The Pilgrimage of the Groves Reconstructing the Meaning of a Sixteenth-Century Hindu Landscape

Behula Shah

This article summarizes the results of an effort to discover the relationship between the land- scape in a region called Vraj, in north central India, and the religious and political climate that existed at the time the landscape became enclosed by an extended pilgrimage route. At that point the area enclosed by the longer route became known as Braj. Located along the Yamuna (Jumna) River between Delhi and Agra, Braj encompasses the ancient city of Mathura and its surrounding countryside, an area of 35 square miles.

The Cultural Landscape of Mathura means earth.”) This is the mythical landscape where Krishna was born and spent his early o history of northern India can exclude childhood and amorous adolescence. a discussion of the contribution of this In the sixteenth century, when Vraj was Nregion to the molding of Indian con- renamed Braj, the area became an even more sciousness. By the first few centuries of the important locus for the cult of Krishna. The current era, Mathura had already acquired the purpose of my study was to uncover the rea- status of an important economic, cultural, and sons for this development and the role that political center; it is no exaggeration to say this sacred landscape played in asserting polit- that every significant political and religious ical as well as religious authority in the area. influence on the development of Indian civi- lization was in some way related to Mathura Mathura in the Sixteenth Century and its environs. In particular, the city has been an important destination for Hindu pil- Because of its geographic and cultural impor- grimage for at least the last ten centuries, and tance, Mathura was the focus of attack when the physical landscape of the region has been the first Muslim invasions of northern India closely associated with the myth of Krishna, took place in the eleventh century. By the one of the most popular Hindu deities and twelfth century Mathura and its environs had mythological figures, ever since the emergence been absorbed into the territory controlled by of the myth two thousand years ago. the Muslim dynasties of India, collectively Krishna (meaning “dark-colored lord”) is known as the Delhi Sultanate. one of ten avatars (incarnations) of Vishnu, the At the beginning of the sixteenth century, sustainer of all life and nature. All Vishnu’s one of the sultanate’s last powerful rulers, avatars personified aspects of the idea of sus- Sikandar Lodi (1488–1517), consolidated his taining life on Earth, which might be framed hold on the region when he moved his capital today as stewardship or environmentalism. from Delhi to Agra, much closer to Mathura. A Krishna grew up among the herdsmen of Vraj road that he built to connect Agra to Delhi ran (one meaning of which is “cattle shed”), and he through the heart of Mathura, severely disrupt- was himself a cowherd. (As in Greek and ing the traditional Hindu pilgrimages. Persian, the Sanskrit word for cow [Go] also Furthermore, his forces desecrated and 40 Arnoldia 64/4

destroyed its important temples, an affront to Thus was established the Pilgrimage of the Hindu freedom of worship in a city that sym- Groves. bolized Hindu religion and culture. I would argue that the Braj landscape served The Hindus, however, were not willing to as the medium through which the Hindus con- surrender their attachment to Mathura; tested the Muslim presence in the land that indeed, one result of this new incursion was to had traditionally been an important religious shift even more devotional activities to the and cultural center for them. By restructuring region. Hindu poet-seers (a “seer”—drashta in the landscape metaphorically and infusing it Sanskrit—has free access to the past, the pres- with new meaning, the Hindus were able to ent, and the future, and his poetry has the assert their claim on the land without directly divine power of universal appeal) began to set- confronting the ruling Muslim elite. In effect, tle in the area, where they elevated Krishna’s the poet-seers used the spiritual power of status as the predominant deity in this Krishna to repossess the region under the name Muslim-controlled territory. The mechanism they had given it, Braj. Krishna’s mythical they used to achieve this was a new pilgrim- authority in the landscape, reinstated as “his- age, the Pilgrimage of the Groves. torical fact” through place-based narratives, legitimized the Hindu presence. This newly Transforming the Landscape into a Sacred mythologized landscape embodied the histori- Pilgrimage Route cal, cultural, and religious perceptions of Mathura that had accumulated in the Hindu The ritual of the Pilgrimage of the Groves was imagination over time. Instead of rebuilding codified in 1552 in a Sanskrit text, Vraj Bhakti the city’s demolished temples, the poet-seers Vilasa, written by Narayan Bhatt, one of the compensated for their loss by “building” the poet-seers. This text became the major instru- Krishna doctrines, and rituals into the land- ment for expanding and elaborating the tradi- scape, creating an iconic landscape with all the tional mythology of Krishna. It was my pri- meanings and associations of the temple. mary source for interpreting the meaning of the landscape of Braj and—in the absence of The Pilgrimage of the Groves contemporary descriptions—for constructing a model of its sixteenth-century form. The pilgrims at Braj were required to visit the The Vraj Bhakti Vilasa metaphorically groves in a prescribed order, performing the inscribed the Krishna myth on the landscape of proper rituals at each grove. Detailed informa- the region, to which the poet-seers now gave tion about some of the groves has not yet come the name Braj. Every feature—hills, woodland, to light, but the map includes the most signif- groves, ponds and pools, the Yamuna River— icant stations, including overnight stops, along became associated with episodes from the the twenty-three-day route. The rituals pre- Krishna myth. This new symbolic significance scribed in the Vraj Bhakti Vilasa introduced was reinforced by a new pilgrimage path. specific meanings at each grove. The pilgrim Mathura itself was no longer the central pil- incorporated the myth into his own life—and grimage destination that it had traditionally charged the landscape with sacred meaning— been; instead, a new and circuitous route by engaging in the traditional actions of Hindu extended the pilgrimage beyond the city into worship: chanting mantras according to a pre- the surrounding natural landscape. Important scribed rhythmic structure and circumambu- sites along this pilgrimage path were marked lating the object of worship in a clockwise by groves, each one representing a deity or direction, all the while concentrating on the deities that played a role in the Krishna narra- Krishna narrative. tive. The poet-seers prescribed rituals for wor- Spatially, the pilgrimage path meandered as shipping the deities at each site, all of them it linked the groves, tracing a closed circuit clearly elaborated in Narayan Bhatt’s text. that insulated Braj from the outside. The cen- Pilgrimage 41

tral area enclosed by the path remained rela- beyond the sixteenth-century circumstances tively undifferentiated, implying that it had no that led to its development. For the Hindu pil- ritual function but, rather, was intended to grim, acts of devotion became connected to the protect worshippers from outsiders, just as natural landscape, with nature replacing the temple walls separate the place of worship ostentatious icons that had traditionally from the space around it. Likewise, Hindu wor- served as objects of worship. While Braj never shippers at a temple followed a prescribed ritu- acquired a political role, the part it played in al circumambulation of the temple walls. redefining and reenergizing the Hindu culture The geometric shapes of the landscape envi- was critical in sustaining the religion in that sioned by Narayan Bhatt were also a feature place and time. shared by Hindu temples, as was the nature symbolism underpinning both. Conceptually, Postscript the Braj landscape replicated the temple envi- sioned by Hindu architecture: a place where My Radcliffe Seminars independent project unordered, undifferentiated nature was ordered provided answers to some of the questions I and given meaning. Unlike the temples leveled broached regarding the relationship of one spe- by the Shah’s troops, however, this new place cific landscape to its surrounding Hindu cul- could not be destroyed. This buttresses the ture and to political events at the time of its argument that the underlying reason for creat- development. At the same time, it raised many ing Braj was subversive: it allowed Hindu tra- new questions. The Hindu landscape tradition ditions to continue undetected by the ruling in India has not been well studied or even Muslims. acknowledged in landscape design history. The None of these changes required substantial much longer paper from which this article was alterations to the natural landscape. Instead, excerpted therefore met with much interest the pilgrimage path largely overlaid new mean- when it was delivered at the Dumbarton Oaks ings on existing landscape. Each grove consist- Landscape Architecture Symposium in ed of a tree or group of trees and a water tank Washington, D.C., in 2002. That paper, “Braj: (cistern), both of which carried many long- The Creation of Krishna’s Landscape of Power standing, symbolic meanings in the Hindu cul- and Pleasure and Its Sixteenth-Century ture. Construction through the Pilgrimage of the Trees represented the operational forces of Groves,” will appear as a chapter in Sacred nature, or the creative process, and also sym- Ritual Practices in Gardens and Landscapes: bolized the axis mundi, or cosmological center Ritual and Agency, forthcoming from of the world. Certain trees and groves were Dumbarton Oaks in early spring 2007. thought to be inhabited and guarded by Yakshas, or tree spirits, who personified the genius of the place and bestowed fecundity and wealth on devotees. As for water, in Hindu Behula Shah received her certificate in land- thought it is a potent purifier. Because all ritu- scape design history in 1997 and became al acts begin with water, its presence was a founding director of landscape studies at functional necessity in a sanctified place. Chatham College, in Pittsburgh, PA, estab- Up to the end of the sixteenth century, lishing a master of arts in landscape studies when political circumstances changed, the and teaching courses in all aspects of land- poet-seers marked the landscape only with scape design. A founding member of the board small shrines and other unobtrusive structures of directors of The Cultural Landscape containing natural or found objects that had no Foundation, she has also been instrumental in value or meaning for the Muslims. establishing the Landscape Records of South The Pilgrimage of the Groves had ramifica- Western Pennsylvania Archives. She is now a tions that went beyond the region of Braj and landscape painter.