Introduction
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Notes Introduction Notes to Pages 1–5 1. Adele Fiske, a scholar of Greek and Latin Classics and a Professor of Religion at Manhattanville College, had done postdoctoral studies in Sanskrit and Buddhism at Columbia University. In the course of these studies, she had spent a year in India learning about modern forms of Buddhism there. In the summer of 1970, when she was returning to India to learn about popular Hinduism, she invited me to travel with her. 2. The train is probably more immediately named for Pune (Poona), which in British times was called the “Queen of the Deccan” (Frank Conlon, personal communication). 3. The southern border of Maharashtra corresponds roughly to a change from the heavy, black cotton soil called “Deccan trap” to the looser, reddish soil of the for- mer Mysore State. See Chen 1996:122 and Spate and Learmonth 1967:98–99. 4. According to some, Khandec is named for Krsga or Kanha, the god of the Abhiras (R. C. Dhere, personal communication, 2001); according to others, it is named for the Yadava king Kanherdev (BSK, Volume 2, p. 635), or its name derives from Seugadeca, a name of the Yadava kingdom (ibid.). Another ety- mology would derive its name from the Persian honorific title “Khan,” reminis- cent of the area’s Muslim rulers. 5. According to BSK, Volume 8, p. 687–88, present-day usage restricts the term “Varhat” to Akola, Amravati, Yavatmal, and Buldhana Districts, and applies the name “Vidarbha” to the area covered by these districts plus Vardha, Nagpur, Canda (Candrapur), and Bhandara Districts. 6. Aurangabad, Jalna, Parbhani, Nanded, Bid, Latur, and Usmanabad Districts. 7. For a fuller description of my fieldwork techniques, see Feldhaus 1995:9–15 and Feldhaus 2000:47–63. 8. Such a region is what Burton Stein (1977) called a “cognitive” or “formal” region, what Bernard Cohn (1967) called a “historical” region, and what others call a “naively given,” “experienced,” or “subjective” region (Lodrick 1994:3–4, quoting Schwartzberg 1967:89–90). 9. For an excellent survey of this literature, see Feld and Basso 1996b. Cultural geographers interested in place have had to extract themselves from a notion of 224 Notes to Pages 5–11 social science as exclusively concerned with scientific rationality. See, e.g., Entrikin 1989:40–41. 10. Casey 1996b:39, citing Bachelard and Heidegger; cf. Bourdieu 1971. 11. Entrikin 1989:30, e.g., uses “the terms ‘place’ and ‘region’ such that, except for the differences in geographical scale, their meanings are essentially equivalent.” Agnew 1993:263, pointing out that “the sense of place need not be restricted to the scale of the locality,” identifies “place” as “discrete if ‘elastic’ areas in which...social relations are located and with which people can identify.” If place is “elastic,” whole regions can be places. 12. They do, however, also know and speak of these directional terms (and have special terms not only for the cardinal directions, but for the intermediate ones, for which people in Kansas are left simply with the hybrids of the cardinal directions, “southwest,” “northwest,” and the others). People in Maharashtra use the cardinal and intermediate directions in architecture as well. For exam- ple, when possible, homes and temples are oriented to the east, and the Vastu Purusa (see Kramrisch 1976) is installed in the (or a) southeast corner of many homes—even in flats in large apartment buildings. Although some people say that Muslims build mosques oriented to the west (the general direction of Mecca), mosques are in fact oriented to Mecca itself (an angle of 280 degrees from India. Catherine Asher, personal communication), rather than to the west. For the importance of the cardinal directions to the compilers of a medieval Marathi religious-geographical text, the SthCnpothI, see chapter 6. 13. Lee Schlesinger first made me aware of this linguistic phenomenon during the mid-1970s, when he was doing field work in a village in Satara District, Maharashtra. 14. Feldhaus 1995:24–25; cf. the section of chapter 5 titled “The Maharashtrian Gafga.” 15. See Berdoulay 1989:125 on the connotations of the term “lieu” in French geography. 16. See, e.g., Keith and Pile 1993. 17. I am grateful to Eleanor Zelliot for her help in formulating the information presented here. For modern definitions of Maharashtra before 1960, see Feldhaus 1986:536, n.8. 18. Quite apart from recent immigration to European countries, the situation is complicated by the fact that Belgium and Switzerland were founded as multi- lingual nation-states, as well as by the fact that several European languages are spoken in more than one nation-state: German, e.g., in Austria and Switzerland as well as in Germany. See Karna 2000:81. 19. See Karna 2000:84 for three “patterns of language diversity” in formerly colo- nized countries. 20. Kolte 1982a:92; ASM I.133–34. See chapter 6. 21. For further arguments in support of this statement, see the section “Maharashtra’s Southern Identity” at the end of chapter 5. 22. Sontheimer 1991; Feldhaus 1995:98–101. There are also stories about the MahCbhCrata heroes spending their period of exile in Maharashtra. See, e.g., the story of the origin of the Karha river, at the beginning of chapter 1. Notes to Pages 12–22 225 23. Paracurambhakta n.d.:17; cf. Mate 1962:111. 24. For further explanations of the Citpavans’ connection with Ambejogai, see the section “The Goddess as Bride: Jogai” in chapter 3. 1 Rivers and Regional Consciousness 1. Some of the villages along this river have names that connect them with this story. The place where the sage ran out of bel leaves for worshiping divalifgas is called Belsar (“sar” comes from the verb “saraGe,” “to give out,” “to be expended”). The village just upstream from Pagtecvar is at the spot where Arjun and Nakul heard their eldest brother, Yudhisvhir, calling out impatiently, “Arjun! Where are you?”—“I’m nearby (javaL)!” Arjun replied. And thus the place that Arjun had reached is now called Javalarjun. 2. Cf. Jackson 1994 on roads. 3. These texts are listed in the abbreviations at the end of the bibliography as NM, TM, PM, GM.Mar., BM, KM.Mar., GM.Skt., and KM.Skt., respectively. Full bibliographical information is given there. 4. KM.Mar. 60.21–22; KM.Skt. 60.23–25. 5. durlabh. TM 75.53. Cf. TM 78.51. 6. KM.Skt. 58.37–38; KM.Mar. 58.29. 7. PM 27.39–40 and PM 39.51 give the same list; PM 22.100–01, a partially different list. 8. Lele (1885:131) quotes a Sanskrit verse from “the Puragas” naming four places on the Bhima which are especially precious (durlabh); he also (1885:160) lists the five most important confluences (saFgams) and the five most important holy places (kSetras) along the Krsga. For the Sijhastha, see chapter 5 in this book. 9. See also Kagalkar 1969:30–31. 10. T. Nilakagvh Kavicvar dastri gives a strikingly similar interpretation of an anal- ogous image of the Krsga. The image is found in a verse of a poem by wembe Svami entitled “Krsgalahari”: “Your mouth is at the base of the Sahyadris; / You have Narahari’s compassionate heart; / Your navel is in a town in Andhra; / Your two feet are in the east.” Although the verse does not name specific tIrthas or kSetras, T. N. K. dastri and other interpreters (Joci 1950:13; oral information from a priest at Narsobaci Vati) identify Wai as the Krsga’s mouth or face (mukha), Narsobaci Vati as its heart, and Kurugatti or Kuravapor in Andhra Pradesh as its navel, with the feet being the two mouths by which the Krsga reaches the ocean. dastri explains that Wai is called the mouth of the Krsga because many Brahmags live in Wai, and Brahmags are the mouth of Visgu (whom dastri identifies with the Vedic Purusa). Since “the scriptures” identify Visgu with the Krsga river (dastri 1982:122), this river too is ultimately one with the Purusa of the Purusasokta. 11. The mouth of the Sarasvati river is understood to be at Prabhas, now called Somnath, in Saurasvra (Bhardwaj 1973:46–47). 226 Notes to Pages 22–27 12. In some accounts, the moon emerged from the ocean, which is thus its father. The story of the origin of the Porga or Payosgi river (see later) shows it to be the daughter of the moon. This makes the river the granddaughter of the ocean. 13. See Feldhaus 1995 for more on gender imagery used in relation to rivers. 14. See Eck 1982:40–41, 320–21, 351–53. 15. For instance, Ujjain, Tryambakecvar, Ojkar Mandhata (Kagalkar 1969:9), Karat (Gupte 1927:6), and qddhipur (chapter 6 in this book). 16. KM.Mar. 54.11; 60.23; KM.Skt. 54.15; 60.26. 17. PM 1.49–6.90; cf. Feldhaus 1995:108–09. 18. I am not sure where either Belkugt or Varamtir is. It may be that Belkugt is the place that the Census of India 1991 District Census Handbook for Amravati District (1995) lists as Belkheda, near Vishroli. Vishroli lies on the east bank of the Porga river in Candor Bajar Taluka. 19. More precisely, Brahma accomplished the sacrifice despite the obstructions caused by his wives. See Feldhaus 1995:41–42, 78; cf. Malik 1993. 20. A Marathi-speaking pandit in Dharmapuri used a play on words to link Dharmapuri not only with Basar, but also with Kalecvaram, another holy place on the Godavari in Andhra Pradesh: VCsar (ϭ Basar), he explained, is upstream (var), and if one goes there one gets knowledge (vidya, the gift of Sarasvati, who is the goddess of learning); KClecvaram is downstream (khCli); if one goes there, one is spared an untimely death (akCla mrtyu); while in Dharmapuri one gets dharma—religious, morally correct behavior.