciousness 17 2. The Pilgrimage to difggapor45 3. Traveling Goddesses 89 4. The Arithmetic of Place: Numbered Sets of Places 127 5. The Algebra of Place: Replication of North Indian Religious Geography in Maharashtra 157 6. Pilgrimage and Remembrance: Biography and Geography in the Mahanubhav Tradition 185 7. Conclusion 211

Notes 223 Bibliography 265 Abbreviations 289 Index 291 List of Maps

Districts of Maharashtra xii 0.1 Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka, with major rivers of the Deccan 2 1.1 The eight limbs of the Godavari 20 1.2 The Rahuri demon story 25 1.3 The Daugt pilgrimage 32 1.4 Gods carried to the Krsga river 35 2.1 The pilgrimage to difggapor 46 3.1 Jagai’s pilgrimage 93 3.2 The palanquin and bedstead pilgrimage to Tuljapor 102 3.3 Malai’s pilgrimage 111 3.4 Ambejogai and the Kofkag 117 4.1 Sets of pilgrimage places throughout India 130 4.2 The three-and-a-half dakti Pivhs 137 4.3 The Asvavinayak 141 4.4 The Eleven Marutis 149 6.1 Mahanubhav holy places in Maharashtra 195 6.2 qddhipor 200 7.1 The V arkari pilgrimage 217 List of Figures

1.1 Palanquin procession to the Bhima river at Daugt on Asathi Ekadaci 33 1.2 The ferry boat at the confluence of the Krsga and Koyna rivers at Karat 36 2.1 Men pulling a kCvaT up Mufgi Ghav at difggapor53 2.2 Bhutoji Teli from Sasvat during the pilgrimage to difggapor64 3.1 Jagai’s palanquin returning to Jejuri 96 3.2 Laksmiai at Rahuri 120 4.1 A typical Asvavinayak picture 147 4.2 Mural of Ramdas and the Eleven Marutis, Pargav152 This page intentionally left blank Series Editor’s Preface

RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUE is a series devoted to publishing work that addresses religion’s centrality to a wide range of settings and debates, both contemporary and historical, and that critically engages the category of “religion” itself. This series is conceived as a place where readers will be invited to explore how “religion”—whether embedded in texts, practices, communities, or ideologies—intersects with social and political interests, institutions, and identities. Anne Feldhaus’s work, Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India, invites its reader into the world of reli- gious pilgrims in Maharashtra, using the theoretically evocative categories of place, travel, and memory to analyze how religious observance trans- forms the imaginative and geographical landscapes of the region. Rich in ethnographic detail and sweeping in its historical reach, this study draws the reader into the complexly woven networks of religious practice in a multicultural region where issues of difference and modernity are negoti- ated by means of religious mapping and commemoration. Pilgrimage, here, is a form of ritual re-enactment of religious narratives, especially divine biog- raphies. It constitutes a way for practitioners to make imaginative connec- tions between themselves, narratives, and the places of memory that they visit. Nature and ritual objects become the artifacts out of which memory becomes materialized. The sacred geography of Maharashtra emerges as a non-static, multidimensional, transforming and transformative place that produces and contests ideas about identity, political regionalism, and religious experience.

Elizabeth A. Castelli RELIGION/CULTURE/CRITIQUE Series Editor New York City April 2003 Districts of Maharashtra Acknowledgments

This book is the product of more than 30 years spent working in and thinking about Maharashtra. Over those years, numerous teachers, friends, and colleagues have prepared me and helped me to gather and analyze the information presented here. Among these people I must mention in par- ticular Sudhir Waghmare, who has accompanied me to virtually all the places and all the festivals described in this book. The anonymous “com- panions” that I mention from time to time also include Ramdas Atkar and Sakharam Lakade, as well as Jeffrey Brackett, R. C. Dhere, Maruti Gaykwad, Shubha Kothavale, Bhau Mandavkar, V. L. Manjul, Manisha and Dnyaneshwar Mehetre, Asha Mundlay, M. L. K. Murty, Purushottam Nagpure, Candrakant Nimbhorkar, Lee Schlesinger, Thakur Raja Ram Singh, Günther Sontheimer, Sonja Stark-Wild, Ananya Vajpeyi, Pushpa Waghmare, Rajaram Zagade, and Eleanor Zelliot. Many more people have willingly spent their time patiently explaining things to me, a complete stranger from far away who suddenly appeared in their village, at their temple, or at their festival, trying to understand what was going on. Most of these people remain anonymous in this book, but they include Mahadu Jhagade and his family (chapter 3), the two Bhutoji Telis (chapter 2), Arjun Kisan Bhagat (chapter 3), and numerous Mahanubhav monks, nuns, and lay people (chapter 6). I made tape record- ings of my conversations with many people who were generous in giving me their time and sharing with me their knowledge and wisdom. For her help in the laborious task of transcribing the tape recordings, I am grateful to my honorary daughter, Manisha Mehetre. I thank Nikhil Shejwalkar for making most of the maps, Linda Zellmer for teaching me about mapmaking, and Sudhir Waghmare for the map of qddhipor. Claudia Brown and Kranti Waghmare helped with the illustrations. S. G. Tulpule helped me with reading the Old Marathi texts used in chapters 5 and 6. He and David Carásco, R. C. Dhere, Joel Gereboff, Roland Jansen, V. L. Manjul, K. R. Paradkar, Rajendra Vora, and especially Eleanor Zelliot helped with bibliographical tips and with getting hold of books and articles that I needed. I am very grateful to all of them as well. xiv Acknowledgments

Financial and practical assistance came from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the United States Educational Foundation in India (Fulbright), the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Pune), Arizona State University, the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington), and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Among the many people at these institutions who have facilitated my work, I especially want to mention Madhav Bhandare, S. D. Laddu, Pradeep Mehendiratta, V. L. Manjul, and Ann Sheffield. My warm thanks also to Claudia Brown in Arizona and Shubha Kothavale in Pune, who have kept watch over my affairs in my two homes, cheerfully enabling my long and repeated absences from each of them. For reading or listening to all or parts of the manuscript, and for dis- cussing my ideas about Maharashtrian religious geography as they have developed over many years, I am grateful to: Véronique Bouillier; Joel Brereton; Heidrun Brückner; Dilip and Vijaya Chitre; Rose Ann Christian; Eugene Clay; Catherine Clémentin-Ojha; Frank Conlon; David Damrel; James Foard; Joel Gereboff; Irina Glushkova; Jack Hawley; James Laine; Jayant Lele; Meera Kosambi; Philip Lutgendorf; Stephen MacKinnon; Michael Martinez; Christian Novetzke; Patrick Olivelle; Lee Schlesinger; Lorenzo Simpson; Günther Sontheimer; Nick Street; Sani Umar; Ananya Vajpeyi; Rajendra Vora; Mark Woodward; my students in Heidelberg, Paris, Vienna, and Arizona; my colleagues at Arizona State University and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the participants in the international conference on regions held in Pune in December 2001; and colleagues who have participated with me in various Maharashtra conferences over the past several years. Some parts of this book have been published elsewhere. In particular, parts of chapter 6 appeared in my articles “Maharashtra as a Holy Land: A Sectarian Tradition” (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1986) and “The Religious Significance of qddhipur” (in Religion and Society in Maharashtra, edited by Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle, 1987). I am grateful to Cambridge University Press and the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Toronto for permission to reprint materials from these articles. In addition, several articles scheduled to appear in print contain earlier versions of some of the materials in this book. These include articles due to appear in the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Devotional Literature in New Indo- Aryan Languages (Leiden, December 1985), edited by G. Schokker; the proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Maharashtra: Culture and Society (Sydney, January 1998), edited by Jim Masselos; and the proceedings of the Symposium on Region and Regionalism in India Acknowledgments xv

(Pune, December 2001), edited by Rajendra Vora and Anne Feldhaus. Finally, I am grateful to the Sontheimer Cultural Association (Pune) and the Srimati Nabadurga Banerji Endowment Lecture, Asiatic Society of Mumbai, for permission to use materials from public lectures of mine that they intend to publish. As I try to show in this book, Maharashtra is made up of many small worlds. I am grateful to those who have admitted me to so many of these worlds, as well as to those who have made the effort to understand what I have learned about them. The book is dedicated to six friends—James and Miko Foard, Viju and Dilip Chitre, and Patrick and Suman Olivelle—who have helped me for decades to connect my own places to one another. This page intentionally left blank Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation

In order to help the reader pronounce unfamiliar names and terms, I have used diacritical marks on some words. In doing so, I have followed the stan- dard conventions for transliterating the devanCgarI script, which is used for both Marathi and Sanskrit. In most cases, I have left out the short “a” when it is not pronounced in Marathi (e.g., I have written “Namdev” rather than “Namadeva,” and “Ramvek” rather than “Ramaveka”). Names and terms that are much more familiar in their Sanskrit than in their Marathi forms I have given in the Sanskrit form (e.g., “diva” and “daiva”), rather than in Marathi (“div,” “daiv”). I have not used diacritical marks in Indian words that are widely used in English, or in the names of Indian languages, states of modern India, districts of modern Maharashtra, major Indian cities, or most living people (except when I refer to them as the authors of Marathi works). The following guide should help those unfamiliar with Indian languages to pronounce the names and terms used in this book:

a sounds like “u” in “cup” C sounds like “a” in “father” i sounds like “i” in “hit” I sounds like “ee” in “feet” u sounds like “u” in “put” O sounds like “oo” in “root” R sounds like “ri” in “river” e sounds like “ay” in “day” ai sounds like “y” in “fry” o sounds like “o” in “go” au sounds like “ow” in “cow” c sounds like “ch” in “church” or like “ts” in “rats” g is always hard, as in “go” j sounds like “g” in “George” or like “z” in “zoo” xviii Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation

V and T are retroflex consonants, sounding like “t” and “d” in British pronunciations of “table” and “doctor” bh, dh, Th, gh, kh, th, and Vh are aspirated consonants, pronounced like the corresponding consonant clusters in “club-house,” “dog- house,” and so on s´ and S are both pronounced “sh”

In long words, English speakers should put a slight stress on the second- last syllable, if it contains the vowels C, I, O, e, ai, o, or au, or is followed by two consonants (and not merely by a single aspirated consonant: dh, bh, ch, and so on). If the second-last syllable does not have one or both of these characteristics, the stress should be placed on the closest preceding syllable that does. “Mahabharata,” for instance, receives a slight stress on “bhC,” and “Himalayas” receives a slight stress on “mC.”