New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives 9781138639270, 9781315637310

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New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies

Although there has been a massive increase in the volume of pilgrimage research and publications, traditional Anglophone scholarship has been dominated by research in Western Europe and North America. In their previous edited volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (Routledge, 2015), Albera and Eade sought to expand the theoretical, disciplinary and geographical perspectives of Anglophone pilgrimage studies. This new collection of essays builds on this earlier work by moving away from Eurasia and focusing on areas of the world where non-Christian pilgrimages abound. Individual chapters examine the practice of ziyarat in the Maghreb and South Asia, Hindu pilgrimage in India and different pilgrimage traditions across Malaysia and China before turning towards the Pacific islands, Australia, South Africa and Latin America, where Christian pilgrimages co-exist and sometimes interweave with indigenous traditions. This book also demonstrates the impact of political and economic processes on religious pilgrimages and discusses the important development of secular pilgrimage and tourism where relevant. Highly interdisciplinary, international, and innovative in its approach, New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies: Global Perspectives will be of interest to those working in religious studies, pilgrimage studies, anthropology, cultural geography and folklore studies. Dionigi Albera is Director of Research in the CNRS and leads the Institute of Mediterranean, European and Comparative Ethnology at the University of Aix-Marseille, France. John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, UK, Research Fellow in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Canada, and co-founder of the Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism series.

Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism

Edited by Simon Coleman (University of Toronto, Canada), Dee Dyas (University of York, UK), John Eade (University of Roehampton, UK), Jas’ Elsner (University of Oxford, UK and University of Chicago, USA), and Ian Reader (University of Manchester, UK) For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Muslim and Catholic Pilgrimage Practices Explorations through Java Albertus Bagus Laksana Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage Journeying to the Sacred Avril Maddrell, Veronica della Dora, Alessandro Scafi, and Heather Walton International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles Edited by Dionigi Albera and John Eade The Camino de Santiago in the 21st Century Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Global Views Edited by Samuel Sánchez y Sánchez and Annie Hesp The Seductions of Pilgrimage Sacred Journeys Afar and Astray in the Western Religious Tradition Edited by Michael A. Di Giovine and David Picard Pilgrimage, Politics and Place-Making in Eastern Europe Crossing the Borders Edited by John Eade and Mario Katic´ Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790–1850 Kathryn Barush Mobile Lifeworlds An Ethnography of Tourism and Pilgrimage in the Himalayas Christopher A. Howard New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies Global Perspectives Edited by Dionigi Albera and John Eade

New Pathways in Pilgrimage Studies Global Perspectives Edited by Dionigi Albera and John Eade

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Dionigi Albera and John Eade to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested. ISBN: 978-1-138-63927-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-63731-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Contributorsvii Acknowledgementsxi 1 Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective

1

JOHN EADE AND DIONIGI ALBERA

2 Pilgrimage in China

18

MARCUS BINGENHEIMER

3 The Amazement of the Ethnographer: Hindu Pilgrimage beyond Sacred and Profane

36

MATHIEU CLAVEYROLAS

4 Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia

53

MICHEL BOIVIN

5 Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West (Peninsular) Malaysia

68

YEOH SENG-GUAN

6 Studying Religious Mobility: Pilgrimage, Shrine Visits and Religious Tourism from the Maghreb to the Middle East

89

KATIA BOISSEVAIN

7 Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania: Betwixt and between National Concerns, Academic Trends and Local Ontologies

106

ANNA-KARINA HERMKENS

8 South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence SHIRLEY DU PLOOY

124

vi  Contents   9 Transcending Symbols: The Religious Landscape of Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico

142

ALEJANDRA AGUILAR ROS

10 Studies of Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil: Continuities and Ruptures over the Long-term

162

CARLOS ALBERTO STEIL

11 Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony: Reflections on the Importance of Multilingual Studies of Pilgrimage beyond the Anglophone World

181

IAN READER

Index199

Contributors

Dionigi Albera is a CNRS Director of Research and leads the Institute of Mediterranean, European and Comparative Ethnology at the University of Aix-Marseille. His research interests and publications focus on anthropological theories concerning complex societies and the mixing of religious devotional beliefs and practices, especially in the context of shared pilgrimage shrines. Publications include (edited with M. Couroucli 2012), Sharing Sacred Spaces in the Mediterranean: Christians, Muslims, and Jews at Shrines and Sanctuaries (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press). Marcus Bingenheimer studied in Germany, Taiwan and Japan and currently works as Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University, Philadelphia. From 2004 to 2011 he taught Buddhist Studies and Digital Humanities in Taiwan. Being interested in both the history of Buddhism in East Asia as well as early Buddhist sutra literature, he is work¯ gama literature and Ming-Qing ing on two very different kinds of texts: A dynasty temple gazetteers. He has authored three monographs and some thirty articles, published the ‘Zhonghua Collection of Buddhist Temple Gazetteers’ in 12 volumes, and has created a digital archive of 240 temple gazetteers (buddhistinformatics.ddbc.edu.tw/fosizhi). He is currently working on a manuscript on the sacred site of Mount Putuo and its gazetteers. Katia Boissevain is Researcher at the CNRS and a member of the Institute of Mediterranean, European and Comparative Ethnology at the University of Aix-Marseille. Her research interests and publications focus on religious anthropology in the Maghreb, more specifically in Tunisia, concerning complex articulations of religious devotional practices in the context of local urban pilgrimage shrines. She has also studied the organization of the Hajj from Tunisia and more recently, religious conversion to Evangelical Protestantism in Tunisia and Morocco. Publications include Sainte parmi les Sayyda Mannûbiya ou les recompositions cultuelles dans la Tunisie contemporaine (IRMC-Maisonneuve et Larose, 2006), and ‘Preparing for the Hajj in contemporary Tunis: Between religious and administrative ritual’ in B.

viii  Contributors Dupret, P. Pinto, K. Spellman and T. Pierret (eds) Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Edinburgh University Press). Michel Boivin is Senior Research Fellow at the CNRS and member of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His work is devoted to the historical anthropology of the Muslim societies and cultures of colonial and post-colonial South Asia. His field straddles Southeast Pakistan and Northwest India while his general overall concern addresses the dialectic between the construction of religious knowledge and the pattern of social domination. His research is mainly located in shrines as spaces where this dialectic negotiated through circulation, ritual discourse and other representations such as the performance of devotional poetry. His most recent publications are Le Pakistan et l’islam. Anthropologie d’une république islamique (Paris, Téraèdre, 2015) and Historical Dictionary of the Sufi Culture of Sindh (Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2015). Mathieu Claveyrolas is a CNRS Research Fellow and a member of the Centre for South Asian Studies (EHESS/CNRS, Paris). His research interests and publications focus on the construction of religiosity and the anthropology of Hinduism in India and Mauritius. Relevant publications include a Hindu temple monograph, Quand le temple prend vie (CNRS Editions, 2003) and a co-edited volume (with Rémy Delage) on religion and territories in South Asia – Les Territoires du religieux en Asie du Sud (Paris: EHESS, 2016). John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton, Research Fellow at the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto and co-founder of the Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism series. His research interests and publications focus on the anthropology of pilgrimage, global migration and urban ethnicity. Relevant publications include (edited with M. Sallnow) Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Routledge, 1991), (edited with S. Coleman) Reframing Pilgrimage (Routledge, 2004) and (edited with M. Katic), Pilgrimage, Politics and Place-Making in Eastern Europe (Ashgate, 2014). Anna-Karina Hermkens obtained her PhD in Cultural Anthropology and Gender Studies from Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (2005). Her research on the interplay between gender and material culture in colonial and post-colonial contexts was recently published as Engendering Objects: Dynamics of Barkcloth and Gender among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea (Sidestone Press, 2013). After her PhD, she worked in the Dutch research program ‘The Power of Pilgrimage: A comparative study’ on the interplay between gender, Marian devotion and Marian pilgrimages in Papua New Guinea, which resulted in the volume Moved by

Contributors ix Mary: The Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World (Ashgate, 2009). Hermkens is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian National University, focussing on the interplay between (material) religion and gender in the context of violence and peacebuilding in the North Moluccas (Indonesia), Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Shirley du Plooy is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Her research interests include rites of passage, traditional health and health care, and pilgrimaging. She works primarily among Sesotho-speaking groups in the Eastern Free State, South Africa and Lesotho. She completed her PhD entitled Pilgrimages to Sacred Sites in the eastern Free State in 2015 and her book chapters on pilgrimage are ‘The making of eastern Free State pilgrimage’ (2014); ‘Landscapes, dreamscapes and personscapes as pilgrimage meshworks’ (2015); and ‘Meshworks, entanglements and presencing absence: Pilgrimages, eastern Free State-style’ (forthcoming). Ian Reader is Professor of Religious Studies at Lancaster University, where he has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on pilgrimage. He spent several years working in Japan and has researched and travelled widely there Among his main publications on pilgrimage are Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku (University of Hawaii Press 2005); Pilgrimage in the Marketplace (Routledge, September 2013), an edited volume Pilgrimage in the Japanese Tradition (with Paul L. Swanson, as a special edition of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 1997) and several journal articles and book chapters, including a chapter on Japanese online pilgrimages in a book he co-edited on Japanese Religion on the Internet (Routledge 2011, with Erica Baffelli and Birgit Staemmler). Alejandra Aguilar Ros is Professor/Researcher at the Center of Research and Higher Education for Anthropological Studies (CIESAS), a major anthropology public research centre in Mexico. She is also a Lecturer of Anthropology of Religion and Sociology and Anthropology of Culture at ITESO (Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education). She is currently coordinating the project ‘Western Mexican Shrines: towards a religious mapping’ where she is aiming to map shrines in the area using ethnocartographic methods. Her areas of research interest are shrines and pilgrimages, ethnic religious expressions, the religious body, gender and the crossroads with Roman Catholicism. Yeoh Seng-Guan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Arts and Social Sciences in Monash University, Malaysia. He is an urban anthropologist who has done fieldwork in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Recent publications include book chapters in M. Weiss (ed.), The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Malaysia (Routledge, 2015); B. Platzdasch and J. Saravanamuttu (eds), Religious Minorities in Muslim-majority States in Southeast

x  Contributors Asia: Areas of Toleration and Conflict (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014); J. Barker, E. Harms and J. Linquist (eds), Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity (University of Hawaii Press, 2014); C. Formichi (ed.), Religious Pluralism, State and Society in Asia (Routledge, 2014); and J. Bautista (ed.), The Spirit of Things: Materiality in an Age of Religious Diversity in Southeast Asia (Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2012). He is also editor of The Other Kuala Lumpur (Routledge, 2014) and Media, Culture and Society in Malaysia (Routledge, 2010). Yeoh also makes ethnographic documentaries. Carlos Alberto Steil is Professor of Anthropology, and coordinator of Graduate Program of Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. His research interests and publications focus on the anthropology of pilgrimage and religious tourism, Catholicism and New Age, anthropological theories and environmental and politics. Relevant publications include the co-edited publications O sertão das romarias (Vozes, 1996), Maria entre os vivos (UFRGS, 2003) and Caminhos de Santiago no Brasil (Contra Capa, 2011) and the co-authored On the Nature Trail (Nova, 2015).

Acknowledgements

This volume was born out of the three-day workshop which was convened by Dionigi Albera and held at the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de Méditerranée (MUCEM) in October 2013. This event was generously supported by LabexMed and the Institut D’Ethnologie Méditerranéenne, Européenne et Comparative, University of Aix-Marseille, and MUCEM and was followed by discussions about how to develop two coherent volumes from the workshop. Michel Boivin, Katia Boissevain and Mathieu Claveyrolas gave papers at the 2013 workshop and they readily agreed to develop their contributions into chapters for inclusion in this second volume. Through our networks we were able to recruit the other contributors to the volume and we would like to thank Dee Dyas and Peter Post, in particular, for holding workshops where we were able to establish links with those who eventually produced chapters here. We have benefitted greatly from the support provided by our fellow series editors, especially Ian Reader, who agreed to produce a concluding chapter. We are also grateful for the very helpful review provided by Anna Fedele as well as the support of those at Routledge—Jack Boothroyd, Margo Irvin and Josh Wells. Finally, we would like to thank Melissa Blanchard for her preparation of the index.

1 Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective John Eade and Dionigi Albera

Why This Book? Around the world today millions go on journey to and from pilgrimage sites, defined here as sites of deep significance for both individuals and groups. Although what we might describe as ‘place pilgrimage’ to distinguish it from two other traditional journeys—imaginary or virtual pilgrimage and the individual quest for moral perfection over time—has long been associated with institutional religion, visitors to religious sites come for a variety of reasons and some may have no close involvement in religious beliefs and practices (see Reader, 2014; Eade, 2016). Furthermore, pilgrimage has developed to sites that are associated with non-religious beliefs and practices. ‘Secular pilgrimage’ has developed around sites of national or ethnic suffering, such as Auschwitz and the First World War battlefields in northern France, Belgium and Gallipoli. Stonehenge and the routes to Santiago de Compostela attract ‘spiritual pilgrims’ and others influenced by ‘New Age’ and other beliefs, which draw on a variety of religious and nonreligious beliefs and practices. This increasing diversity in place pilgrimage is also intimately bound up with the massive expansion of tourism since the Second World War, leading to various hybrid forms such as ‘religious tourism’, ‘dark tourism’ and ‘thanatourism’, for example (see Rinschede, 1992; Reader and Walter, 1993; Seaton, 2002; Slade, 2003; Timothy and Olsen, 2006; Raj and Morpeth, 2007). The increasing diversity and complexity of pilgrimage is attracting keen interest among researchers from different disciplines globally. However, as we argued in our companion volume, International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles (Albera and Eade, 2015), the dissemination of this expanding volume of knowledge is hampered by a number of obstacles. While the emergence of English as a global lingua franca has encouraged communication across national borders, Anglophone scholars have tended to ignore research published in other languages. Even among Anglophone scholars there is limited engagement across disciplinary boundaries and between countries. Furthermore, there has been limited success in bridging the gulf between those studying contemporary pilgrimage

2  John Eade and Dionigi Albera and scholars involved in historical research.i These boundaries and gaps in Anglophone pilgrimage studies have been compounded by the dominance of research and publications concerned with Christian (largely Roman Catholic) pilgrimage in Western Europe and North America. In International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies we examined the rich heritage of work undertaken outside the Anglophone world through chapters focusing on Japan, Russia, Poland, Hungary, German-speaking areas, Israel, Italy and France. The volume not only invited Anglophone scholars to learn from the rich variety of research and disciplinary traditions outside the Anglophone world, it also de-centred that world. We sought to put Anglophone pilgrimage studies in its place and open up a space where the contribution by non-Anglophone could be properly appreciated. We take this project further here through a collaboration which is, in some respects, more challenging than the one encountered in the previous volume. We range more widely around the world and encounter a more diverse world of religious and non-religious pilgrimage. We begin in China and then move across southeast and south Asia to the Middle East, North Africa, Australia and the Pacific, southern Africa, Mexico and Brazil. This is a journey which introduces us not only to a wide variety of religious beliefs and practices (Daoist, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu as well as Christian) but also to people who are attracted to sites bearing little or no connection with institutional religion. The contributors to the volume reveal the diversity within religious traditions created by the complex relationship between institutional and popular beliefs and practices as well as the syncretic and hybrid forms created by this relationship. Through their surveys of pilgrimage research in these different areas of the world they encourage us to consider the ways in which colonial influences, secular nationalism, tourism and religious reformism, for example, are shaping pilgrimage through the often intricate, shifting and sometimes conflictual intersections of religious and non-religious formations. The developments in pilgrimage research considered here are not meant to constitute a representative sample on a global scale. Moreover, any attempt to find some sort of middle ground in the processes described in this volume is undermined by the varied and often irreducibly divergent realities. The various chapters show a broad spectrum of situations and processes shaped by different national and regional academic fields. They also demonstrate the impress of the political processes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, reflecting, for example, the legacies of the colonial period and the ‘Cold War.’ Even the degree of openness to the influences of the English-speaking academic world is not uniform. That said, it is still possible to notice a kind of common breathing despite the disparities and contrasts in the various intellectual itineraries described here. As the chapters variously demonstrate, between the 1950s and 1970s most social scientists were slow to question reductionist assumptions concerning religion and its close associate, pilgrimage. Scholarly relegation of pilgrimage to the realm of ‘superstition’ and a repudiated past

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 3 was encouraged by political elites in Latin America and China, while in Australia nationalist discourses consciously ignored the issue of religion. In India research was stymied less by political influences than by dominant academic models. Anthropologists, for example, often ignored the millions of Indians travelling to the wide array of shrines across the country because of their preoccupation with the village as a bounded community. Although attitudes in these areas of the world changed at different speeds and in different ways, from the 1970s onwards researchers began to broaden their horizons and draw on a variety of perspectives towards pilgrimage. This openness reflected to some extent the strengthening of international ties, especially with North American and West European universities. In the countries discussed here, pilgrimage research reveals a continuing involvement with academic debates in these western metropoles. Since the 1980s Anglophone researchers, for example, have drawn on the various ‘turns’ which have stimulated western social scientific debate and analysis through the exploration of cultural production, dwelling, emotionality, identity, materiality, mobility and space. This engagement has enabled pilgrimage studies to move away from reductionist interpretations and a reliance on such canonical tropes as communitas, contestation and hierophany. Marcus Bingenheimer’s chapter here on China is particularly interesting in this regard. The Chinese equivalent of pilgrimage—visits to particular mountains or temples—has become an officially validated object of study relatively recently among Chinese scholars. While there has been a rapid increase in the volume of research on pilgrimage (mirroring academic productivity in the country more generally), reductionist interpretations remain strong. However, Bingenheimer notes the beginnings of a more nuanced approach. The anthropological study of women pilgrims at Mount Tai by Wang (2009), for example, moves away from reductionist, post-Marxist approaches within Chinese religious studies and ‘takes care to understand [them] as “rational actors” against the condescending ascription that they are merely ignorant followers of “feudal superstition” ’ (Wang 2009: 216, quoted in Chapter 2, p. 29). The canonical tropes and reductionist interpretations are still influential as the chapters demonstrate, but our contributors are all seeking to explore other pathways by drawing on recent theoretical debates in their own ethnographic training and research. They are making their own contribution to the development of pilgrimage studies through their investigations of material religion, landscape, identity, gender, narrative, migration and diaspora, as well as spiritual and secular pilgrimage, contestation, hybridity and the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism.

Exploring New Pathways It could be argued that our attempt to encourage a freer and more equal global flow of knowledge about pilgrimage is just another hegemonic project.

4  John Eade and Dionigi Albera After all, we are publishing in English and drawing on the global networks established by Routledge and the academic publishing empire built up by the Taylor and Francis Corporation. Our project could be criticized as yet another instance of (neo)colonialism by ‘indigenous scholars’, who seek to develop approaches free from the embrace of European imperialism and colonialism (see Smith, 1999). We are more interested here in exploring pathways that take us through countries, which have been undoubtedly influenced by European colonialism but where local scholars have approached that influence and research undertaken by western scholars through eclectic and independent approaches. They have created pathways that lead us to a more diverse global landscape and take us beyond the Anglophone doxa that often identifies Victor Turner’s seminal work as the only anthropological examination of this topic. The pathways described by our contributors also lead us back in time towards research undertaken by both local and western scholars. Irawati Karve, for example, was an important pioneer in the study of Hindu pilgrimage. After training in India and Germany during the 1920s, she carried out the first participant observation of a Hindu pilgrimage. Interestingly, her article, published first in Marathi in 1951 and then in English ten years later, was quoted by Victor Turner to support his vision of pilgrimage based on the notion of communitas—a connection which has been largely ignored by scholars. Her work also raises an important but still relatively unexplored issue—the contrast between the predominant presence of females involved in pilgrimage and the plethora of male scholars studying pilgrimage (see Jansen and Notermans, 2012 for a pioneering examination of gender and pilgrimage). Another Indian pioneer, Surinder Bhardwaj, also began publishing research on Hindu pilgrimage during the early 1970s and established an important bridge between Indian and western academic scholarship (see Bhardwaj, 1973, 1985). In neighbouring China western scholars contributed to pioneering research on pilgrimage. Édouard Chavannes, for example, studied T’ai chan pilgrimage during the early twentieth century, combining an erudite exploration of literary sources with direct observation. Francophone and Anglophone scholars also undertook research in the Maghreb during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the study of religious organization and rituals involving saint cults and their relationship to political authority. It is not always easy, therefore, to draw a sharp divide between local and western research. Indeed, a creative alliance was sometimes forged, especially where there was a long tradition of cultural ties between intellectual elites. As Alejandra Aguilar Ros shows here in her chapter on Mexico, local pilgrimage scholars engaged in critical dialogue with North American and European approaches, including ‘Italian Marxist analyses of popular culture.’ A nuanced Marxist approach emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, as

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 5 researchers began to apply Gramscian models of ideological hegemony and resistance in their interpretations of popular involvement in pilgrimage. Yet, although Mexican scholars were inspired by Italian Gramscian pilgrimage studies, they also drew on non-Marxist perspectives through their openness to the work of Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Turner and Geertz. Research on pilgrimage in Brazil reveals a similar complex web of intellectual influences. In his contribution to this volume, Steil considers anthropological research undertaken from the 1980s through a focus on several Brazilian scholars who engaged in the ethnographic study of ‘devotional practices, traditional festivals and pilgrimages’ and encouraged the analysis of ‘rituals as key loci for accessing and interpreting popular culture.’ Among them Pierre Sanchis (who looked for the roots of popular Brazilian Catholicism, by studying pilgrimages and religious festivals in Portugal) was strongly influenced by French structuralism. For his part, Otávio Velho developed a hermeneutics of popular Catholicism inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. For other authors, intellectual inspiration came from publications produced by Mikhail Bakhtin, Victor Turner and Michael Sallnow.

Terminological Diversity Looking at pilgrimage studies through a wider lens also involves paying due attention to linguistic aspects. This issue was already addressed in the companion volume by contributors who outlined the different terms used to describe pilgrimage in Japan, Russia, Poland and Israel, for instance. In this volume the issue of terminology is explored more deeply. Hence, Marcus Bingenheimer begins his chapter on China by discussing the problem of employing abstract western nouns such as pilgrimage in a radically different cultural context. At the same time he still uses the term pilgrimage and refers to the close equivalence between this term and local categories. In literary Chinese ‘chaoshan’ (to have an audience with a mountain) and ‘jinxiang’ (to offer incense) are the closest equivalents and reflect the central role played by pilgrimages to five mountain ranges which set the limits of the empire and involved both Daoist and Buddhist beliefs and practices. ‘Qiufa’ (searching for the Dharma) was another related term since it referred to the travels by Chinese monks to India, while ‘canxue’ (to visit and study (with a master)) was used for monks travelling to different monasteries. Moreover, in modern Mandarin, ‘chaosheng’ (to have an audience with the sacred) is frequently used to categorize pilgrimage outside China, while a specific term, ‘chaojin’, is reserved for the ‘hajj’, the pilgrimage to Mecca by Chinese Muslims. For Bingenheimer, therefore, ‘pilgrimage’ can still be used in a non-western context but close attention needs to be paid to indigenous terminology and the diverse array of beliefs and practices specific to this cultural context. We can talk about proximity and equivalence but need to avoid reductionism, in other words.

6  John Eade and Dionigi Albera Mathieu Claveyrolas’ study of Hindu pilgrimage in India also discusses this terminological issue. He again refers to ‘pilgrimage’ in noting that ‘the terms used in India reflect the dual character of pilgrimage as both a destination and a journey’. A nice example of this duality is provided by the most common word for a pilgrimage place—‘tirtha’—which refers literally to a ‘ford’ as both a place and a movement. Claveyrolas also indicates that in Hindu traditions the terms related to the pilgrimage may have wider connotations. For instance, ‘mela’ refers to a gathering at a specific location, which can be either religious, such as the Kumbh Mela where every twelve years up to a hundred million devotees gather to bathe in the sacred river, or entirely mundane such as a fair. Moreover, because pilgrimage entails a journey (‘yātrā’), both pilgrims and those travelling on a plane are called ‘yātrī’’. Hence, in India, China and Japan − as Ian Reader has finely shown in his contribution to the companion volume (2015) − there exists a multiplicity of meanings and nuances to define religious mobility across a variety of cultural and religious contexts. In Muslim tradition the situation is rather different, since the ‘hajj’ or ‘umra’ constitute the only officially approved forms of pilgrimage, thereby obscuring somewhat other forms of religious travelling and visiting. This distinction, strongly supported by rigorist authorities, has also been adopted by most foreign observers. Consequently, in Boivin’s chapter in this volume where he examines western accounts of ‘ziyarat’ (visits to saints tombs) in India and Pakistan from the eighteenth century, he contends that there has been ‘a reluctance until recently to use the word “pilgrimage” with regard to these visits’ (see Boivin, p. 54). Yet, while Katia Boissevain in the following chapter on ‘ziyara’ (saint worship) in North Africa and the Middle East notes the ‘inherent tension’ between ‘hajj’ and saint worship within Islam, she argues that the similarities between the rituals performed during hajj and at saints’ shrines justify describing ‘ziyara’ as a pilgrimage of substitution for ‘hajj’. Drawing on Peter Brown’s classic study (1981/1984), Boissevain claims that the origin of the inherent tension between these two forms of pilgrimage is ‘intrinsic to the ambivalence concerning the relationship between God and human beings in monotheist religions, unmediated and direct or eased along by the intercession of intermediaries.’ Ambivalence is a theme which will appear in other guises later. Here we can conclude that the singular Anglophone term – pilgrimage – clearly operates as a catch-all type term that serves to translate a multiplicity of meanings and nuances in other religious traditions. The fact that this huge variety of forms is rendered in English by only one term may been seen in some respects as a simple coincidence, due to the fact that scholars need a common terminology in order to draw cross-cultural comparisons, that they tend to write in English (because of the asymmetry in the international division of labour) and that there is a lexical poverty of English from this point of view. Yet, what are the implications of this linguistic practice for the use

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 7 of ‘pilgrimage’ as a universal category? To what extent does its use tacitly disseminate across the globe a concept that comes from western history? Should we identify this process embedded in translation as an instance of hermeneutic circularity? Is the use of a singular English gloss to designate very different forms of religious mobility—forms that often have a profound specificity, even from the lexical point of view, within other cultures—an innocent exercise? Answering these questions would require an extensive discussion, which is impossible to carry out here, so we will confine ourselves to making some preliminary reflections. The vicissitudes of the term ‘pilgrimage’ seem to be part of what Derrida calls ‘mondialatinization’—a process where Latin became the language of the Church and then of modern science, perpetuating itself through the emergence of English as a global language. Yet, although the term ‘pilgrimage’ reflects the history of Christianity, it does not necessarily mean that it is useless for comparative endeavours; rather, scholars should be more aware of its particular social and intellectual history when they use it in non-Christian contexts. The confrontation with the semantic richness of other religious traditions can also help western scholars to be more aware of the historical and etymological background of the word ‘pilgrimage’ in the European past. Let us explore a bit further this historical background. The words ‘pilgrim’ and ‘pilgrimage’ derive from the Latin, where terms like ‘peregrinus’, ‘peregrinatio’, ‘peregrinitas’, ‘peregrinor’ and ‘peregrines’ had a common root (‘per ager’ meaning ‘across the fields’) and were used during the Roman period to refer to aliens or those travelling abroad. The term ‘peregrini’ (plural of ‘peregrinus’) also took on a specific legal meaning, indicating those who were not Roman citizens. In fact, the ‘peregrini’ corresponded in many respects to those who occupied an intermediate position between the Romans and the barbarians, i.e. provincials and peoples who were independent from Rome. All these terms were employed at this time without any religious connotation. A semantic shift in this direction will take many centuries and the decisive mediation of a new religion. During the early centuries of Christianity, ‘peregrinus’ and the various related categories continued to refer to a ‘foreigner.’ For example, in the Vulgate ‘peregrinus’ designates the stranger who sojourns in the land of Israel, translating Hebrew expressions such as ‘ger’ and ‘tosab’, or Greek ones like ‘pároikos’ and ‘parepidêmos’. Here strangeness is not absolute but somewhat transient and intermediate; it is the condition of those who are not in their own land and where they have not acquired full citizenship. ‘Peregrinus’, therefore, still retains the legal and political connotations of the imperial era. In this period some Christian authors also used the term in a symbolic sense, as a metaphor of the human condition, seen as a land of exile. Here believers are dwelling like strangers in their own bodies and waiting to reach their true heavenly home. It is in this sense that the verb ‘peregrinor’ is used in the translation of a passage from St Paul’s Epistle to

8  John Eade and Dionigi Albera the Corinthians to render the Greek word ‘ekdêmeô’, which means ‘to be exiled,’ ‘go or be out of the country’ (II Cor 5: 6–8). Devotional visits that could be associated with the modern conception of pilgrimage do not seem very widespread during early Christianity. The underground conditions, to which the followers of the new religion were often forced, did not encourage the development of these kinds of religious events. Yet, in the fourth century, when Christianity gained official recognition within the Roman Empire, visits to holy places began to develop. The ‘Holy Land’, where the traces of the episodes narrated by the Bible and the New Testament are rediscovered (and often invented), began to attract a growing number of devotees. Moreover, visits to the graves of the martyrs and the sanctuaries that conserved their relics multiplied. Yet, these practices were still not designated as ‘pilgrimages’ by contemporary authors. The text that has been seen as the first guide to pilgrimage—it was drawn up by a Christian from Bordeaux who reached the Holy Land in 333 CE—is entitled ‘Itinerarium’. Furthermore, the important chronicle written by Egeria, who visits the same places at the end of the same century, sporadically uses the term ‘peregrinus’ but only in the sense of ‘alien’ and never applies it to her own experience in the Holy Land. It is later in the medieval period that this word comes to refer to travel to holy sites. The semantic displacement to a purely religious mobility is gradual, however. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, the terms arising from ‘peregrinus’ and ‘peregrinatio’ have no univocal meaning. In medieval France, for instance, they are also used in the sense of stranger and wanderer, and when expressing the modern sense of ‘pilgrimage’, they encounter competition from a wide array of other words, such as ‘way’ or ‘journey’. In Godefroy’s or Huguet’s dictionaries of ancient French, the pilgrim is often defined by words that refer to the symbols and the goals of his movement: ‘paumier’ if he travels to the Holy Land, ‘romel’, ‘Romier’ or ‘romipede’ if he goes to Rome, ‘Michelot’ or ‘micquelot’ if he visits Mont St. Michel and ‘jacquet’ or ‘jacobipede’ if he opts for St James. Sometimes these terms were also used to generically describe the situation of a pilgrim, irrespective of the destination. The linguistic situation appears to have considerably changed by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Dictionary of Nicot, published in 1606, contains the entry ‘peregrin’, which is given the meaning of ‘stranger’, but the dictionary adds that in French there is the most common term ‘pelerin’, which indicates a move with religious purposes. The Dictionary of the Académie (1694) reveals a marked change, however. ‘Pellerin’ is now, uniquely and generically, the one who makes a journey to a place of worship (action defined by the noun ‘pellerinage’). The definition also states that ‘pellerin’ sometimes simply means a wanderer, but this meaning does not seem to be very important. Other seventeenth century French dictionaries, like Richelet and Furetière, give similar indications. Furetière still includes the word ‘peregrin’ (which has now disappeared in the other two), but just

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 9 to remind the reader that this is an old, obsolete term. Analogous lexical shifts are present in other European languages, such as Italian or English, with the triumph of the terms ‘pellegrinaggio’ and ‘pilgrimage’ (while German kept a double definition as ‘Pilgerfahrt’ and ‘Wallfahrt’). This very rapid foray in the western genealogy of ‘pilgrimage’ suggests that it is important to be aware of underlying linguistic issues (such as how and why we have come to use the word ‘pilgrimage’, and why there is no a precise equivalent in many languages). ‘Pilgrimage’ as a term has a historical and etymological background that in itself has subsumed multiple meanings and nuances, which have in turn served to influence the ways in which term and concept has been examined and theorized, especially in western contexts. However, we do not think that this critical awareness should lead us to consider the term ‘pilgrimage’ simply as a western cultural idiosyncrasy. The lengthy process by which a number of varied forms of religious mobility in western Christianity have progressively been subsumed within one word can help comparative research to identify in non-European contexts a range of common practices linked to religious mobility, even when other religions traditions tend to distinguish them. Yet, what researchers isolate as ‘pilgrimage’ should not be seen as a given, a natural ‘thing’, but as a theoretical construct. And above all, the commensurability thus fabricated should not lead to ignoring the reasons for differences among forms of religious mobility that are emphasized, even terminologically, by other traditions. In other words, a more sophisticated conceptualization of religious visiting and travelling can be generated by an intercultural perspective based on a more conscious triangulation between different conceptions, and between terminological uniformity and difference.

Pilgrimage and Space: Territories, Colonialism and Indigeneity Several chapters raise the question of the relationships between pilgrimage and the symbolic and political construction of territories. In China, mountains and temples (both those built on mountains and those near to the towns) were pivotal in the religious imaginary and contributed to affirming a powerful symbolic geography. The same role was exercised by regional pilgrimage processions within temple-networks. It seems possible to see here at work some dynamics which recall those present in Japan, between major pilgrimages and ‘replicated’ pilgrimages at a regional and local level (see 2014). One of the ‘loci classici’ for studying the spatial conundrum of pilgrimage is without doubt the Indian sub-continent, with its profusion of sacralized territories and landscapes. Mathieu Claveyrolas begins his account of Hindu pilgrimage in India by introducing classical approaches which either focused on pilgrimage’s symbolic meanings or its functions. Hence, a journey to a particular shrine was equated with ‘the circumambulation of the universe’,

10  John Eade and Dionigi Albera i.e. cosmic space. These approaches have given way to a more grounded analysis of space where ethnographers have focused on pilgrim practices, their journeys and the sacralization of public space (a process linking India to Hindu communities around the world). As travel has become easier, the numbers visiting shrines have massively increased and this has implications for people’s understandings of pilgrimage and their different (sometimes conflicting) motives for travelling across space to sacred places. The relationship between pilgrimage and space may also be shaped by heritage politics, as some chapters clearly show. Boissevain discusses research on the development of heritage policies in Jordan, for example, and the crucial role played by nation-state institutions. The sacralization of the national territory here illustrates the interweaving of religious, political and economic interests and the determination to attract Christian pilgrims in competition with Jordan’s neighbour, Israel. In Shirley du Plooy’s chapter on southern Africa we see another example of the relationship between heritage politics and what might be called ‘secular pilgrimage’. In South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, Freedom Park has been created as a ‘national sacred space’ but this space has failed so far to represent all the country’s communities. This issue of the symbolic construction of territories is taken further in Anna-Karina Hermken’s chapter on Australia and the Pacific. In Australia secular or non-religious pilgrimage has been the dominant mode of travel to sacred space. The country’s cultural and political development during colonialism and the ongoing process of post-colonial nation-building have resulted in an emphasis on its identity as a secular society. ‘Secular pilgrimages’ to commemorate Australians, who died during conflicts outside the country, have been a popular mode of overseas travel and the commemoration of the First World War conflict at Gallipoli, Turkey, has attracted most interest among scholars. However, pilgrimages to the Second World War sites in Papua New Guinea and Greece, for example, have also become the focus of scholarly attention as the number of visitors increases, encouraged significantly by the Australian government. While scholars have explored the motives for undertaking these ‘secular pilgrimages,’ they have also attended to the ways in which commemorations are contested. Political attempts to claim Gallipoli as an exclusive Australian space are challenged by changing relations between Australia and Turkey and a greater willingness to share the same space. Although scholars have drawn on the Turners’ classic study of religious pilgrimage to understand this and other dimensions of travel to Gallipoli, they again insist on their secular character and the dominant role played by the myths of Australian manhood and nationhood, in particular. More widely, these questions are intimately bound up with the diffusion of religious beliefs and practices in association with conversion and conquest. Hence, Muslim place pilgrimage in India and Pakistan is shaped by the ways in which Islam spread from its Arabian heartland through trade, religious mission, military conquest and political control. Contemporary

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 11 Muslim and Hindu pilgrimage is embroiled in political and ideological debates about the place of Islam in the post-colonial nation. In India these debates raise a number of related questions. Are Hindu beliefs and practices ‘indigenous’ and the cultural bedrock of the modern nation-state as some Hindu nationalists claim? Is Islam an ‘alien’ religion and, if so, can Muslims be guaranteed equal rights as citizens? Should Hindus and Muslims share the same pilgrimage shrine? As many of the chapters show, sacred space can be shared between people who, in other contexts, may find little in common. Hermkens refers to research on the little studied but increasingly popular ‘spiritual pilgrimages to remote Aboriginal sacred sites by both non- indigenous and indigenous Australian Catholics’ and draws on her own study of indigenous Catholic pilgrimages in Papua New Guinea, where Christianity is an indigenous rather than an alien system of belief and practice. In South Africa the relationship between Christian and indigenous beliefs and practices is also prominent, encouraging researchers to explore it through ethnographic studies of organized pilgrimage by Indigenous Churches, as du Plooy demonstrates. Perhaps the most striking body of research concerning this relationship in the context of pilgrimage appears in the chapters written by Alejandra Aguilar Ros and Carlos Steil on Mexico and Brazil, respectively. This research has explored the divisions and conflicts between the peasant descendants of indigenous converts, on the one hand, and the colonial and post-colonial political and religious elites, on the other. In Brazil, for example, pilgrimage cults emerged around charismatic priests in millennial movements which were violently opposed by an alliance of secular nationalists and Vaticancontrolled clergy. Yet, here the encounter between colonizer and colonized is complicated further by the forced migration of African slaves. Modes of religious expression have developed, which are in tension with Catholic institutional formulae, but refer to beliefs and practices indigenous to West Africa rather than to Brazil.

Migration, Diasporas and Tourism Although this volume and its predecessor have focused on pilgrimage studies within national boundaries, they also point to the flows across these boundaries. Territorial dynamics implicit in pilgrimages go beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. For instance, the centrality of the ‘hajj’ for Muslim religious identity gives to pilgrimage to Mecca a pivotal importance in defining a transnational Muslim ‘umma’. The growing importance of Wahhabi discourses and of reformist Islam more generally, and the increasing ease of travel help to accentuate the symbolic and political centrality of the ‘hajj’. Yet, the nation still continues to play a significant role here, partly because the Saudi authorities attribute to each nation-state a quota of yearly participants to the pilgrimage based on the size of its Muslim population. Also, as Yeoh Seng-Guan points out in the context of western Malaysia, not

12  John Eade and Dionigi Albera only have religious officials encouraged the growing performance of ‘hajj’ by Malay-Muslims, but the state has also played a key role in a process which extends back to the colonial period and British attempts to control the flows of pilgrims from this region to Mecca (see Bianchi, 2004). The references to migration by most of the contributors to this volume also suggest that research is beginning to appreciate the relationship between labour migration and pilgrimage. Mathieu Claveyrolas, for example, has undertaken multi-sited research which links Hindu pilgrimage in India to the Indian diaspora in Mauritius, while Seng-Guan also explores the contribution to religious pluralism and pilgrimage by the Indian Hindu diaspora, for example, in western Malaysia. In both cases these diasporas were the result of indentured labour migration during the colonial period and, in the case of western Malaysia, this is a history which plays a significant role in contemporary pilgrimage practices and ‘their diasporic, localised and hybridised constitution due to changing socio-economic and political contexts.’ Ros and other scholars in Latin America are investigating a similar involvement by shrines in diasporic ties, multi-sited identities and circulatory space. Migration from Mexico and other central American countries to the USA, for example, is reshaping the pilgrimage landscape in both countries (see Ros’s chapter here and Tweed, 1997; Vasquez and Marquardt, 2000), while similar dynamics can be observed in Europe (Eade, 2013). In several chapters researchers have been exploring the porous boundary between pilgrimage and tourism and the diversity of interests beyond the boundaries of institutional religion which motivate people to visit shrines. In Australia the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism has attracted considerable attention as Hermkens shows. The 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Melbourne Cup, gay bathhouses and outback heritage visits have been studied through a broad approach towards the ‘sacred’ that engages with the Turnerian communitas model but rejects the binaries of sacred and profane, pilgrimage and tourism in order to explore hybrid forms of movement such as religious or spiritual tourism. Steil and other researchers in Brazil are also focussing on the growth of religious tourism and what they see as the sacralization of tourist events. As Boissevain notes in the context of the Middle East, this interweaving of religious and tourist practices has resulted in pilgrimages by Muslims, Christians and Jews becoming ‘similar in their tourist features.’ She even goes so far to suggest that ‘[p]ilgrimage practices and religious tourism can be understood as new practices, which are transforming contemporary religion’.

Pluralism, Sharing and Hybridity The various instances of boundary crossing, mingling of different elements and creation of new, hybrid practices remain a challenge to many scholars. Victor and Edith Turner, who are the authors of the probably most influential book on pilgrimage, saw mono-confessionalism as an intrinsic feature

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 13 of pilgrimage. For them, except in rare and exceptional occasions, pilgrims of different historical religions do not visit the shrines of others. A growing bulk of research has challenged this assertion by exposing the recurrent aspect of sharing at certain shrines at least (Albera and Couroucli, 2012; Bowman, 2012; Barkan and Barkey, 2014). Hence, it should not come as a surprise that, as Bingenheimer shows in his chapter, some pilgrims to Chinese sacred mountains freely circulate through the symbols and temples belonging to different religious traditions. He notes that ‘the identity of most sites was rarely constructed exclusively; there often was a Daoist shrine or even “grotto-heaven” at a Buddhist mountain, and Buddhist temples gave shelter to pilgrims at a Daoist site’. We may add that this situation is also present in several Japanese pilgrimages, with a merging of Buddhist and Shinto symbols and practices (Reader, 2014). In his chapter Boivin refers to several examples, making clear that the same phenomenon is widespread in the Indian sub-continent. He quotes, for example, the study by Anna Bigelow (2010) which analyzes the dynamic encounter between Muslims and Hindus at a particular shrine and Carla Bellamy’s research where a local shrine appears to be an ambiguous, cosmopolitan place where pilgrims can create new identities superseding the divisions of social status, caste or religion. Bellamy even goes so far as to claim that there is a ‘specific South Asian culture of dargahs, which is not Islamic nor Islamized’. Francophone scholars also began exploring this issue of sharing sacred space during the 1990s. In 1995 Jackie Assayag, for example, studied the ways in which Muslims and Hindus shared religious rituals and the part played by processions in sustaining communal harmony. In another 1995 Francophone publication Indian ‘ziyarat’ was located within a more global perspective of saint worship from Indonesia to Morocco. The editors, Henri Chambert-Loir and Claude Guillot contend that ‘ziyarat’ is ‘a bridge of privilege unity between religions’; these ‘hybrid’ tombs are where Muslims and non-Muslims can pray ‘nearly everywhere in the Muslim world’ (French original translated by Boivin, p. 61). Using the term hybridity in relation to these phenomena may seem problematic. This term became popular in the area of race and ethnicity, for example, during the early 1990s since it challenged the assumption that nations in particular could be defined in terms of some essential ethnic features (see Hall, 1992; Bhabha, 1994). However, critics soon contested the concept of hybridity on the grounds that it was still influenced by cultural essentialism since it presupposed ‘two anterior purities’ (Gilroy, 1994: 54). Indeed, by the end of the 1990s Hutnyk went so far as to claim that hybridity had become so contested ‘that its referent has dissolved into mush’ (1999/2000: 39). The use of ‘diaspora’ met a similar challenge. Despite these criticisms, other scholars have made a compelling case for retaining these concepts as long as they were placed within historical and geographical contexts and acknowledged the operation of hegemonic power (see Mitchell, 1997). In the chapters on southern Africa, Mexico

14  John Eade and Dionigi Albera and Brazil the location of hybridity within these contexts is clearly demonstrated together with the operation of power through religious institutions. The diversity of religious beliefs and practices constrains the power of these institutions, however. Hybridity restricts the impulse towards hegemony, in other words. In the South African region this hybridity can itself be contested as Nthoi reveals in his study of a Zimbabwean cult (2006). Pilgrimage involves here a complex mixture of beliefs, practices and motives, which western scholars have often failed to understand. Terence Ranger is an exception to this general rule since his research in Zimbabwe was sensitive to the interplay of religious, political and economic forces shaping ‘pre- and post-colonial perceptions of land, landscape and the sacralizing process’, as well as the development of ‘a spiritual hybridity’ (du Plooy, p. 134). In Mexico and Brazil the issues of power, hybridity and contestation play a prominent role. Here pilgrimage has been intimately bound up with the Roman Catholic Church’s mission to convert indigenous peoples to orthodox beliefs and practices during the colonial period and subsequent reformist movements led by Rome. Once again, pilgrimage is engaged within a complex world of diverse beliefs and practices, mixtures and local resistance. This is a complexity which has increased considerably since the 1970s with the growth of ‘religious tourism’, ‘spiritual tourism’, green activism, influenced by ‘New Age’ beliefs and practices. In spite of the rapid growth of Pentecostalism in Brazil at least, pilgrimage to Roman Catholic shrines is still popular, but the reasons people visit these shrines are highly diverse and the range extends far beyond the boundaries of officially condoned belief and practice (see Eade, 2016 for comparison with European pilgrimage).

Final Comment This chapter has moved from explaining the volume’s rationale to introducing the themes which recur from the substantive chapters, e.g. terminological diversity, territories, colonialism, indigenous beliefs and practices, migration, diasporas and tourism, pluralism and hybridity. These themes are not uncontested as we have seen in the last section where we discussed the use of the term ‘hybridity’. The debates swirling around the use of this and other key concepts encourage us to keep pilgrimage studies open to theoretical developments within social sciences and humanities, more generally. These theoretical currents have mainly flowed between two dominant regions—Europe and North America. The various ‘turns’ (e.g. cultural, spatial, mobility) in Anglophone scholarship, whose influence can be seen in some of the pilgrimage research outlined here, were heavily indebted to nonAnglophone European intellectuals, especially those writing in French and German. Although empirical research on pilgrimage is expanding globally, it appears that this relationship between the European and North American

Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 15 regions will continue to dominate theoretical innovation for some time to come. Yet, as some of the chapters have shown, non-western scholars have critically engaged with western perspectives and developed their own distinctive approaches towards pilgrimage. In Mexico, for example, researchers have drawn creatively on Italian Marxist analyses as well as the approaches devised by the Anglophone anthropologists, Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz. This sensitivity to diverse theoretical currents counteracts the strong tendency for a particular approach to become hegemonic. Hence, while the Turnerian paradigm has loomed large in pilgrimage studies, attention to contestation and to processes bound up with globalization, secularization, ethnicity and gender, for example, has opened up new pathways for empirical investigation. The recent application of non-representational or more-than-representational perspectives to the study of pilgrimage demonstrates the continuing importance of western theoretical debates for developing new areas for research globally. This approach is beginning to be applied by pilgrimage scholars, although its contribution to theoretical debates within pilgrimage studies has yet to be properly discussed (see Ross-Bryant, 2013 and Maddrell et al., 2014). The dominant representational approach and its alternative are not necessarily in opposition to one another (see Maddrell, 2011). Hence, although the act of walking can be interpreted as a process of representation through which people construct sacred places, Maddrell claims that the landscape they walk through possesses its own immanent features and aura. The walkers encounter ‘the landscape visually and materially’ and engage ‘with it kinetically, sensually and imaginatively, both seeing and becoming part of the picture’ (Maddrell, 2011: 17). The pathways explored here have been almost exclusively framed within the representational tradition. However, as theoretical debates and empirical research become more globally disseminated, similar kinds of critical, eclectic engagement with the non-representational approach may emerge to complement those seen here with regard to the representational perspective. Given the expanding academic interest in pilgrimage around the world, it is vital to encourage an awareness of different research traditions and new avenues for theoretical and empirical investigation. Our volume invites the reader to explore the diversity and complexity of contemporary pilgrimage by following pathways beyond western Christianity. A pioneering step in an exciting intellectual journey.

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Pilgrimage Studies in Global Perspective 17 Raj, R. and Morpeth, N. (eds) (2007) Religious tourism and pilgrimage festivals management: An international perspective, Wallingford, UK and Cambridge, MA: CAB International. Reader, I. (2014) Pilgrimage in the marketplace, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ———. (2015) ‘Japanese studies of pilgrimage’ in Albera and Eade, op cit. Reader, I. and Walter, T. (eds) (1993) Pilgrimage in popular culture, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Rinschede, G. (1992) ‘Forms of religious tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 19, issue 1, pp. 51–67. Ross-Bryant, Lynn (2013) Pilgrimage to the national parks: Religion and nature in the United States, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Seaton, A. (2002) ‘Thanatourism’s final frontiers? Visits to cemeteries, churchyards and funerary sites as sacred and secular pilgrimage’, Tourism Recreation Research, vol. 27, issue 2, pp. 73–82. Slade, P. (2003) ‘Gallipoli thanatourism: The meaning of ANZAC’, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 30, issue 4, pp. 779–794. Smith, L. Tuhiwai (1999) Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples, London: Zed Books. Timothy, D. and Olsen, D. (eds) (2006) Tourism, religion and spiritual journeys, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Turner, V. and E. (1978) Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture, New York: Columbia University Press. Tweed, T. (1997) Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic religion at a Cuban Catholic shrine in Miami, New York: Oxford University Press. Vasquez, M. and Marquardt, M. (2000) ‘Globalizing the Rainbow Madonna: Old time religion in the present age’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 119–143.

2 Pilgrimage in China Marcus Bingenheimer

Terminology Abstract nouns such as ‘religion’ or ‘philosophy’ assume categories that are not easily mapped onto non-European cultures. The same is true when asking for ‘pilgrimage/pèlerinage/Pilgerfahrt’ in China. The closest equivalents in literary Chinese are chaoshan 朝山, literally ‘to have an audience with a mountain’1 and jinxiang 進香 ‘to offer incense.’2 Jinxiang is also used for pilgrimage processions, in which an effigy of a deity is carried back and forth between temples.3 In modern Mandarin, chaosheng 朝聖 ‘to have an audience with the sacred,’ is frequently used where one would write ‘pilgrimage’ in English, and especially when writing about pilgrimage outside China. Another term, chaojin 朝覲 is reserved for the hajj, the most significant pilgrimage for the more than 20 million Chinese Muslims. For the travels of Chinese monks to India the texts mostly speak of qiufa 求法, ‘searching for the Dharma’. Still another word that can be translated as ‘pilgrimage’ is canxue 參學 ‘to visit and study (with a master),’ which has been used for monks travelling to different monasteries in search of instruction. The central terms chaoshan and jinxiang already indicate two characteristics which are germane to traditional Chinese pilgrimage. Irrespective of whether a site was associated with Buddhism, Daoism, a regional deity, or the imperial cult—mountains played a central role. Furthermore, the practice of offering incense to resident spirits, ancestors or deities was universal across traditions. Offering incense has been called ‘the most fundamental religious act in Chinese culture’ (Ter Haar, 1999: 5).4 Accordingly, lay pilgrims to sacred sites are called xiangke 香客 ‘incense (offering) guest.’5 In late imperial China these often travelled in organized pilgrimage ‘incense groups’ (xianghui 香會6). At the site itself pilgrims insert their incense sticks into incense burners (xianglu 香爐), which are placed in front of images. Revealing is the difference to the most frequently used term in Japanese: junrei 巡礼 ‘to circuit and worship.’7 The Japanese term emphasizes a pilgrimage route that consists of an itinerary of linked sites that are to be visited in order, while in China pilgrimage was more often seen in terms of its destination. Japanese Buddhist pilgrims tend to follow a circuit that connects

Pilgrimage in China 19 several shrines and temples, whereas pilgrimage in China is usually perceived of as a visit to a single mountain or temple site, even where the visit includes a circuit of famous places at the larger site. Thus, on the Shikoku pilgrimage pilgrims are called henro遍路 (appr. ‘making the round of the circuit’).

Characteristics Below we will focus on pilgrimage in China mainly in terms of pilgrimages to mountains and famous temples. Neither the travels of Chinese monks to India in the first millennium, nor the hajj by Chinese Muslims today can be covered in detail here. Accounts of the Chinese India pilgrims have long elicited intense interest, because they offer unique eyewitness reports about early medieval Indian history, a period for which we have otherwise little information. Especially the travelogues of Faxian 法顯 (d. c. 420), Xuanzang 玄奘 (d. 664) and Yijing 義淨 (635–713) have been scrutinized in great detail.8 Their travels can be understood as pilgrimages, as they did indeed visit the sacred Buddhist sites in India. However, the number of those monastic pilgrims was small and their goal was not merely to see the sites, but also to study with Indian masters and to acquire new texts. Whereas pilgrimage in a narrow sense leads pilgrims on well-known paths to well-known places, the Chinese monastic pilgrims to India rather resembled explorers, venturing into the unknown. In spite of their importance for the transmission of Buddhism and the communication between India and China, their mode of ‘pilgrimage’ was never an option for the majority of Chinese Buddhists, and moreover was limited to the period from the third to about the 8th century. Whereas the last of the famous India pilgrims returned to China in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), the stream of unnamed xiangke who visit sacred sites within China has been a constant in Chinese history until today. No one has ever counted the millions of pilgrims who went on chaoshan.9 In the context of a comparative discussion of ‘pilgrimage’ the focus should therefore be on chaoshan/jinxiang pilgrimages to mountain or temple sites. Mountain Worship Mountain worship began early in Chinese history, long before the advent of Buddhism and the formation of religious Daoism. The earliest dictionary of folklore and customs, by Ying Shao 應劭 (fl. 190 CE), already asserts a religious geography in which mountains figure prominently.10 Ritualistic travel to sacred mountains was certainly part of the imperial cult of the Han and even earlier, but it was probably not yet widely practiced.11 After the Han, however, mountain worship assumed such an important role in Chinese religion that Édouard Chavannes, began his work on Mount Tai categorically: ‘Les montagnes sont, en Chine, des divinités’ (Chavannes, 1910: 3). Central to the development of mountain worship was the system of the five marchmounts (wuyue 五嶽) that can be traced back to the first written

20  Marcus Bingenheimer texts in China.12 The set was not fixed in the beginning, but after the 2nd century BC generally comprised the following five mountain ranges: Mount Tai 泰山 in the east, Mount Heng 衡山 in the south, Mount Hua 華山 in the west, Mount Heng 恆山 in the north, and Mount Song 嵩山in the centre. The five marchmounts, with the centre surrounded orderly at the four cardinal points, were thought to define the empire as a whole. As part of the imperial cult the mountain gods were likened to ministers, who administered the periphery and centre of the state. As local deities in their own rights, they were venerated in temples and shrines just like other members of the Chinese pantheon. The marchmounts were more strongly associated with Daoism than Buddhism, but most have a Buddhist presence as well. This mingling is true for most pilgrimage sites. Daoist and Buddhist sites are discussed below in different sections only for the sake of convenience. The identity of most sites was rarely constructed exclusively; there often was a Daoist shrine or even ‘grotto-heaven’ at a Buddhist mountain, and Buddhist temples gave shelter to pilgrims at a Daoist site.13 Daoist Mountain and Temple Sites Sacred geography has been part of religious Daoism since its inception in the 2nd century CE when Zhang Daoling (trad. 34–156) organized his Sichuan domain in twenty-four ‘dioceses’ (zhi 治) (see Verellen, 2003; Olles, 2005). In the Tang, Daoists created a systematic Daoist geography of China and its deities.14 They listed ten major and thirty-six minor grotto heavens, and seventy-two blissful lands in locations throughout the empire. The ‘heavenly grottoes and blissful lands’ (dongtian fudi 洞天福 地) had been an important trope in the Daoist imaginaire even before the Tang. Heavenly grottoes and blissful lands were generally associated with mountains and continued to play a role in the literati perception of sites even after popular belief in them had faded. Besides the marchmounts there were a large number of other Daoist mountains. Some were connected to important historical developments within Daoism, such as Mount Heming 鶴鳴山 and Mount Qingcheng 青城山, where Zhang Daoling had had visions of Laozi, or Mount Mao 茅山, where the Shangqing school originated. Others were centres of monastic Daoism such as Mount Longhu 龍 虎山, where the Zhengyi school had its headquarters. The most popular Daoist pilgrimage sites were associated with prominent deities, such as Mount Wudang 武當山, believed to be the residence of the martial god Zhenwu 真武. In spite of the concern with religious geography, however, there was no developed discourse on pilgrimage. On the contrary, many Daoist sites derived their prestige from being remote and exclusive. Only the few that were able to combine deity worship with strong monastic institutions and imperial support became popular pilgrimage centres (e.g. Mount Wudang).

Pilgrimage in China 21 Buddhist Mountain and Temple Sites For Daoists, correspondences between landscape, the stars, parts of the body and various deities played a central role in doctrine, ritual and practice. In Buddhism on the other hand, mountain worship is not an integral part of the teachings. The pan-Indian axis mundi of Mount Sumeru is part of Buddhist cosmography, but it would be hard to argue that Indian Buddhist doctrine was overly concerned with the sacredness of mountains. It was in Buddhist China, doubtless inspired by indigenous notions of sacred geography, that there evolved a set of sacred mountains that attracted large numbers of pilgrims in the last millennium.15 The Buddhist mountains, however, are not ruled by autochthonous mountain gods, but understood as the residence of Bodhisattvas. Since the Qing dynasty a set of ‘four great and famous mountains’ of Buddhism has enjoyed great popularity. The four are Mount Wutai 五台山 (associated with Mañjus´rī), Mount Emei 峨嵋山 (associated with Samantabhadra) Mount Putuo 普陀山 (associated with Avalokites´vara), and Mount Jiuhua 九華山 (associated with Ks´itigarbha). Mount Wutai and Emei were already Buddhist sites before the Tang, Putuo became a pilgrimage site in the Northern Song, and Jiuhua was firmly associated with Ks´itigarbha only in the Ming. Today sometimes Mount Jizu 雞足山 in Yunnan is added as a fifth sacred mountain. Next to the ‘great and famous mountains’ there are many other Buddhist mountain and temple sites which have attracted pilgrims. Traditionally, information about these has been collected in mountain or temple gazetteers, of which at least three hundred are still extant (Bingenheimer, 2012: 58).16 As sacred mountains became popular in Chinese Buddhism, and more and more temples were built on mountains, the two were conjoined in the religious imaginaire. Large monasteries came to be perceived as ‘mountains’ irrespective of their geographic setting. Both mountains and temples were seen as numinous places, and the metaphorical use of the word ‘mountain’ (shan 山) for temple, became common in late imperial times (Goossaert, 2000: 125). Both in Daoism and in Buddhism larger monasteries were thus seen as mountain-like and a ‘mountain gate’ (shanmen 山門) marked the temple entrance. Entering the precincts of a sacred mountain or a temple one stepped ‘outside the world’ (fangwai 方外) into a space of reclusion, but also divine presence. In the Ming and Qing, when the construction of new temples and monasteries was proscribed by law, temples had to be built outside of towns, further removing them into ‘numinous’ (ling 靈) mountainous landscapes. This continued a trend that started in the late Tang and further contributed to pilgrimage travel. In this way, the temples in the Wulin 武林 Hills east of Hangzhou or the Miaoxiang 妙香 Hills near Beijing developed into pilgrimage sites. They were just remote enough to be seen as outside the city, but close enough to be reachable without the cost and the perils of long distance travel.

22  Marcus Bingenheimer Sacred Sites in China Cities Sites: Buddhist Daoist Marchmount Confucian

Northern Mt. Heng

Taiyuan Dezhou Mt. Tai

Map by MB 2016

Xi’an Mt. Hua

Mt. Heming

Beijing

Mt. Wutai

Mt. Qingcheng

Chengdu Mt. Emei

Qufu

Mt. Song

Nanjing

Mt. Wudang wuhan

Chongqing

Yangzhou Mt. Mao

Suzhou

Mt. Emei

Hangzhou Mt. Qiyun

Mt. Lu Mt. Longhu

Mt. Putuo

Mt. Tiantai

Southern Mt. Heng Mt. Jizu Kunming Mt. Luofu

Guangzhou

0

250

500

750

1000 km

Map 2.1  Sacred Sites in China.

Pilgrimage versus Literati Travel Considering that mountain paths are arduous, what moved Chinese pilgrims to undertake their ‘audience with the mountain’? As in other cultures, the hope to meet and communicate with a deity—be it a mountain god, an immortal, or a bodhisattva—provided one rationale. Deities could be encountered in the flesh as well as in visions or dreams. Another manifestation of divine presence was numinous images (ruixiang 瑞像) which draw visitors. Like for Christianity in Europe, relics (sheli 舍利) played a crucial role in the spread of Buddhism in both India and China (Bingenheimer, 2006). Again like in Christianity, relics also were among the attractions that brought pilgrims to a site, e.g. at the famous As´oka Temple near Ningbo. Like in Hinduism, devotees could pledge a pilgrimage to a saint’s temple in exchange for supernatural help. Fulfilling such promissory vows was called ‘to return a vow’ (huan yuan 還願). In general, pilgrimages were considered virtuous acts that created merit (gongde 功德), a concept that was imported into Chinese religion from Buddhism. Pilgrimage by Buddhist monks and nuns too was motivated by all of these reasons, even if their pilgrimage travel was often framed as educational visits to elder masters at different monasteries. Monks, who travelled

Pilgrimage in China 23 as part of their monastic education, were not called xiangke, but ‘Water and Cloud Monks’ (yunshui seng 雲水僧).17 Different from the Chinese India pilgrims of the first millennium, the xiangke of the second millennium rarely left first-person accounts of their travels. Instead, the majority of eyewitness reports by visitors to sacred sites in China were written by members of the literati. The literati of late imperial China were men that had learned to write according to occasion in the literary idiom. Their early education consisted almost exclusively of Confucian texts and was aimed to allow them to participate in the highly competitive civil examinations. The default attitude of literati culture toward folk religion was to maintain a tolerant distance, but this was just one section of a wide spectrum that ranged from strident opposition to modest participation. Literati were often members of the land-holding gentry and had the means to travel for leisure. Besides visiting historical and scenic sites, literati also followed pilgrimage routes, which had a developed infrastructure to accommodate travellers. The rise of the genre of the informal travelogue (youji 遊記) in the Ming and Qing resulted in a large number of first-person accounts of sacred sites.18 However, the literary conventions of the time did not encourage the expression of religious sentiment, and the literati had been trained to see themselves as a class apart from commoners and their religious concerns. In fact, literati authors rarely mentioned the presence of pilgrims, and where they are mentioned they are usually described as a bother to the gentleman traveller and his friends. Therefore, in spite of a large number of youji, first-person accounts of religiously motivated pilgrimages are exceedingly rare. To be clear: literati have at times visited sacred sites out of religious fervour, and surely many commoners went on pilgrimage merely to enjoy the scenery at Mount Emei. Nevertheless, there was a class divide in the attitude towards the sacredness of the place. The studiously relaxed posture of the literati in the religiously charged atmosphere of the pilgrimage site asserted Confucian superiority in the face of popular religion. There were even some conservative Confucians who were opposed to any kind of popular pilgrimage. Especially when it came to women. Women on Pilgrimage The Ming and, based on it, the Qing law codes strictly regulated religion. Even if there was a considerable leeway in its enforcement, the legal code severely limited religious institutions and organizations. One of the vectors of control was based on gender. In late imperial China women actively participated in pilgrimage. Indeed, for all we know, female pilgrims were the majority at most sacred sites. However, women went on pilgrimage in spite of a cultural current that was opposed to travel by commoners in general and female travel in particular. Ming and Qing law explicitly prohibited women from visiting Buddhist temples and sacred sites, and the laws were echoed in administrative handbooks. For instance, the chapter on ‘Prohibiting women

24  Marcus Bingenheimer from visiting temples’ in the Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence says: The magistrate should post notice to the effect that no women do visit temples on the pretext of burning incense. If the violator belongs to a gentry family her followers or servants should be arrested and punished. If she belongs to a commoner family, her husband should be arrested and punished. Buddhist monks or Taoist priests who harbor these women should be punished by wearing the cangue for public exposure. (Huang and Chu, 1984: 608) As Vincent Goossaert has remarked such rules were ‘on first glance comical,’ because obviously the temples were frequented and supported by women throughout these eras (Goossaert, 2002: 118; see also Yü (1981: 151). Nevertheless, female pilgrimage existed in a tension with certain strands of Confucian orthodoxy. Where women went on pilgrimage outside of their hometown, they had to organize themselves in pilgrimage groups, as individual pilgrimage was illegal for them (Brook, 1998: 630). The Canadian missionary Virgil C. Hart (1840–1904) has left a lively description of female pilgrims on Mount Emei: Every person carries an umbrella, for the weather in July and August is most fickle. Of the pilgrims fully one half were women, and they, as a rule, were above forty years of age; some were quite young and in care of chaperones. I also observed a curious custom they have of travelling in companies of seven. The rich and the poor walk together, and kneel in the same circles around the altars of their honored gods. But how differently they dress! Here comes a queenly dowager, with staff and a retinue of servants, her head adorned with gold and pearls, and heavy gold rings in her ears . . . The poor are clad in homespun blue, green, or red cotton stuff; their dresses are shorter and more convenient for climbing. All kinds of headdresses are represented, and all devices in jewelry; for even the very poor wear jewelry, and are as proud of their silver and pewter ornaments as the rich are of their jewels. Nearly all have small feet, and to make the journey over rough stones at all comfortable, they tie corn husks around the small shoes, and then attach sandals to these. The ascending pilgrims have bundles of incense and many pounds of copper cash, but those on the descent are not burdened with either. (Hart, 1888: 201f) ‘Incense and copper cash’ were the currency of Chinese pilgrims, the former offered to the deities, the latter donated to the monastic institutions which maintained the infrastructure of inns, temples, mountain roads, wells and bridges. Next to this, pilgrims often would wear special outfit, pennants, hats or coats. For orientation, pilgrims from the 19th century

Pilgrimage in China 25 onwards were able to buy shorter illustrated guidebooks or pilgrimage maps.19 Thus pilgrimage, both lay and monastic, was widely practiced in late imperial China. In spite of Confucian misgivings, there existed countless local networks of pilgrimage groups and a developed infrastructure along the routes to the major sites. Traditional pilgrimage ended when the SinoJapanese War (1937–45) and the ensuing civil war (1945–49) made travel difficult. Pilgrimage in Communist China stopped, as far as we can know, completely during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Since the 1980s, however, travel to religious sites has revived and is again flourishing, now promoted and researched as part of the domestic tourism industry.20

Studies in European Languages Pilgrimage in China in the last four decades has been studied less intensively than pilgrimage in Japan. There are two main reasons for this, one historical, the other structural. In recent history, pilgrimage in Japan has hardly ever been interrupted by outside events. Parallel to an uninterrupted tradition of practice there is a strong tradition of scholarship studying ‘folk culture’ in the post-war period. Thus, Ian Reader can start a discussion on pilgrimage studies in Japan with the words: ‘Japan has both a highly developed network of pilgrimages and a rich academic tradition of studying them’ (Reader, 2015: 23). Compared to this, the study of Chinese pilgrimage in the 20th century—as indeed the study of Chinese religion as a whole—faced great political challenges, even, or perhaps especially, after the end of World War II. The actual practice of pilgrimage was interrupted, in some places for longer than one generation, and the burgeoning pilgrimage-tourism of modern China has a much more troubled and complicated connection with its past than do the pilgrimage circuits in Japan. This situation is different for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and, not incidentally, much of the anthropological work on pilgrimage was done in these regions. Structurally, Chinese pilgrimage was generally oriented towards a single destination, rather than towards a pilgrimage circuit along an ordered set of shrines. This made scholars of religion often focus on the pilgrimage site and its history, economy or architecture, instead of the dynamics of pilgrimage which sustained the site. In the study of Chinese religion pilgrimage so far has not emerged as a central category, as it did in the study of Japanese religion. In this, modern scholarship has tacitly followed the view of Ming and Qing dynasty literati, who recognized chaoshan as a practice, but one in which they were not overly interested.21 Chaoshan was never endorsed and at best tolerated by the hegemonic Confucian discourse and literati travellers only rarely mention pilgrims in their travelogues. For the past hundred years scholars of Chinese religion have produced a good number of studies on sacred sites that were frequented (and supported)

26  Marcus Bingenheimer by pilgrims. There is Édouard Chavannes (1910) and Brian Dott (2004) on Mount Tai, Michel Soymié (1956) on Mount Luofu, Florian Reiter on Mount Lu (1978) and on Mount Qiqu (1993), Michel Strickmann (1981) on Mount Mao, Susan Naquin (2000) on the temples in and around Beijing, Olles (2005) on Mount Laojun, James Hargett (2006) on Mount Emei, Meir Shahar (2008) on the Shaolin Temple, James Robson (2009) on Nanyue, Michael Walsh (2010) on the Tiantong Monastery, Pierre-Henri De Bruyn (2010) on Mount Wudang, Ernst Boerschmann (1911) and Marcus Bingenheimer (2016) on Mount Putuo, and María Elvira Ríos Peñafiel (2015) on Mount Nanwutai. Not surprisingly, the site that has attracted most attention is Mount Wutai, which is not only one of the oldest sites, but also the most internationally famous of the sacred mountains (Ono and Hibino, 1942; Tuttle and Elverskog, 2011; Andrews, 2013; Cartelli, 2013; Lin, 2014).22 In spite of this wealth of research on sacred sites, dedicated studies of pilgrimage are still rare. Among the numerous monographs cited above only Dott’s work on Mount Tai privileges pilgrimage as the main heuristic perspective from which to understand the site. Dott not only discusses the agency and organization of common pilgrims visiting the goddess of Mount Tai, but also considers the intermittent visits by emperors and literati as pilgrimages. The most detailed ethnography of pilgrimage in modern China is Ríos Peñafiel, who reports on the actions, festivals, music, infrastructure and the lore of contemporary pilgrims to Mount Nanwutai.23 Another exceptional work dedicated to pilgrimage in China is the widely-cited collection of essays edited by Naquin and Yü (1992). It contains papers by Glen Dudbridge and Pei-yi Wu on Mount Tai, Robert Gimello on Mount Wutai, Bernard Faure on Mount Song and Caoxi, Chün-fang Yü on Mount Putuo, James Cahill on Mount Huang, John Lagerway on Mount Wudang, Susan Naquin on the Miaofeng Shan pilgrimage, and Rudolf Wagner on the ­present-day ‘pilgrimages’ to Mao Zedong’s Mausoleum. The introduction by Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü is still the best overview of pilgrimage in China that is available in English.24 It concludes with a long list of questions for future research on pilgrimage, only few of which have, so far, been followed up. The fascination with mountains that sinologists have inherited from their literati forebears has somewhat obscured the role of regional pilgrimage processions within temple-networks. Because in the 20th century the networks of temples that worshipped the same deity were destroyed or interrupted in mainland China, much of the existing research on temple pilgrimages is based on data from Taiwan. Pilgrimage processions (raojing 遶境) feature prominently in Steven Sangren’s work on Chinese religion in Taiwan (1987, 1988, 1991, 1993, 2003 and others), in which he paid special attention to the annual Mazu pilgrimage processions in central Taiwan. A most interesting project that has used GIS technology in conjunction with fieldwork to

Pilgrimage in China 27 map the pilgrimages in situ has resulted in the Atlas of the 2012 Religious Processions in the Tainan Region (Center for Geographic Information Science, Academia Sinica et al., 2014). In the late 1980s, Mazu pilgrimage expanded as pilgrims from Taiwan started to visit Mazu temples in Fujian (see Rubinstein, 1995). This development is the subject of a monograph on pilgrimage in Taiwan and Fujian by D. J. Hatfield (2010). Hatfield gives a detailed account of modern Mazu pilgrimage and its place in the contested construction of Chinese folk religion (minjian xinyang 民間信仰). It is based on data gathered in years of fieldwork and from reports in Chinese media. Here we find a description of pilgrim uniforms, as well as the Chinese equivalent of the pilgrim stampbooks, the ‘incense pennants’ (xiangqi 香旗) (Hatfield, 2010: 186–189).25 A revival of Daoist pilgrimage processions in China, again in Fujian, has also been attested by Kenneth Dean (1993: 131–133), who has remarked on the continuity of his findings with the earliest Western descriptions of pilgrimage processions by de Groot (1886).

Studies in Chinese Bibliographic control of Chinese scholarship has in recent years been greatly helped by the development of the China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI / 中国知网), which claims to represent 90 per cent of knowledge resources produced in the PRC (http://oversea.cnki.net/accessed July 2015). This includes journals, master and doctoral dissertations, proceedings, yearbooks, patents etc., but significantly not monographs. CNKI, which was launched in 1996, allows querying the research output of Chinese academia enabling users to not only find resources on a particular topic, but also to learn how a topic has fared over time. In the analysis below I will trace Chinese publications regarding pilgrimage in China. These must be understood relative to the overall development of research output in China, which has risen spectacularly in recent years. In the sciences alone the Chinese research output almost quadrupled between 2002 and 2012. Consequently, the rise of China in scientific and academic publishing has been described as ‘the most significant change during the last three decades’ in this field by Thomson Reuters (2014: 22f). Table 2.1 below shows the number of publications in the Humanities, Social Sciences 1 & 2, and Economics and Management sections of CNKI (哲学与人文科学, 社会科学 I & II辑,经济与管理) which contain a term for “traditional Chinese pilgrimage” (朝山or 進香), or “traditional Chinese pilgrim” (香客) in the topic (主題).26 Obviously, pilgrimage studies in Chinese are on the rise. Some 500 papers were published in the four-year period between 2010 and 2014. Although absolute numbers seem to suggest an explosion of pilgrimage studies, it must be remembered that in China the overall output in all fields of research has increased drastically. In the absence of reliable data on the growth of

28  Marcus Bingenheimer 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1950

1984

1994

2004

2014

Table 2.1  Pilgrimage-related publications in Chinese (1950–2014).

other fields within the Humanities, it is not possible to say whether the particular field of pilgrimage studies has outgrown or lagged behind the average increase. Nevertheless, and that is the reason I cite these figures here, the sheer mass of recent studies needs to be recognized and addressed. The study of China in the West has had a tendency to overemphasize research done in European languages and Japanese. Historically, this might have been justified. Where it came to the study of Chinese history and religion, academic output in 20th century China was often overwhelmed by political and ideological currents. It is incumbent on Western scholarship to recognize that this has changed in the last twenty years. Here, I will show only for a single topic—female pilgrimage—how rich secondary literature in Chinese has become. Apart from a translation of two women pilgrims’ songs (Yü, 2007), there is no dedicated study on this topic in any Western language. In China, however, a number of studies have appeared in China in recent years. These often treat the subject from perspectives outside the current cultural theory commons of Western academia. Sometimes these perspectives seem overly reductive, such as when Chen Baoliang treats pilgrimage merely as the ‘best excuse’ to allow women to travel (2010: 123). On the other hand, Chen’s work offers a wealth of sources about female pilgrimage in the Ming that include, e.g. an analysis of the folk ballad ‘The lady offering incense’ (shaoxiang niangniang 燒香娘娘), which deplores the cost of the incense, candles, provisions and transport needed by the pilgrims (2010: 121). Wan and Cao (2007) rely on the depiction of pilgrimage in Ming-Qing novels and their descriptions of pilgrimages. Like Dudbridge (1992) and Mei (2003) before, Wan and Cao mine the description of female pilgrimage to Mount Tai in the s17th-century novel Xingshi yinyuan zhuan 醒世姻緣傳. There is little awareness, however, of the intentionally caricature-like quality

Pilgrimage in China 29 that the male author drew for his male audience. The depictions in novels are used as illustrations of actual practice without taking the misogynist intent of the narrative into account.27 Another historical study is Zhang (2010), who investigates why and how women from Beijing went to Taishan in the Ming and Qing. Zhang, too, relies on literary sources, but draws a more balanced picture of the various attractions that a visit to the goddess of Mount Tai held for women of the capital. An informative anthropological study is Wang (2009). Based on her fieldwork at Mount Tai, Wang outlines in detail how female pilgrims rationalize their practice in the face of the prevailing discourse on religion and are able to argue for and explain their beliefs to outsiders once trust is established. In the post-Marxist discourse of Chinese religious studies ‘superstition’ (mixin 迷信) is still a widely used category and at times applied in the discussion of female pilgrimage. For a practice to be pigeon-holed as ‘superstitious’ has implications for its legal and academic treatment. It is good to see anthropological work emerging in Chinese that takes care to understand female pilgrims as ‘rational actors,’ against the condescending ascription that they are merely ignorant followers of ‘feudal superstition’ (Wang, 2009: 216). In short, even on a relatively small topic in the wider field of pilgrimage studies, we see a steady output of publications in Chinese. Much of it focuses on the pilgrimage culture at certain sites—especially Mount Wutai, Mount Tai and Mount Wudang, but it is still too early to identify major trends. If current publication patterns continue, however, an overview article about pilgrimage in China will look very differently ten years from now. Its bulk will be dedicated to describe the different approaches realized in the scholarship on Chinese pilgrimage in Chinese.

Notes 1 The term chaoshan was probably not used before the Tang. One of the earliest occurrences is in the entry on Mount Wudang 武當山 in one of the chapter on mountains (Shang Luo Xiang Deng Huai Cai zhu shan 商洛襄鄧淮蔡諸山) included in the Taiping yulan (completed in 983). 2 For the offering of incense at a nearby temple the term shaoxiang 燒香 is more common (Mei, 2003: 54). There is also the less frequent canbai 參拜 ‘to visit and worship.’ 3 For pilgrimage processions at times the term xunli 巡禮 ‘to circuit and worship’ was used as well. In modern Taiwan pilgrimage processions are generally termed raojing 遶境 ‘to circuit a region.’ 4 The article includes a bibliography on the use of incense in Chinese religion. 5 One of the earliest occurrences of xiangke 香客 is in the poem Xing xiang gui 行 香歸 by the famous Bai Juyi (772–846). Monastic pilgrims were called xingzhe 行者 (‘practitioner’ or literally ‘walker’), yunshui 雲水 (‘clouds and water’) toutuo 陀頭 (from Sanskrit dhūta ‘ascetic practice’) or toutuo seng 陀頭僧 (dhūta monk).

30  Marcus Bingenheimer 6 Or xianghuohui 香火會, xiangshe 香社. Leaders of such pilgrim groups were called huishou 會首 or xiangtou 香頭. 7 In Japan the term was used early by the monk Ennin (794–864) in the title of his famous diary, the Nittō guhō junreikōki 入唐求法巡禮行記, in which he recorded his travels to Buddhist sites in China (first entry 836 CE, last entry January 848 CE). In China the term is attested around the same time in the works of Wang Jian (767–830). 8 On Faxian and the role of Indian pilgrims in general, see Deeg (2005), which contains a comprehensive 60-page bibliography on the subject. Deeg considers Faxian and others as pilgrims on ‘Pilgerfahrt,’ but also remarks on the differences of their situation to the standard definition of Deeg (2005: 47–48). On Xuanzang the most detailed study is still Mayer (1992). 9 Already Virgil Hart, in 1888, uses ‘millions’ to describe the streams of pilgrims to Buddhist mountains (Hart 1888: 199). In 1937, Prip-Møller observed that ‘the big monasteries in the pilgrim centres boast sleeping accommodation for a couple of thousand pilgrims’ (Prip-Møller, 1967 [1937]: 139). Boerschmann mentions the ‘unzähligen Pilger’ on Mount Putuo (Boerschmann, 1911: 13). A hundred years later at Mount Putuo, I was told the island accommodates several thousand visitors every day. For the Mazu 媽祖 cult in Taiwan of the 1980s and 1990s Sangren says that ‘Every year some four to five million Taiwanese (20% of the island’s population) make pilgrimages to Pei-gang, home of . . . the goddess Ma Tsu.’ (Sangren, 1993: 565). 10 Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義, Ch.10: ‘On Mountains and marshes.’ In a later glossary, Zhai Hao 翟灝 (d. 1788) cites text from the Western Han (206 BCE to 24 CE) to argue that chaoshan began in that period (Tongsubian 通俗編 (1751), Ch. 19: ‘On Deities and Ghosts 神鬼’, sub voc. chaoshan 朝山). 11 Robson, in his overview of the formation of the system of the five sacred mountains of the imperial cult, reminds us that mountains in early China were not only home of supernatural beings, but also ‘landscapes of fear.’ (Robson, 2009: 18). 12 For a concise overview of the historical development of the marchmount system see Kleeman (1994), and Chapters 1 and 2 in Robson (2009). For the role the five marchmounts in the literary imagination of Qing literati see Landt (1994). 13 Here and below, ‘Daoism’ is used in the broadest sense, i.e. including all forms of local and regional ‘folk-religious’ practices. Although in other contexts the demarcation of regional religion from organized forms of Daoism is important, it does not matter in a discussion of pilgrimage. 14 In works like Sima Chengzhen’s 司馬承禎 (647–735) ‘Chart of the palaces and bureaus of the [Grotto-]Heavens and the [Blissful] Lands’ (Tiandi gongfu tu 天 地宮府圖), and Du Guangting’s 杜光庭 (850–933) ‘Record of heavenly grottoes, blissful lands, [the five] marchmounts, rivers and famous mountains’ (Dongtian fudi yuedu mingshan ji 洞天福地嶽瀆名山記 (901)). 15 Needless to say, there are holy Buddhist mountains outside of East Asia, e.g. in Northern Thailand (Swearer et al. 2004), Mongolia (Wallace 2015), and Tibet (McKay 1998). 16 For some of the larger sites, such as the four mountains, ten or more gazetteers were compiled over the centuries, whereas smaller sites might only have one or two gazetteers about them. 17 On monastic travel in the early nineteenth century, see Bingenheimer (2016, Ch. 8). 18 The authoritative treatment of this genre is Eggert (2004). 19 For a specimen of such a late 19th century map for Mount Putuo, see Boerschmann (1911: 15), for Mount Wutai, see Chou (2007:110–111). 20 See e.g. Yang, Pan and Zhao (2011: 90–112), who base their analysis of pilgrimage travel in China on a framework developed in Western tourism studies.

Pilgrimage in China 31 21 Sangren (2003: 10) speaks of ‘class-based biases.’ It should be noted that Buddhist authors did not make a concerted attempt to defend or legitimize pilgrimage. Faure mentions that the Chan school especially ‘tended to downplay the notion of pilgrimage’ (Faure, 1992: 151). 22 A bibliography of recent publications on ‘Temples & Mountains, Pilgrimage’ is maintained by Philip Clart as part of his Bibliography of Western Language Publications on Chinese Popular Religion (1995-present). Available online at http:// home.uni-leipzig.de/clartp/bibliography_CPR.html. 23 On the subject of pilgrims’ songs see also Yü (2001: 505–510). 24 In French there are overviews by Magnin (1987) on Chinese Buddhist pilgrimage and Lagerway (1987) on Daoist pilgrimage. 25 The pennants, which at times were used to record a pilgrim’s name and the starting point of her pilgrimage, and other paraphernalia can be traced back to the Qing. See also Hargett on pilgrim associations centred on Mount Emei in Sichuan (Hargett 2006: 180f). 26 The set contains a few dozen false positives, because 朝山 is also a place name. They are not significant. 27 Another problem might be mentioned here: Mei does not cite Dudbridge, and Wan and Cao do not cite either Mei or Dudbridge. The reception of previous scholarship often seems incidental rather than systematic.

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32  Marcus Bingenheimer processions in the Tainan Region 臺南地區壬辰年(2012)遶境儀式香路圖圖 集,`Taipei: Academia Sinica Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. Chavannes, É. (1910) Le T’ai Chan: Essai de monographie d’un culte chinois, Paris: Éditions Ernest Leroux. Chen, B. 陈宝良 (2010) ‘Haogui chongfo: Mingdai funü de fodao xinyang ji qi yishi 好鬼崇佛:明代妇女的佛道信仰及其仪式.’ Haerbin shifan daxue shehuikexue xuebao 哈尔滨师范大学社会科学学报, no. 1, pp. 118–125. Chou, W.-S. (2007) ‘Ineffable paths: Mapping Wutaishan in Qing Dynasty China,’ Art Bulletin, vol. 89, no. 1, pp. 108–129. Dean, K. (1993) Taoist ritual and popular cults of southeast China, Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Bruyn, P.-H. (2010) Le Wudang Shan: Histoire des récits fondateurs, Paris: Les Indes Savantes. Deeg, M. (2005) Das Gaoseng-Faxian-zhuan als religionsgeschichtliche Quelle. Mit Übersetzung der Texte, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Studies in Oriental Religions 52). Dott, B. (2004) Identity reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in late imperial China, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Dudbridge, G. (1992) ‘Women pilgrims to T’ai Shan: Some pages from a seventeenthcentury novel’ in Yü Naquin, S. and Yü, C.-F. (eds) Pilgrims and sacred sites in China, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press. Eggert, M. (2004) Vom Sinn des Reisens: Chinesische Reiseschriften vom 16. bis zum frühen 19. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Faure, B. (1992) ‘Relics and flesh bodies: The creation of Ch’an pilgrimage sites’ in Naquin, S. and Yü, C.-F. (eds) Pilgrims and sacred sites in China, Berkeley: University of California Press. Goossaert, V. (2000) Dans les temples de la Chine, Paris: Albin Michel. ———. (2002) ‘Anatomie d’un discourse anticlérical: le Shenbao, 1872–1878.’ in Goossaert, V. (eds) L’Anticléricalisme en Chine, Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes. Groot, J. de (1886) Les fêtes annuellement célébrées à Émoui (Amoy), Paris: Leroux. (Annales du Musée Guimet No. 11). Hahn, T. (1988) ‘The standard Taoist mountain and related features of religious geography,’ Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, vol. 4, pp. 145–156. Hargett, J. (2006) Stairway to heaven: A journey to the summit of Mount Emei, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hart, V. (1888) Western China: A journey to the great Buddhist Center of Mt. Omei, Boston: Ticknor. Hatfield, D. (2010) Taiwanese pilgrimage to China: Ritual, complicity, community, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kouamé, N. and Goossaert, V. (2006) ‘Un vandalisme d’État en Extrême-Orient? Les destructions de lieux de culte dans l’histoire de la Chine et du Japon’, Numen, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 177–220. Lagerway, J. (1987) ‘Le pèlerinage taoïque en Chine’ in Chélini, J. and Branthomme, H. (eds) Histoire des pèlerinages non chrétiens. Entre magique et sacré: le chemin des dieux, Paris: Hachette.. Landt, F. (1994) Die Fünf Heiligen Berge Chinas—Ihre Bedeutung und Bewertung in der Ch’ing Dynastie, Berlin: Verlag Dr. Köster. Lin, W.-C. (2014) Building a sacred mountain: The Buddhist architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, Seattle: University of Washington.

Pilgrimage in China 33 Lin, W.-P. (2014) ‘Virtual recentralization: Pilgrimage as social imaginary in the demilitarized islands between China and Taiwan,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 131–154. Kleeman, T. (1994) ‘Mountain deities in China: The domestication of the Mountain God and the subjugation of the margins,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 114, no. 2, pp. 226–238. Magnin, P. (1987) ‘Le pèlerinage dans la tradition bouddhique chinoise’ in Chélini and Branthomme op cit. Mayer, A. (1992) Xuanzangs Leben und Werk, Teil 1: Xuanzang, Übersetzer und Heiliger, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. McKay, A. (1998) Pilgrimage in Tibet, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. Mei, L. 梅莉 (2003) ‘Cong ‘Xingshi yinyuan zhuan’ kan Ming Qing funü de ­chaoshan jinxiang从《醒世姻缘传》看明清妇女的朝山进香,’ Wuhan daxue xuebao 汉大学 学报(人文科学版), January edition. Naquin, S. and Yü, C.-f. (eds) (1992) ‘Pilgrimage in China’ in Naquin and Yü, op cit. Naquin, S. (2000) Peking: Temples and city life, 1400-1900, Berkeley: University of California Press. Olles, V. (2005) Der Berg des Lao Zi in der Provinz Sichuan und die 24 Diözesen der daoistischenReligion, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ———. (2012) ‘The gazetteer of Mt. Tianshe: How the Liumen community reshaped a Daoist sacred mountain’ in Clart, P. (ed.) Chinese and European perspectives on the study of Chinese popular religions, Taipei: Boyang Publishing. Ono, K. 小野勝年 and Hibino, O. 日比野丈夫 (1942) Godaisan 五臺山, Tokyo: Zauhō Kankōkai 座右寶. Prip-Møller, J. (1967/1937) Chinese Buddhist monasteries: Their plan and function as a setting for Buddhist monastic life, 2nd edition. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Reader, I. (2015) ‘Japanese studies of pilgrimage’ in Albera and Eade, op. cit. Reiter, F. (1978) Der‚ Bericht über den Berg Lu‘ (Lu-shan chi) von Ch’en Shun-yü; einhistoriographischer Beitrag aus der Sung Zeit zum Kulturraum des Lu Shan. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Munich, 1978. [廬山] ———. (1993) Der Tempelberg Ch’i-ch’ü in der Provinz Szechwan, im China der Gegenwart, Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann. [七曲山] Ríos Peñafiel, E. M. (2015) ‘El reflejo de la luna en la montaña: el budismo en Nanwutai-shan.’ Unpublished doctoral thesis (El Colegio de México, A.C. Centro de Estudios de Asia y África). Robson, J. (2009) Power of place: The religious landscape of the southern sacred peak (Nanyue南嶽) in medieval China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center (Harvard East Asian Monographs). Rubinstein, M. (1995) ‘The revival of the Mazu cult and of Taiwanese pilgrimage to Fujian’, in Harvard Studies on Taiwan: Papers of the Taiwan Studies Workshop, vol. 1, pp. 89–125, Cambridge, MA: Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. Sangren, S. (1987) History and magical power in a Chinese community, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Sangren, S (1988) ‘History and the rhetoric of legitimacy: The Ma Tsu cult of Taiwan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 30, pp. 674–697. ———. (1991) ‘Dialectics of alienation: Individuals and collectivities in Chinese religion,’ Man, New Series, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 67–86.

34  Marcus Bingenheimer ———. (1993) ‘Power and transcendence in the Ma Tsu pilgrimages of Taiwan,’ American Ethnologist, Vol. 20, pp. 264–282. ———. (2003) ‘American anthropology and the study of Mazu worship’ in Meirong, L. 林美容, Hsün, C. 張珣 and Xianghui, C. 蔡相煇 (eds) Mazu xinyang de fazhan yu bianqian媽祖信仰的發展與變遷, Taiwan Zongjiao Xuehui [Taiwan Association for Religious Studies]and Caituan Faren Beigang Qiaotian Gong [Beigang Qiaotian Temple Corporation]. Shahar, M. (2008) The Shaolin monastery: History, religion, and the Chinese martial arts, Honolulu: Hawaii University Press. Shuo, Y. (Sam) S., Ryan, C. and Liu, G. (Maggie) (2009) ‘Taoism, temples and tourists: The case of Mazu pilgrimage tourism,’ Tourism Management, vol. 30, pp. 581–588. Soymié, M. (1956) ‘Le Lo-feou chan: étude de géographie religieuse,’ Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, vol. 48, pp. 1–139. Strickmann, M. (1981) Le Taoïsme du Mao Chan: Chronique d’une revelation, Paris: Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises du Collège de France. Swearer, D., Premchit, S. and Dokbuakaew, P. (2004) Sacred mountains of northern Thailand and their legends, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Ter Haar, B. (1999) ‘Teaching with incense,’ Studies in Central & East Asian Religions, vol. 11, pp. 1–14.Thomson Reuters (2014) The research & innovation performance of the G20—and its impact on decisions made by the world’s most influential economic leaders. Retrieved from http://sciencewatch.com/grr/theg20-nations Accessed July 2015. Tuttle, G. and Elverskog, J. (eds) (2011) Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, vol. 6. Special Issue on Wutai Shan and Qing Culture. Verellen, F. (1989) Du Guangting (850–933): Taoiste de cour à la fin de la Chine médiévale, Paris: De Boccard. (Memoires de l’Institut des hautes etudes chinoises Vol. 30). ———. (1995) ‘The beyond within: Grotto-Heavens (dongtian 洞天) in Taoist ritual and cosmology, ’Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, vol. 8, pp. 265–290. ———. (ed.) (1998) Culte des sites et culte des saints en Chine. Special issue of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, vol. 10. ———. (2003) ‘The twenty-four dioceses and Zhang Daoling: The spatio-liturgical organization of early heavenly master Taoism’ in Granoff, P. and Shinohara, K. (eds) Pilgrims, patrons, and place: Localizing sanctity in Asian religions, Vancouver: UBC Press. Wallace, V. (2015) ‘Buddhist sacred mountains, Auspicious landscapes, and their agency’ in Wallace, V. (ed.) Buddhism in Mongolian history, culture, and society, New York: Oxford University Press. Walsh, M. (2010) Sacred economies: Buddhist monasticism and territoriality in medieval China, New York: Columbia University Press. Wan, Q. 万晴川 and Cao, L.曹丽娜 (2007) ‘Xuan juan yu jinxiang: Ming Qing funu: shenghuo jianying—yi xiaoshuo wei kaocha duixiang 宣卷与进香:明清妇女 生活剪影——以小说为考查对象,’ Zhongguo dianji yu wenhua 中国典籍与文化, March, pp. 95–100. Wang, J. 王均霞 (2009) ‘Zuowei xingdongzhe de Taishan jinxiang nüxing 作为行动 者的泰山进香女性,’ Minsu yanjiu 民俗研究, March, pp. 204–217.

Pilgrimage in China 35 Yang, M. 杨明, Pan, Y. 潘运伟 and Zhao, Q. 赵谦 (2011) Fojiao yu siyuan ­jingji lüyou guihuachuyi 佛教与寺院经济旅游规划刍议, Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua 宗教文化. Yü C.-F. (1981) The renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming synthesis, New York: Columbia University Press. Yü, C.-F. (2001) Kuan-Yin: The Chinese transformation of Avalokites´vara, New York: Columbia University Press. ———. (2007) ‘Chinese women pilgrims’ songs glorifying Guanyin’ in Lopez, D. Jr. (ed.) Buddhism in practice, abridged edition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zhang, Z. 张志娟 (2010) ‘Ming Qing Beijing funü de chaoshan jinxiang 明清北京妇 女的朝山进香.’ Unpublished MA thesis, Xinan University 西南大学.

3 The Amazement of the Ethnographer Hindu Pilgrimage beyond Sacred and Profane Mathieu Claveyrolas Let us start with obvious facts. First, although often seen as an ‘age-old’ practice, Hindu pilgrimage has only become a mass movement fairly recently. Second, in the highly prolific study of Hindu religion the main focus of interest has been the temple or the village studies. Both of these facts are at least partly linked, since following pilgrims in their demanding and often dangerous journeys in the mid-twentieth century India required quite a reckless field researcher! Certainly, the most abundant literature about Hindu pilgrimage consists of booklets sold to pilgrims on the spot. They are written in vernacular languages and often do not bear the name of any identified author. They serve both as tourist brochures about the town or region and as eulogistic presentations of the religious sites. Since they are not concerned in any academic tradition and reading of pilgrimage, I will not include them in my discussion. Besides these eulogistic booklets, most of the literature on Hindu pilgrimage has been written in English, even when Indian scholars and institutions have been involved.1 Neither the French tradition nor Indian Subaltern studies, which have made strong contributions to the Indian academic field, have thoroughly dealt with pilgrimage. I will begin by reviewing classical approaches towards Hindu pilgrimage, which focused on its symbolic meaning or its various functions. I will then argue that ethnographers (both Indian and Western) explored dimensions absent from textual sources as well as the specifically Hindu experience of the divine. Their research led them to challenge the applicability of Christian concepts, such as the sacred/profane dichotomy, which have traditionally shaped pilgrimage studies; more generally, this challenge resulted in a reappraisal of the study of Hindu pilgrimage institutions and practices. I will focus primarily on religious pilgrimage, even if other related issues such as tourism or nationalist politics will be considered along the way. Due to spatial constraints, the discussion will be confined to India with only a few references to Hindu diasporas. While I refer to pilgrimage studies across the nation (from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu and from West Bengal to Maharashtra), I will often draw on Banaras as a case study to illustrate Hindu pilgrimage in general.

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 37

Pilgrimage and Cosmology Among the major classical approaches, Hindu pilgrimage has been extensively studied for and through its cosmological symbolism, both from the perspective of textual analysis and cultural geography. Even scholars who were eager to emphasize the functionalist dimensions of pilgrimage or its ethnographic context were obliged to acknowledge the necessity of examining the symbolic meanings of Hindu pilgrimage. Micro-macro Symbolism The main cosmological meaning attached to Hindu pilgrimage, repeatedly discussed by scholars, refers to micro/macro-cosmos relations as enacted by pilgrim centres and pilgrimage journeys alike. In a well-known legend, the two God-brothers Ganesha and Kartikkeya compete with each other to see who can more quickly circle the universe. Kartikkeya rushes on his vehicle, the fast-moving peacock, laughing at Ganesha’s unreliable vehicle, the rat. But Ganesha decides to slowly walk around their divine parents, Shiva and Parvati, symbolizing the totality of the universe, and is declared the winner. Drawing on this cosmological narrative, Hindu elaborations are fond of games of substitutes which equate the whole universe with the national territory, the sacred city, the temple, and the human body. As a consequence, pilgrimage (across India or around a sacred city) is systematically equated with the circumambulation of the universe. As the geographer, Surinder M. Bhardwaj, who was brought up in India but spent his whole professional career in America, notes: ‘the Grand Pilgrimage exposed in the Mahābhārata [one of the major sacred poems of Hindu mythology] encompasses the whole Indian sub-continent. Not only a journey it is a ritual circumambulation of the Hindu cosmos’ (Bhardwaj, 1999). Because the Hindu cosmos is largely considered as bound within India’s national borders, many forms of actual pilgrimage networks across India have been seen as activating representations of the whole cosmos. Here we can mention the car dham (four abodes) pilgrimage, which is very popular in its charter bus form. The journey symbolically encompasses the totality of the Hindu cosmos since it passes through the four cardinal cities of Hindu India (Badrinath in the North, Puri in the East, Rameshvaram in the South and Dvaraka in the West). Regional or more local territories can also be micro-representations of the Hindu universe. Perhaps one of the best-known examples, studied by the American religious studies scholar Fred Clothey (1978) and the French geographer Pierre-Yves Trouillet (2010), is the South Indian pilgrim-network which links six famous temples of the god Murugan, thus symbolizing and upholding the local Tamil sacred geography. Pilgrimage centres have also been studied as centres of the Hindu universe, most of all through a focus on the roads taken by pilgrims once they reached the sacred centres. The Indian geographer, Rana P. B. Singh, professor at the

38  Mathieu Claveyrolas Banaras Hindu University, has specialized on the major pilgrimage around his hometown (2002). He focuses on the cosmological meaning of the pilgrims’ circulation in Banaras, as pilgrims experience a body-cosmos relation through their circumambulation around various shrines, which stand for the seven Hindu sacred cities and the four cardinal directions. In a chapter entitled ‘The Cosmic mandala and the city’ he provides ‘cognitive maps’ which represent Hindu conceptions of the cosmos rather than Western-style cartographic traditions. Beyond national territory and sacred cities, therefore, micro-macro relations mobilize the pilgrim’s body. Drawing on the same idea, the Canadian anthropologist, Alan Morinis, published in his book on West Bengal pilgrimage based on the classical mandala drawing, since it represents the body of the Purusa (cosmic, primordial, being) and serves as the model for a Hindu sacred topography to which pilgrims are supposed to constantly refer (1984: 293).

Typology and ‘Centers out there’ What the American religious studies specialist, Diana Eck, calls ‘the locative strand of Hindu piety’ (1981: 323) leads to a profusion of sacralized territories—cosmos, nation, cities, temples, bodies—but also landscapes (mountains, rivers), each subject to circumambulation and pilgrimage. Unlike the Muslim hajj (see Boivin in this volume), no one-and-only canonical pilgrimage is acknowledged in Hindu traditions. On the contrary, the proliferation of cosmological representations puzzled many scholars, who tried to put into a hierarchical order or simply organize the profusion of Hindu pilgrimage sites. Bhardwaj, for example, wrote a pioneering study in 1973, which argued in favour of a hierarchy between pan-Hindu pilgrimage centres where high-caste urbanized Hindus would seek high level spiritual goals conversely to lower caste rural Hindus seeking down-to-earth rewards in local pilgrimage sites. The American anthropologist, Lawrence Babb, also formalized this point, arguing the pilgrimage was a medium for the Sanskritic, pan-Indian tradition to spread locally (1975: 19). Many scholars, such as Morinis (1984), criticized this vision of Hindu devotion and pilgrimage for understating the continual overlaps between local and pan-Indian sites and elite and popular devotees. However, he was unable to really solve the typological puzzle of the many Hindu pilgrimage places. After an exhaustive and critical review of pilgrimage theories and after presenting three case studies of pilgrimages in West Bengal, Morinis ends his book with a somewhat disappointing chapter titled ‘A semantic approach to the analysis of pilgrimage’. Stating that ‘these symbolic analyses of Hindu cosmological concepts point to the significance of the journey in the implicit ideology of Hindu pilgrimage’ (1984: 295), he focuses on micro-macrocosmic schemes and metaphysical meanings. Notwithstanding his precise ethnographic data and repeated statements

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 39 that pilgrims’ motivations should not be considered exclusively spiritual, Morinis seems to come back to a dual and hierarchical model of pilgrimage where the practices of pilgrims would only make sense if contextualized (and subsumed) within the learned, textual and metaphysical dimensions of Hinduism. These interpretations of Hindu pilgrimage as cosmological, however, usefully focus on a crucial dimension of Hindu logics, namely the way through which the universal divine presence is manifested and inscribed in precise and multiple places linked by pilgrimage networks and pilgrim circulations (Reiniche, 1988). Furthermore, as substitutes for the whole cosmos, being both totality and navel of the universe, Hindu places of pilgrimage are radical examples of Victor Turner’s paradoxical ‘centers out there’. Pilgrim places such as Banaras are traditionally thought to be free of the current, degenerate, age of darkness (Kali Yuga). Neither model of the human world nor duplicate of the divine world, Banaras is defined as a time and space fundamentally apart, and this is precisely what pilgrims hope to experience when coming there (Claveyrolas, 2010a). It also encourages devotees to momentarily abandon their worldly condition and mimic the ascetic condition. As for leaving this liminal space and returning to the mundane world, the mythological narrative of Ganesha and Kartikkeya can be considered an illustration of how Hindu conceptions of micro-macro relations contextualize and, often, outweigh, the idea of a journey. A Hindu pilgrimage road is bound to be, literally, circular: Hindu pilgrims, walking clockwise, come back to where they started. Of course, with Hindu cyclical conceptions of time matching this round trip, many scholars stressed that the journey must be considered a metaphor for the samsara—the Hindu journey of life. However, Hindu pilgrimage should not be restricted to travelling around a representation of the cosmos. On the contrary, Eck (1981) among others studied how the Hindu journey also powerfully refers to linear travel from one world to the other thanks to the pilgrimage centre known as a ‘crossing place’ or ‘ford’ (tirtha) between the divine and human worlds (for comparison with the Indian Muslim context, see Boivin in this volume). The Turnerian model of pilgrimage as a process of leaving and returning home after experiencing the liminality of the sacred centre has rarely been given much credit in Indian studies. The reason may well be because, with the exception of Ann Gold (1988), scholars have long failed to contextualize pilgrimages in their whole time structure and have focused primarily on the pilgrimage site.

Criticisms of Static Approaches In Hindu traditions, pilgrimage is often discussed as an age-old practice—a point which deserves to be qualified.

40  Mathieu Claveyrolas Historicity of Places Pilgrimage networks constantly raise the question: how can so many places bear the same, absolute and exclusive meaning of a ‘special place’? Each Hindu sacred city offers the pilgrim the myth of its uniqueness and superiority. Listening to sacred texts, religious specialists, residents and pilgrims, Banaras would be the Hindu sacred city, the Hindu pilgrimage site, the city of Shiva, the city where rites for the dead and ancestors should be performed. It is viewed as unique and un-rivaled. Whether Indian or Western, scholars have more often than not failed to keep their critical distance from such local representations (Kane, 1941; Vidyarthi et al., 1979). The result is that even academic texts repeatedly compare Banaras with Jerusalem (Eck, 1983) and consider it the obvious and eternal representative of Hinduism, ‘the prototypical place for illuminating the whole Hindu vision of the world’ (Eck, 1985: 41). Hence, in a review comparing the studies by Morinis and Eck, Nita Kumar (1986) criticizes Eck’s lack of sociological interest and sees her book as similar to a mahatmya (a eulogizing text for pilgrims). The emphasis on pilgrimage as a symbol embedded in cosmological meaning has also largely failed to account for the developments of pilgrimage, pilgrim centres and the pilgrims themselves. Some have criticized this idealized vision by insisting, for instance, on the historicity of the Banaras pilgrim centre (Bakker, 1996: 32) or noting that other sacred towns, such as Pushkar or Gaya, were long preferred to Banaras (Bhardwaj, 1973: 41, 65; Freitag, 2006: 242). Others have stressed the historicity of the pilgrimage institution itself, such as the American anthropologist, James Lochtefeld (2010), who has shown how the ‘eternal’ pilgrim town Haridvar dramatically changed from a rather local site into a national pilgrimage place through the British introduction of railways. It became obvious that this symbolist approach fails to appreciate the day-to-day construction of the pilgrim centres and routes through pilgrim practices. In Banaras, for instance, the 100 chapters of the Kās´ī khanda text describe the sacred territory, classifying and commenting on the myriad shrines and gods. It shows a list and order of the places for a pilgrim to visit, a description of the local religious geography together with mythological accounts and ritual prescriptions, all being presented as eternal, unchanging normative facts. This all too static approach was usefully contextualized by ethnographic studies stressing the various routes actually taken by pilgrims, but also by textual studies. The German Indologist Jörg Gengnagel (2006), for instance, stressed the variety of meanings and individual preferences of pilgrims, along with the historicity of texts themselves whose dating and authorship are highly problematic and which should be considered more like palimpsests than single author productions. Pilgrimage studies here offer an ideal insight into the complex interactions between textual norms and their popular and practical enforcement.

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 41

From Place to Journey For decades, Hindu field scholars have produced many (excellent) village or temple monographs. The tradition goes as far as the 1950s, with the work of the Indian sociologist/anthropologist, M.N. Srinivas (1952), and the French anthropologist, Louis Dumont (1957). At best, scholars focused on pilgrim centres considered as ‘sacred complexes’ and paid scant attention to mobility and pilgrimage—see, for example, Saraswati, 1975 and Vidyarthi et al., 1979 on Banaras, Vidyarthi, 1961 on Gaya and Eschmann et al., 1978 on Tirupati. Indeed, for most scholars, even the primary paradigm for Hindu religious mobility was not pilgrimage but processions around the temple or within the locality (Burghart, 1985; Porcher, 1985; Jacobsen, 2008; Delage, 2010). Processions take the gods on a journey around the social space and divine territory whereas pilgrims travel in order to meet the divine. Despite this important difference, processions and pilgrimages have raised common questions among scholars, most of all focused on territories and identities. Indianist scholars have only recently become interested in Hindu pilgrimage as an ideal object for understanding mobility. Hindu pilgrimages are not only a matter of experiencing a sacred place as point of arrival, therefore. Indeed, the terms used in India reflect the dual character of pilgrimage as both a destination and a journey. Mela, for example, refers to a gathering at a specific location, which can be as mundane as the celebrated Pushkar camel fair. Yet, it also implicitly refers to a journey since the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage hosts every twelve years up to a hundred million devotees and involves many processions of ascetic orders arriving from across India. The most common word for a pilgrimage place—tirtha—has also a double meaning, since it refers both to a place (a ‘ford’) and to movement (a ‘crossing place’ from one world to another). Since pilgrimage involves a journey (yātrā) pilgrims, like air travellers, are called yātrī. Ann Gold (1988) perfectly understood this dimension and decided to follow the pilgrims’ journey. She participated in a bus journey, giving a wonderful description of it as ‘sacred sight-seeing’ associating the trip (going there but also coming back) with the sometimes very fugitive experience of the arrival point (having been there). Since going on a pilgrimage already earns the participant religious merit (punya), the performance of ritual actions at the destination relies on a mechanical efficacy that sometimes only punctuates the central experience of circulation. That is probably why those coming to Banaras from a long distance only stop there for a few hours, with traffic jams and shopping taking as much time as the ritual activities. This paradox often puzzles ethnographers, who expect pilgrims to focus their devotion on places of destination—the very places which scholars of pilgrimage have long been researching and consider as summarizing Hindu pilgrimage. Obviously, pilgrimage has not invented mobility in modern India. There is considerable evidence of movement around pre-modern India, whether commercial or religious (Markovitz et al., 2003). Scholars have found in

42  Mathieu Claveyrolas Indian history clues concerning the links between the development of pilgrimage and trade routes as well as the role of pilgrimage in spreading diseases and epidemics (Lochtefeld, 2010). Yet, at the same time it is clear that modern transportation systems have made the ancient practice of pilgrimage in India easier and faster. This is not only a matter of comfort. A century ago, a pilgrimage to Banaras was a very hazardous undertaking (Srinivas, 1976), lasting many months or years and was typically experienced only once in a lifetime. Nowadays, pilgrimage centres are busy all the year round, with people arriving from very long distances, staying overnight and returning many times. An increasing proportion of these visitors are female and older people. Furthermore, buses, trains and planes are booked by travel agencies which specialize in pilgrimages. These developments undoubtedly change the meaning of pilgrimage far beyond the actual ease of the experience. As Lochtefeld (2010) argues, this is a revolution in the whole meaning and context of pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage and Identity-building Many other studies of Hindu pilgrimage have drawn on quite universal debates, focusing on various functions of pilgrimage, whether territorial, political or sociological. From Journey to (National/Regional) Territory Hindu pilgrimage scholars have constantly highlighted its territorial function, acknowledging the role played by legends in reminding devotees of this function for centuries. One of these refers to Banaras. Shiva had cut off one of the heads of his fellow-god Brahma, which was considered the worst possible crime. After thousands of years wandering as a mendicant with the severed head of Brahma stuck to his hand, Shiva was forgiven (and his hand freed from the head) at the very moment he crossed the boundaries of Banaras’ sacred territory, the very road which today pilgrims are said to follow. Indeed, the Hindu pilgrimage route delimits the territory of a pilgrim centre. Crossing this boundary, even unwillingly (taking the wrong road, for instance), represents for pilgrims a sin that might destroy all the merits associated with the pilgrimage (Gengnagel, 2006: 151). The pilgrimage route demarcates, therefore, a radical change of status between an exterior and an interior (see Singh, 2002; Claveyrolas, 2010a). Walking clockwise along the pilgrimage route, the pilgrim finds, on his right, the pure space where spiritual liberation (moksa) can be gained. On the left side, considered impure space, the pilgrim will eat, defecate and be caught in the cycle of rebirths if he dies there. Banaras pilgrims shape the paradigmatic sacred territory of Banaras: they walk around it and, in the process, they establish and experience its boundaries.

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 43 There is not much distance from territory to identity and, indeed, the territorial function of pilgrimage definitely supports the argument that Hindu pilgrimage produces and reproduces the community through the promotion of a very powerful sacred geography (Eck, 1998). Stressing the political focus or potential of Hindu pilgrimages, a number of scholars have studied the sacralization of the Indian national territory through pilgrim mobility (Jaffrelot, 1996; Brosius, 2009; Lochtefeld, 2010). According to these studies, Hindu pilgrimage has become a way to take overt claim and possession of the national territory; it is a medium for ethnicizing the national territory (Berti and Tarabout, 2009: 20). Paralleling the national integration process facilitated by pilgrimage, other scholars (Karve, 1988; Feldhaus, 2003; Delage, 2010) have emphasized how certain Hindu pilgrimage sites are also vehicles for strengthening regional identity (and for pilgrims to experience their regional belonging). In his study of the South Indian god, Murugan, Trouillet comes to the same conclusion, stressing that pilgrimage networks not only uphold sacred territories but are also politically instrumentalized, serving as a ‘major religious and cultural medium of the Tamil political and administrative territory’ (2010: 199). Pilgrimages, like all processions, involve the sacralization of public space, therefore, and even more so in pluri-confessional and competitive contexts. This is an especially crucial dimension in diaspora contexts where Hinduism has mainly been studied through processions as public displays of Hindu identity in a non-Hindu context (Jacobsen, 2008). Simon Coleman’s suggestion that pilgrimages can be read as ‘domesticating’ and ‘providing alternative meanings for experiences of displacement’ (2002: 364) is confirmed by the example of Hindu Mauritians. Contemporary narratives regularly compare the nineteenth-century voyage from India to Mauritius with the pilgrims’ boat journey to Jagannath, a famous Indian pilgrimage site. Once the migrants had settled in Mauritius, local pilgrimages there have become one of the favourite mediums through which Hindus could claim that they belong to the territory or that the territory belongs to them (Claveyrolas, 2010b).2 In India itself, with growing communalism and aggressive Hindutva nationalism, pilgrimages have become the paradigm for many political rallies dressed in pilgrimage symbols—see, for example, the study of patriotic pilgrimages (des´bhāv kī yātrī) by Brosius (2009). True enough, politicians such as the Hindu nationalist Minister, L. K. Advani, are famous for organizing highly broadcasted rath yatra, ‘pilgrimages’ which melt together religious-style circulation and political agendas. On a global scale, pilgrimage has become a huge medium for nationalist rhetoric (mainly urban, middleclass) to reach rural, less educated masses. Another example of the use of pilgrimage for nationalist purposes would be the recently-built Bharat Mata (‘Mother India’) pilgrim temples hosted in Haridwar and Banaras (two of the biggest Hindu pilgrim centres). Mother India is a goddess thought of as an embodiment of the Indian territory, itself incarnated in a huge

44  Mathieu Claveyrolas marble map central to these temples. Pilgrims are keen to visit these temples between two more conventional sacred sites. However, my research on the Mother India temple in Banaras (Claveyrolas, 2008) led me to doubt the weight of the political rhetoric and nationalist manipulation of Hindu pilgrims. Temple managers do argue that the map in the temple is meant to encourage the pilgrim-citizen to understand the nation in terms of devotion to Mother India. Yet, what pilgrims experience there is, in fact, a very leisurely or museum-like visit of a marble map, which lacks any of the divine experience and emotion for which they come here. In the end, while pilgrimage certainly appeals to politicians as a medium to reach the masses and the global ideological context, in which pilgrims are immersed, appears more and more politically biased, one should probably be careful not to read actual pilgrimage by Hindu devotees (the kind of experiences they are looking for) from a too exclusively political perspective.

Communitas and Equalizing Models As we have noted already, the communitas experience that pilgrims are supposed to share according to Turner has not been extensively discussed by Indian scholars. Nevertheless, communitas does match the ideal experience of pilgrimage, at least according to the pilgrims’ representations. Talking about the origins of Hindu pilgrims, their sectarian or territorial backgrounds or, more importantly still, their caste identity is very inappropriate from the standpoint of people themselves since it throws doubt on the efficacy of pilgrimage, the sacred place and the gods. Hindu pilgrims see themselves as experiencing the divine and transcending social divisions in a rather anti-structural way. Indeed, in contrast to studies by political scientists, which privilege all-Indian pilgrimages and focus on devotion as a major medium for communalism, research on local pilgrimages and popular tradition has long demonstrated the importance of shared devotions and the permeability of confessional boundaries (see Boivin in this volume). Hence, although the Hindu nationalist movement recently turned such places as Ayodhya into violent conflict centres, visits by Hindus to Muslim shrines are not an exception in India (Assayag, 1995; Assayag and Tarabout, 1997; Bigelow, 2010). Many pilgrimage towns such as Banaras remain sacred to both Hindus and Muslims and some scholars even argue that their specific ethos is precisely born out of this very convergence outweighing communal rivalries (Freitag, 1989, 206, Kumar, 1989: 164; Parry, 1994: 36). It is also worth noting that despite the sometimes violent Hindu nationalist attacks targeting Indian Christians, the most famous Indian Catholic pilgrimage shrine, Velankanni, draws crowds of Hindu devotees through the association of the Virgin Mary with the Hindu goddess Mariyamman (ClémentinOjha, 2008: 102–106). As a matter of fact, two major dimensions of the Hindu pilgrim context are liable to re-define (whether temporarily or more radically) the social

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 45 frame of the individual’s interactions: the model of the Hindu renouncer and the ideal of Hindu devotionalism (bhakti). I will draw on these two dimensions, notwithstanding a third important one, namely the urban (or, at least, crowded), context of sacred cities far from home, which blurs traditional social categories and markers (it becomes hard to identify each other’s caste), thus weakening mutual obligations. The first model of pilgrimage as socially equalizing builds, then, on the idea of the Hindu renouncer. It focuses on the voluntary imposed hardships of the road, equating them with the renunciation of worldly matters and material comfort. The Hindu renouncer (sannyasin) is, ideally, the only Hindu individual who escapes the social distinctions of caste, sect or even gender and Hindu pilgrims take vows which directly reflect ascetic practices and values (celibacy, fasting, walking barefoot or restraining from shaving). Yet, we must also note that wandering ascetics have often been organized into martial orders, and have long been historically linked with the development of trade routes only they could travel and with political functions: they were both rich merchants and feared mercenaries. This seems to contradict the pilgrim model of renouncing the world. It also echoes the not-so recent parallel between pilgrimage and other forms of travels. The second model of pilgrimage as socially equalizing is Hindu devotionalism (bhakti) which emphasizes, roughly put, that devotion is an individual, emotional communication with the divine that needs neither temple nor priest and cannot be constrained by any social category. As the models have it, it is a matter of love (prema), whether based on the lovers’ model or on the parent-child model. This possibility of creating communitas is supported by the very nature of Hindu pilgrimage. The French ethnographer Olivier Herrenschmidt (1981: 139) indeed insists on the radical distinction between daily ritual activities and pilgrimage. He states that Hindu pilgrimage is the only devotional activity where individuals choose (through a vow) and pursue their own goals (salvation, for instance) outside of social constraints. The very fact that pilgrimage is generally hosted in huge Brahminical temples allows and strengthens such individual devotion.

Ethnography and Counter-models Morinis confirms that the Hindu pilgrimage is, first, an individual matter (1984: 249) but, noting the absence of any formal rite of passage, he argues that the Turnerian analytical framework does not match Hindu conditions. Although pilgrimage may be individually chosen, as Peter Van der Veer (1984) rightly argues, the sharp distinction between individual and society presented by the model of communitas is not reflected in Hindu representations. Ethnographers were the first to question the relevance of the communitas model for Hindu pilgrimage. Those who focused on the day-to-day life of pilgrimage frequently returned with accounts of hierarchical and

46  Mathieu Claveyrolas not-so-open (anti-structural) groups of pilgrims. Pilgrims usually travel with their kin or fellow villagers and as the Indian-born Canadian researcher and disciple of the Ramakrishna mission, Radhika Sekar, noted in her study of the Sabarimalai pilgrimage ‘the normative ideal does not automatically lead to communitas’ (1992: 4). Above all, pilgrims are traditionally welcomed, housed, guided and attended to by priests linked to their family or village by a hereditary system of patronage (jajmani). In the Hindu context, sleeping and eating in this priest’s guesthouse offers the most appreciated guarantee of staying among members of the same caste. New dimensions of pilgrimage have resulted in major changes, however. Pilgrim-priest relations are now defined by market laws and the priest’s guesthouse is not the favourite choice: it cannot provide the up-scale comfort for which many recent pilgrims are looking (Lochtefeld, 2010). Yet, pilgrims still predominantly look for a religious specialist traditionally linked with their caste—thus contradicting their supposed anti-structural aspiration. An article by Irawati Karve, first published in Marathi in 1951 and then in English during 1988, can be considered the first participant observation of a Hindu pilgrimage—in this case, by an Indian female anthropologist trained in India and then Berlin in the 1920s. Her very personal essay is typical of what I mean by the title of my paper, the ‘amazement of the ethnographer.’ Karve did enjoy a kind of communitas ‘on the road’ (which is the essay’s title) but also discovered with amazement, disappointment and even anger that caste divisions persisted among pilgrims. She denounced the inconsistency between the practice of these social divisions and the egalitarian ideal of Hindu devotionalism on which this particular pilgrimage was supposedly based. Interestingly, while the author openly condemned the resilience of structures, this essay is one of those quoted by Turner to support the pilgrimage as the paradigm of communitas (1974: 166). The other challenge to the view that Hindu pilgrimage is characterized by communitas comes from ethnographers, who draw on Eade and Sallnow’s critiques of structural, universal readings of pilgrimage (1991). Van der Veer (1988), a Dutch anthropologist, and Lochtefeld, use both textual sources and field research at pilgrimage centres to show how different groups of actors (priests, devotees, residents) constructed different and sometimes conflicting, meanings of pilgrimage. In his study of the Kumbh Mela, for example, Lochtefeld (2008) insists on the many conflicts visible during these gatherings. These conflicts may be recent, when the Indian government deprives the ascetic orders (akhara) of their organizational role, i.e. deciding who bathes first, or they may be long-established, such as the violent fights for hierarchical supremacy between ascetic orders, which have caused many deaths. While ethnographers generally agree that the cosmological meanings of pilgrimage are clear, what about the pilgrims’ perceptions and experience? Following pilgrims to a Krishna site in the 1980s, Owen Lynch (1990) stressed the centrality of the journey around the local landscape. During the journey, pilgrims are supposed to experience the various mythological events

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 47 of Krishna’s youth, focusing on his incarnation as a flute-dancer charming the milkmaids. Lynch stressed the centrality of senses in Hindu devotion at large. Hindus need to see, hear, smell, taste and touch to assert the divine presence, and to communicate with the gods. For pilgrims, the meaning of pilgrimage is a matter of perceiving the world. Travelling, Lynch states, is crucial to Hindu pilgrimage because, unlike Christian pilgrimages, nature is believed to express the true, real form of the divine, full of meaning and emotions. Hence, one should not see the Ganges (or a cave or a mountain or a tree) as a metaphor for the divine but as the truly divine reality of which only the pilgrim can become aware. Along the road, the pilgrims radically change their status until they become part of the divine reality. The experience of the pilgrimage site’s landscape is not a mere symbolic act, therefore; it is a re-actualization of cosmological events. Lynch insists that the pilgrims’ actions are not modelled on Krishna’s lovers, they become Krishna’s milkmaid during the pilgrimage. Lynch’s study emphasizes the way in which the participant observer shares the pilgrims’ experience and understands the meanings involved in pilgrimage through the pilgrims’ emotions (for a comparison with the Indian Muslim context see Boivin in this volume). Yet, here comes the classical limitation of ethnographic research—how does the observer really get into another person’s mind? Since the pilgrims’ emotions are culturally coded, trying to share them through participant observation seems to be epistemologically inaccessible. This leads to another question: how can the ethnographer share the Hindu pilgrim’s perceptions without falling into the trap of eulogistic descriptions of the pilgrimage and sacred place? Indeed, although I noted in the introduction that I will not deal here with locally produced eulogistic booklets, it is worth noting that many Western scholars or Indian scholars raised or trained in the West have repeatedly used participant observation of pilgrimage as a rather ambiguous, and sometimes spiritual, self-experience. In so doing, they have blurred the boundaries between academic research and ideological quest or commemoration. For these scholars, studying pilgrimage was an initiation.3 When Rana Singh calls the German Indianist Niels Gutschow his ‘co-pilgrim’ and repeatedly mentions their experience of pilgrimage around Banaras, they get close to communitas-like descriptions. More recently, a two-day conference in Norway and a consequent edited volume focused on the reminiscences of scholars on their experience of Banaras. In his introduction, the editor, Istvan Keul, explained that the volume’s subtitle, ‘Scholarly Pilgrimages to the City of Light’, ‘was not entirely uncontroversial among the participants’ (2014: 8n3).

Conclusion: Pilgrimage, Spirituality and Hindu Categories Unlike these initiatory approaches towards pilgrimage, many ethnographies of pilgrimage have strongly challenged one of the main clichés of Hindu religion: its inherent spirituality. Ann Gold’s monograph of a Rajasthani pilgrimage

48  Mathieu Claveyrolas (1988) clearly shows how the pilgrims’ daily concerns were very pragmatic, and sometimes could not possibly stand farther from spiritual matters. Boivin (this volume) notes how the Orientalist perspective already contrasted Hindu religiosity and pilgrimage (a kind of colourful and pagan ‘fair’) with the harshness of the Muslim hajj. More recently, when scholars write about their participation in Hindu pilgrimages, their valuable accounts can sometimes be read as a kind of demystification of the ideal image of Hindu pilgrims, and of the shared cliché of Hindu spirituality as opposed to Western pragmatism. Lochtefeld constantly uses the same downgrading lexical field: sacred texts about pilgrim cities are advertisements (p.6, 46), the pilgrimage is a carnival (2010: 15, 108), and pilgrims are but customers (2010: 171—also see Vidyarthi, 1979: 19) with a vacation mentality (Lochtefeld, 2010: 204) and a consumer ethos (Lochtefeld, 2010: 211). Yet, there is a danger in focusing only on demystification. Once again, one should not take for granted the adequacy of pilgrimage theories based on Christian notions and concepts. As noted by Van der Veer (1984), the sacred/profane dichotomy supposed by communitas cannot describe faithfully the Hindu pilgrimage realities. Ann Gold even pointed to such frivolous moments as privileged times for ‘joyful, ludic communitas’ (1988: 282). Engaged in a discussion on pilgrimage and sacredness, I argued elsewhere (Claveyrolas, 2010a) that Hinduism must be considered a tradition where no profane can be identified. What have been described as mundane dimensions of religiosity have been mistaken for, at worse marginal or disrupting dimensions, threatening a once pure and spiritual form of Hindu religiosity, and at best, as a kind of creative emancipation from the textual norm. Local representations describe Banaras as settled on top of Shiva’s trident, which is neither on earth nor in heaven, and Banarasi residents are envied not only by men but also by gods. Banaras does not respect the usual rules of cosmological order (dharma): it is the very special place where gods and men meet. It may precisely be what a Hindu ‘center out there’ is supposed to guarantee: not only ritual communion with the divine, nor the access to the realm of gods (what scholars would tag as sacred) but, above all, a time and space for experiencing a cohabitation with the divine that extends to everyday activities such as sleeping, and picnic, shopping and tourism (the so-called problematic profane dimensions of pilgrimage). The pilgrims’ foremost concern lies in the efficacy of their devotion and on the proofs of this efficacy, which they can obtain. Scholars are puzzled by the coexistence of discourses we classify as sacred or secular and we describe as cacophonic, but are Hindu pilgrims puzzled? Rather than distinguishing between what is religious, or sacred, and what is not, we should ask: what do specific shocking dimensions of pilgrimage, such as business or tourism, tell us about the Hindu pilgrims’ experience of the divine melting truly spiritual aspirations with socio-political hierarchies and economic or leisurely interests? Is this really contesting the Hindu sacred, or restating it?

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 49

Notes 1 This is also the case of two famous volumes led by German teams, one in 1978 (Eschmann et al.) and the other in 2006 (Gaenszle and Gengnagel). 2 This process of domestication is not only linked with the experiences of displacement but also with the dangers of wandering. Indeed, the paradigmatic Hindu pilgrim is none other than the wandering ascetic, associated with spiritual power and merits, but also with danger: the danger he represents for others (settled Hindus), and the danger he is the only one able to face. In Hindu tradition, rooting the potentially unpredictable and dangerous spiritual beings is also the main way to domesticate them. More sociologically speaking, travelling is very unsafe for the orthodox Hindu, because of the constant risk of encountering impurity through meeting people whose ritual status he does not know. 3 It would be interesting to go further into the personal religious involvement of scholars studying Hindu pilgrimage. Apart from Indian Hindu researchers, many Western scholars quoted here are themselves known as engaged in personal religious beliefs (see Eck and Morinis, for example).

Bibliography Assayag, J. (1995) Au confluent de deux rivières. Musulmans et hindous dans le Sud del ’Inde, Paris: EFEO. ———. and Tarabout, G. (eds) (1997) Altérité et identité. Islam et christianisme en Inde, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Babb, L. (1975) The divine hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India, New York: Columbia University Press. Bakker, H. (1996) ‘Construction and reconstruction of sacred space in Varanasi’, Numen, vol. 43, pp. 32–55. Berti, D. and Tarabout, G. (2009) Territory, soil and society in South Asia, Delhi: Manohar. Bhardwaj, S. (1973) Hindu places of pilgrimage in India: A study in cultural geography, Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. (1999) ‘Circulation and circumambulation in Tirtha Yatra.’ Paper presented at the conference Pilgrimage and Complexity, Delhi, January 5–9, Retrieved from http://www.colorado.edu/Conferences/pilgrimage/papers/Bhardwaj.html. Bigelow, A. (2010) Sharing the sacred: Practicing pluralism in Muslim North India, New York: Oxford University Press. Brosius, C. (2009) ’Mapping the nation’s body: Territorial processions in propaganda videos of the Hindu Right’ in Berti, D. and Tarabout, G. (eds) Territory, soil and society in South Asia, Delhi: Manohar. Burghart, R. (1985) ’The regional circumambulation of Janakpur seen in the light of Vaishnavite tradition (Nepal)’ in Galey, J.-C. (ed.) L’espace du temple. Espaces, itineraires, médiations, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Claveyrolas, M. (2008) ’Les temples de la Mère Inde, musées de la nation’ Gradhiva, vol. 7, pp. 84–99. ———. (2010a) ’Construire un espace à part. Circulations rituelles et territoires sacrés à Bénarès’ in Dupont, V. and Landy, F. (eds) Circulation et territoire dans le monde indien contemporain, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. ———. (2010b) ’L’ancrage de l’hindouisme dans le paysage mauricien: transfert et appropriation’, Autrepart, vol. 56, pp. 17–38.

50  Mathieu Claveyrolas ———. (2014) ’The orthodox Banaras or the purification of Hinduism’ in Keul, I. (ed.) Banaras revisited: Scholarly pilgrimages to the City of Light, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Clémentin-Ojha, C. (2008) Les chrétiens de l’Inde. Entre castes et Églises, Paris: Albin Michel. Clothey, F. (1978) The many faces of Murukan _ : The history and meaning of a South Indian God, New York: Mouton Publishers. Coleman, S. (2002) ’Do you believe in pilgrimage? Communitas, contestation and beyond’, Anthropological Theory, vol. 2, pp. 355–368. Delage, R. (2010) ’Le pèlerinage à Sabarimala en Inde du Sud. Circulation religieuse et redéfinition de l’identité géographique’ in Dupont and Landy, op. cit. Dumont, L. (1957) Une sous-caste de l’Inde du Sud. Organisation sociale et religion des Pramalai Kallar, Paris: Mouton. Eade, J. and Sallnow M. (eds) (1991) Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage, London: Routledge. Eck, D. (1981) ‘India’s tirthas: “crossings” in sacred geography’, History of Religions, vol. 20, pp. 323–344. ———. (1983) Banaras: City of Light, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. (1985) ‘Banaras: Cosmos and paradise in the Hindu imagination’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 19, pp. 41–55. ———. (1998) ’The imagined landscape: Patterns in the construction of Hindu sacred geography’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 32, pp. 165–188. Eschmann, A., Kulke, H. and Tripathi, G. (1978) The cult of Jagannath and the regional tradition of Orissa, Delhi: Manohar. Feldhaus, Anne. (2003) Connected places: Region, pilgrimage, and geographical imagination in India, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Freitag, S. (1989) ’Introduction: The history and political economy of Banaras’ in Freitag, S. (ed.) Culture and power in Banaras: Community, performance, and environment, 1800–1980, Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. (2006) ’Visualizing cities by modern citizens: Banaras compared to Jaipur and Lucknow’ in Gaenszle, M. and Gengnagel, J. (eds) Visualizing space in Banaras: Images, maps, and the practice of representation, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Fuller, C. (1984) Servants of the goddess: The priests of a South Indian Temple, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaenszle, M. and Gengnagel, J. (eds) (2006) Visualizing space in Banaras: Images, maps, and the practice of representation, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Gengnagel, J. (2006) ’Maps and processions in Banaras: The debate concerning the Pancakrosiyatra’ in Gaenszle and Gengnagel, op. cit. Gold, A. (1988) Fruitful journeys: The ways of Rajasthani pilgrims, Berkeley: University of California Press. Herrenschmidt, O. (1981) ’Le sacrifice du buffle en Andhra côtier. Le »culte de village » confronté aux notions de sacrifiant et d’unité de culte’ in Biardeau, M. (ed.) Autour de la déesse hindoue, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Jacobsen, K. (2008) South Asian religions on display: Religious processions in South Asia and in the diaspora, New York and London: Routledge. Jaffrelot, C. (1996) ’La question du territoire en Inde: du particularisme aux universalismes’, Cultures et conflits, vols 21–22, pp. 75–102.

The Amazement of the Ethnographer 51 Kane, P. (1941) History of Dharmas´āstra, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Karve, I. (1988/1951) ‘ “On the road”: A Maharashtrian pilgrimage’ in Zelliot, E. and Bernsten, M. (eds) The experience of Hinduism. Essays on religion in Maharashtra, Albany: State University of New York Press. Keul, I. (2014) Banaras revisited: Scholarly pilgrimages to the City of Light, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Kumar, N. (1986) ’Meanings of pilgrimage’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 315–318. ———. (1989) ’Work and leisure in the formation of identity: Muslim weavers in a Hindu city’ in Freitag, S. (op. cit). Kurien, P. (2007) A place at the multicultural table: The development of an American Hinduism, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lochtefeld, J. (2008) ‘Getting in line. The Kumbha Mela festival processions’ in Jacobsen, K. op. cit. ——— (2010) God’s gateway: Identity and meaning in a Hindu pilgrimage place, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Lynch, O. (1988) ‘Pilgrimage with Krishna, sovereign of the emotions’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 22, pp. 171–194. ———. (1990) Divine passions: The social construction of emotion in India, Berkeley: University of California Press. Markovitz, C., Pouchepadass, J. and Subrahmaniam, S. (2003) Society and circulation: Mobile people and itinerant cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950, Delhi: Permanent Black. Morinis, A. (1984) Pilgrimage in the Hindu tradition: A case-study of West Bengal, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Parry, J. (1994) Death in Banaras, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porcher, M.-C. (1985) ’La représentation de l’espace sacré dans le Kāñcīmāhātmya’ in Galey, J.-C. (ed.) L’espace du temple. Espaces, itinéraires, médiations, Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS. Reiniche, M.-L. (1988) ’Un nom, une forme, un lieu. L’invention hindoue de l’autre et du même’, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, vols 205–251, pp. 367–384. Saraswati, B. (1975) Kashi: Myth and reality of a classical cultural tradition, Simla: Indian Institute for Advanced Study. Sekar, R. (1992) The Sabarimalai pilgrimage and Ayyappan cultus, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Singh, R. (2002) Towards the pilgrimage archetype: The Pañcakros´ī Yātrā of Banāras, Varanasi: Indica Books. Srinivas, M. (1952) Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India, Delhi: Asia Publishing House. ———. (1976) The remembered village, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tinker, H. (1974) A new system of slavery: The export of Indian labour overseas, London: Hansib Educational Book. Trouillet, P.Y. (2010) Une géographie sociale et culturelle de l’hindouisme tamou : le cultede Murukan _ en Inde du Sud et dans la diaspora. Unpublished PhD, Université de Bordeaux. Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

52  Mathieu Claveyrolas Turner, V. and E. (1978) Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture, New York: Columbia University Press. Van der Veer, P. (1984) ’Structure and anti-structure in Hindu pilgrimage to Ayodhya’ in Ballhatchet, K. and Taylor, D. (eds) Changing South Asia: Religion and society, London: School of Oriental and African Studies. ———. (1988) Gods on earth: The management of religious experience and identity in a North Indian pilgrimage centre, London: The Athlone Press. Vidyarthi, L. (1961) The sacred complex in Hindu Gaya, Delhi: Asia Publishing House. ———, Jha, M., and Saraswati, B. (1979) The sacred complex of Kashi: A microcosm of Indian civilization, Delhi: Concept Publishing Company.

4 Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia Michel Boivin

South Asia or the Indian sub-continent area hosts one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, although Muslims constitute a majority in only three states, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Republic of Maldives. In India although there are about 200 million Muslims, they only comprise 12 per cent of the total population. Hindus constitute the majority of India’s population, i.e. about 70 per cent, and in the different branches of what we currently call Hinduism the performance of pilgrimage is ‘one of the most popular religious activities’ (Klostermeir, 1998: 138). While the word yatra embodies different categories of pilgrimages, the popular term for pilgrimage—tirtha − is found in most of the North Indian languages and refers to both a ford and the movement between the world of human beings and the world of the gods (see Claveyrolas in this volume). Interestingly, tirtha is very close to the word used by the Muslims for the sacred places they visit—the dargah or threshold. Rather than focusing on displacement, the two terms emphasize the role of place as a bridge between the two worlds. In the Muslim context, orthodox discourse states that there is only one canonical pilgrimage: the hajj, with a minor performance known as umra. The rules for performing the hajj have been strictly formulated so that not only has hajj been translated into European languages as pilgrimage, but it has monopolized the idea of pilgrimage within the Muslim context.1 Thus, other kinds of religious visits, such as those to saints’ tombs known as ziyarat, have not officially been regarded as pilgrimages (see Boissevain in this volume). Significantly, the different rituals involved in Christian or Hindu pilgrimages were rarely addressed during the period of Muslim rule in India. Furthermore, in the Muslim literature of India, the issue of ziyarat as a form of pilgrimage was not addressed. For example, in the 1832 English translation by G. A. Herklots of a book written in Urdu by the South Indian Muslim, Jafar Sharif, under Herklots’ supervision, ‘pilgrimage’ is used to refer only to the hajj (Jafar Sharif, 1972).The book shows no interest in the life of the saints nor the place where they were worshipped. Even the great historian Khalid Ahmad Nizami, who was a pioneer since he published several books on the Sufi order of the Chishtiyya, did not deal with this topic.2

54  Michel Boivin Addressing the issue of pilgrimage in the context of Muslim South Asia can thus only be based on western approaches referring to the worship of Muslim saintly figures. Consequently, setting the question of terminology aside, my aim here is to provide a comprehensive overview of ziyarat in European representations of Muslim religious culture in South Asia. My basic contention is that there was a reluctance until recently to use the word ‘pilgrimage’ in the works devoted to the worship of Muslim saints usually affiliated to a Sufi brotherhood.

The First Orientalists India has attracted European travellers and merchants for centuries. The seventeenth century is commonly seen as the apex of Muslim civilization in India under the rule of the Moghuls, when diplomatic relations were established between European powers and the ’Great Moghul’, the general term given to the badshah, the Moghul emperor. One of the first references to the worship of Muslim saints is to be found in Jean Law de Lauriston’s Mémoire sur quelques affaires de l’empire moghol, published in 1758. He was a commercial agent who lived on the Ganges plain from 1742 to 1761. Near Delhi, he ‘spoke of the tomb of a Moghul emperor, standing in a “derga” (dargah) close to that of the “pyr” (pir)’. He defined a pir in the following way: ’Nom chez les Mahométans qu’on donne à certaines personnes qui, par une vie retirée, dévouée à Dieu, sont en odeur de sainteté’ [The name which Muslims give to certain people who, by spending their lives in seclusion devoted to God, live in the odour of holiness] (Deleury, 1991: 1046). A few years later, the French officer Louis de Féderbe de Modave (1725–77) explains in his Voyage en Inde (1775) that a dargah is a mausoleum built in the memory of a Muslim prince or a Muslim saint: he makes no mention of any pilgrimage (Deleury, 1991: 1037). During the eighteenth century, the British became the dominant power in North India and the East India Company needed a lot of civil servants to rule the vast territory under its control and some were trained in Oriental languages in London. William Jones (1746–94) was already a specialist in Persian language and literature when he landed in Calcutta in 1783 and in the following year he founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the first institution related to the emerging field of Orientalism. Jones was an admirer of the Persian poet, Hafiz,3 and in his publications, he claimed that Sufism was not Islamic because Islam could not produce such beautiful poetry. For him, the Sufi was a free thinker, who loved to drink and dance: the Sufi shared, therefore, more with Christianity and Indian Vedanta4 than with Islam. This was an interpretation of Islam and Sufism which deeply influenced the British civil servants employed by the East India Company, since they were all introduced to Jones’s writings. During the early nineteenth century other Orientalist institutions were founded in Europe, such as the Asiatic Society in Paris in 1822. While

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 55 Arabic and Persian still formed the basis of Orientalist teaching and writing, some scholars were interested in other contemporary languages and literatures. Joseph Héliodore Sagesse Vertu Garcin de Tassy (1794–1878), for example, was one of the founders of the French Asiatic Society and a Professor of Indology at the School of Oriental Languages in Paris. Trained in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, he was also the first European specialist in Hindustani—a language spoken in North India, which was mainly based on Hindi but with many Arabic and Persian words, and written in the Arabic alphabet. It was to become during the late nineteenth century Urdu, the lingua franca of the Indian Muslims. In 1832 Garcin de Tassy published a book on Indian Islam, which drew exclusively on books translated from Hindustani. In the introduction, he clearly stated: ‘Les pèlerinages ne sont pas empreints de la sévérité qui distingue celui de la Mecque et de Médine; on dirait que ce sont ceux des Hindous’ [The pilgrimages are not characterized by the severity which distinguishes those to Mecca and Medina; one could say that they are Hindu pilgrimages] (Garcin de Tassy, 1832: 8). Although this Orientalist pioneer used the word ‘pilgrimage’, he focused more on the fairs that accompanied it rather than the issue of displacement as a physical travel towards a pilgrimage centre. Furthermore, he outlines in this quotation two themes which were to be the pillars of Orientalist representation for many decades. First, he claims that pilgrimage in India lacks the harshness of the hajj and, second, he establishes a close similarity between Indian Muslim and Hindu pilgrimages. He expresses, thereby, the prejudices of the time: ‘La tolérance indienne est venue diminuer dans l’Inde le fanatisme musulman’ [Indian tolerance has had the effect of diminishing Muslim fanaticism in India] (idem: 12). Garcin de Tassy emphasized the role of processions, whether Sufi or Shia, and saw them as replicas of Hindu processions. He compared without any hesitation the procession of tazias, the miniature tombs of Imam Husain,5 with Hindu processions held during Durga puja:6 ‘Le dixième jour, les Hindous jettent la statue de Durga dans la rivière avec une foule nombreuse et des milliers d’instruments de musiques ( . . . ); la même chose se produit avec la procession du tombeau de Husain qui est de la même façon jeté dans la rivière’ [On the tenth day with a large crowd and thousands of musical instruments the Hindus throw the statue of Durga into the river ( . . . ) ; the same thing happens with the procession of Husain’s tomb, which is thrown into the river in the same way] (Garcin de Tassy, 1832: 10–11). Exclusively drawing on texts written by Indian Muslims, the dominant theme of his work is the exotic nature of Indian religious practices and the exuberance of the ceremonies performed during pilgrimages, in particular. The book written by Jafar Sharif under Herklots’s supervision, who later translated it into English, also seeks to describe Muslim ceremonies, but within a broader picture of Muslim life in India. It does not focus on pilgrimage as such but on the ‘festivals’. Interestingly, the two authors disagree

56  Michel Boivin concerning the importance of the pilgrimages. Garcin de Tassy claims that the pilgrimage to Shah Madar’s tomb is the most popular, while in the 1832 English version of Jafar Sharif’s book only two pages are devoted to this shrine and pilgrimage is described as a ‘visit to his tomb’ (Jafar Sharif, 1832: xxxi)—obviously a translation of the vernacular term, ziyarat. Sharif only refers to ziyarat in the context of the annual calendar of celebrations and offerings, and saw it as restricted to a particular day when specific rituals are performed, mainly the third or the tenth day of each month. The offerings are mainly made of flowers and there is also food distribution. Even though it is true that Jafar Sharif was influenced by the Orientalist perspective, the similarity between his approach and Garcin de Tassy’s is striking. Both describe a scene where pilgrimages are not depicted as such. Furthermore, they establish the key ideas as to how these pilgrimages came to be represented, i.e. they had Hindu rather than Islamic origins and could be reduced to ceremonies which are characterized by the tolerant mixing of Hindus and Muslims whose spirit could not be found within the ‘fanaticism’ of Islam.

British Colonization and the Ethnologist William Jones’ approach towards Indian Muslim pilgrimages shaped British attitudes throughout the nineteenth century. In 1871 the British organized the first census across the whole of the Indian empire and Jones’ Orientalist perspective, which informed it, was thereby systematized. The British were more interested in the social structure of the Sufis rather than in studying the cult proper, since caste was used as the main reference point with regard to Indian society as a whole.7 They represented the Sufis as social actors and divided them into three categories: the masters, the common Sufis and the uncontrolled dervishes. Also, they were attracted by the most spectacular events celebrated by the Muslims, especially the Muharram processions.8 The masters of the Sufi brotherhoods known as pirs were seen as members of local elites, which included other heads of tribes or landowners. Indeed, many pirs were also tribal chiefs and landowners. In Sindh, for example, the British established a local hierarchy based on land ownership, which included pirs. However, some Sufis were seen as socially or politically dangerous. Hence, Denzil Ibbetson (1847–1908), who was to be the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, distinguished between Sufis as ‘clerical classes’ or ‘priestly castes or classes’, on the one hand, and the large number of ‘profligate debauchers’ and ignorant Sufis (idem) on the other. The latter seduced women and extorted alms under the threat of curses. They could be members of authentic orders but they knew nothing about their religion and were beggars rather than ascetics (Ibbetson, 1884: 225–226). Some British officers were genuinely interested in local religious culture, however, and learned the vernacular languages. One of the most significant authors was Richard Francis Burton (1821–90).9 After being expelled

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 57 from Trinity College, Oxford, he joined the East India Company army and arrived in India during 1843, reaching Sindh soon after the British conquest. Although Burton was not an Orientalist by training, he referred twice to William Jones but was sceptical about his literary approach and his ignorance of the cultural terrain. He was much more complimentary about Jafar Sharif, referring to him a dozen times and seeing him as an authority on the topic. His major work on the populations of Sindh appeared in 1851, the same year as Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–81) published The League of Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois.10 (Interestingly, Burton defines himself as a traveller and ethnologist, see Burton, 1851: 172). His knowledge of the local language, Sindhi, gave him a good understanding of local society, although he also shared a number of the prejudices of his time and milieu. With regard to the issue of Muslim pilgrimage, he devoted a chapter to Sufism which he called tasawwuf. He was mainly interested in Sindhi Sufi poetry and his comments on the main local Sufi poet, Shah Abdul Latif (d. 1752), perfectly reflected his ambiguous position towards vernacular culture and society. He admired Abdul Latif’s poetry, calling him the ‘Hafiz of Sindh’ and celebrated his wonderful verses and his ‘beautiful specimens of Kafis’ (1851: 79). Yet, he was also critical of the literary quality of Latif’s work: ‘His ornaments are mainly alliteration, puns and other word games’ (idem), and noted the inaccuracy of Latif’s quotations of Arabic literature and the Quran, as well as Persian. Burton shared many of his predecessors’ attitudes towards Sufism. For him, Sufism was mainly influenced by Vedism, the earlier form of Hinduism, and there was nothing deriving from the Quran. He also distinguished between the Jamalis or the ‘respectable class’ of Sufis and the Jalalis or ‘vile class’ (1851: 208–211). Nonetheless, Burton is one of the first British officials to point out that the Hindus and Muslims of Sindh shared what he called a ‘national faith’ (1851: 172), which could be seen in practices related to local pilgrimages, such as dancing in the sanctuaries. While he observed that many Muslim places of pilgrimage were pre-Islamic places, Burton’s main contribution was to point out the role played by those he named ‘subintercessors’, the pirs, who are Janus-faced since they possessed both Muslim and Hindu names (1851: 324). In support of this claim he provided a short list of the most important pirs in the province, such as Lal Shahbaz/ Bhartari, Khwajah Pir/Jinda Pir or Shaykh Tahir/Udero Lal. The main trends described above dominated until the end of British colonization. In this respect, the most representative book was published nine years before independence (in 1938) by John A. Subhan, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and, as he put in the book, an ‘Ex-Member of the Qadiri Order.’ His book, Sufism: its Saints and Shrines, republished in 1970, with more than 400 pages divided into twenty chapters, contains a chapter devoted to ‘[n]otable features of Sufi practice’, while the others focus on the history of Sufism, Sufi thought, and the main Sufi orders, namely the Chishti, Qadiri, Naqshbandi order and Suhrawardi orders. A chapter is

58  Michel Boivin also devoted to some minor orders. Speaking of the Muslim saints, Subhan claims that ‘pilgrimages are constantly made to their tombs and shrines’ (Subhan, 1970: 102), but the part on ‘ziyarat, visitation to a shrine’ is only one and a half page (1970: 106–107)! He provides a basic vocabulary, such as dargah and mazar, but settles the question of ziyarat through a statement on the annual fair, the urs:11 ‘It would be an endless task to attempt to describe the particular rites attached to the ‘urs of individual saints . . . .’ (1970: 107). After the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, a fresh stimulus to the study of Muslim India was given by Indian scholars, such as Khalid Ahmad Nizami, who mainly worked through Persian and Urdu literary sources. In 1961 Nizami, who taught history at the Aligarh Muslim University, published the influential Some Aspects of Religion and Politics in India during the Thirteenth Century, where he provides a comprehensive picture of the relations between the State and the Sufis, as well as of the organization of the Sufi orders. Yet, in the chapter on the Sufi contribution to Indian culture, pilgrimage is hardly discussed and Nizami does not even include the word ziyarat in his copious index. Of course, Nizami was not blocked by the colonial representation of Sufism but he was influenced by the Muslim reformist ideology, for which Aligarh University was in the vanguard.12 According to this approach, ziyarat is not true Islam—it is a mere superstition close to magic and, even more importantly, it is totally forbidden by Quran. Hence, the issue of pilgrimage in the context of Muslim South Asia was not addressed as such before the spread of social sciences after the Second World War. Those who commented on Sufism were mostly interested in Sufis as poets, as members of powerful social classes or even as major political actors. Although the issue of the role played by Sufism in Muslim South Asia is beyond the scope of this chapter, two main features can nonetheless be highlighted. First, there is the proselytism policy of the Sufi brotherhoods towards non-Muslims, although this was not the sole factor in the conversions to Islam, since what is called ‘conversion’ was most often a long-term process. Second, there is the meeting of Sufism with other religious traditions such as the bhakti, a spiritual movement of Hinduism centering on the worship of a personal deity from the medieval period onwards. The result of this meeting was the construction of a similar technical language, a common mystical goal—the merging with God—and a shared religious culture.

The Spread of Social Sciences and the Study of Pilgrimage A watershed in the study of Sufism in South Asia came with the publication of Richard Eaton’s Sufis of Bijapur in 1978. Focusing on three key questions—how do Sufis relate to the Ulamas, to the Court, and to the non-Muslim population − his prime concern is to demonstrate the interaction between the social roles of Sufis and the changing historical context. While it had been

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 59 suggested for some time that Sufis were important agents in converting Hindus, particularly those from the lower castes, to Islam, it had not been made clear how this happened. Eaton suggests three ways. Hindus made bai’at (pledge of allegiance) with a pir which meant they recited the Muslim creed, became a spiritual disciple and submitted themselves body and soul to the pir’s directions. They came to believe in the intercessory power of the many saints buried in and around Bijapur, making pilgrimages to their shrines and attending the annual celebrations of the saint’s urs. Nevertheless, it is striking to observe that even here Eaton still ignores the issue of pilgrimage. This study was followed by another important monograph by Carl Ernst (1992). This book has two aims. One is to relate the religious and political history of Khuldabad, a royal and saintly necropolis in the Marathi Deccan. The other is to explore the various ways Indo-Muslim religious history has been written in the past, and how it might be written once one is properly sensitized to the very different kinds of source materials available to the historian. Yet, once again, the issue of pilgrimage is totally neglected. Since the 2000s, however, studies have emerged which are devoted to Muslim pilgrimage in South Asia. They have followed two main trends: revisiting old issues and promoting new issues. In 2010, Anna Bigelow published her Ph.D., which was devoted to the study of pilgrimage to a local Muslim saint, Hyder Shaykh, in Malerklota, the only town in Indian Punjab where Muslims constitute the majority. The title of her book gives a clear idea of her aim: Sharing the sacred: Practising pluralism in Muslim North India (Bigelow, 2010). It echoes one of the oldest themes related to Islam and Muslim in South Asia: Muslim pilgrimages as places where Muslims and Hindus meet. Garcin de Tassy had much earlier pointed out that the dargahs were placed where both Muslims and Hindus perform rituals side by side, if not together. In fact, despite her soothing title, Bigelow revitalizes the issue by addressing a fresh question: why are some places peaceful, while others become embroiled in communalism? Interestingly, Bigelow did not focus on rituals but mostly on narratives in order to understand how communal peace is maintained. Briefly put, the local population provides explanations through narratives which rehearse three main themes. The first concerns the saint as founder and protector of the town. The second focuses on protest: in 1705, the local ruler, a nawab who was the descendant of the saint, objected to the killing of the sons of the tenth Sikh guru. The last refers to a meaningful episode in the history of the town—1947, the year when India and Pakistan became two independent countries after the British departure. While Punjab was the scene of horrific massacres, Malerklota was spared from communal violence. Bigelow succeeds in proving that the topic of encounter is still relevant. From a traditional approach based on literature or rituals, she is able to provide a comprehensive analysis of the painstaking work which sustains communal peace—without drawing on Victor Turner’s influential formulation of communitas and liminality, interestingly.

60  Michel Boivin The issue of sharing the sacred could also be applied to the recent book published by Carla Bellamy. It addresses indirectly the issue of the religious identity of pilgrimage centres (Bellamy, 2011). The place under study is Hussain Tekri, in the town Jaora, which is located in the state of Madhya Pradesh, close to the border with Maharashtra. Bellamy’s approach is drastic: she claims that Hussain Tekri does not belong to any of the categories used for the religious Indian spaces. Nevertheless, in the first chapter, she addresses the issue of ‘The place: The making of a pilgrimage and a pilgrimage centre’ (2011: 31–48). Although she does not consider here the use of the word ‘pilgrimage’, she does locate Hussain Tekri within a kind of pilgrimage network, since in a single trip the pilgrims can visit the famous Sufi shrine of Mu’in al-Din Chishti in Ajmer before proceeding to Hussain Tekri. Hussain Tekri consists of six shrines: Ali, Hussain, Abbas, Sakina, Zaynab, and Fatima. It is remarkable that half of the shrines are devoted to women, who are the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and major characters in Shia mythology. The pilgrimage site was founded by the Khojas, an Indian Shia community originated from Gujarat but influential in Mumbai. Bellamy argues that the success of this particular site lies in the ambiguous character of the dargahs. She even goes so far as to claim that Hussain Tekri demonstrates the existence of a specific South Asian culture of dargahs, which is not Islamic nor Islamized, even if it has historical links with the institutions and doctrines of Islam. For her, the pilgrimage site is primarily a cosmopolitan place due to the variety of the pilgrims, the boundless territory of the saint and its therapeutic function. Pilgrims are detached from their social, ethnic and religious backgrounds and believe that many of their difficulties can be solved, such as psychological, physical, financial or family-related troubles. Last but not least, the pilgrimage is the place where, through trance, pilgrims can develop a new identity beyond caste and lineage. This new identity is that of the follower, and during the trance it supersedes all the pilgrim’s previous identities in terms of social status, caste or religion. Francophone research has also made a significant contribution to the study of Muslim religious rituals, including pilgrimage, in South Asia. Since the 1980s religious rituals were approached through two main lenses: anthropology and literature; here I will focus on the former. Marc Gaborieau produced a number of studies which examined the issue of social organization and in his main work on a Muslim caste in Nepal, he identified the fakir, another name given to the Sufi, as a central figure in religious life (Gaborieau, 1993). For him pilgrimage was peripheral. However, Jackie Assayag, another French anthropologist, was more interested in pilgrimage and its role as a vehicle for sharing religious rituals between Muslims and Hindus in South Asia. Hence, he focused on processions as the main instrument for maintaining peaceful inter-religious relations, such as Shia commemorations of the martyrdom of the third imam, Husain (Assayag, 1995).

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 61 Denis Matringe and Catherine Servan-Schreiber also contributed to the study of South Asian Muslim saint worship in a milestone work edited by Henri Chambert-Loir and Claude Guillot (1995). The volume covers the main parts of the Muslim world and the prime aim of the contributors is to show that from Morocco to Indonesia saint worship has more similarities than differences. Furthermore, they show that in most cases ziyarat is performed as a substitute for the hajj by those who cannot afford to go to Mecca (1995: 6). They identify ziyarat as a ‘trait d’union privilégié entre les religions: presque partout dans le monde musulman, on trouve ces tombes hybrides (sic) où viennent prier ensemble musulmans et non-musulmans’ [bridge of privileged unity between religions: nearly everywhere in the Muslim word one finds these hybrid (sic) tombs where Muslims and non-Muslims come to pray] (1995: 10).13

Recent Trends One of the rare books whose title explicitly refers to pilgrimage was published by Pnina Werbner (2003); it was also the first book to be devoted to Sufi pilgrimage in Pakistan. In the introduction, she attempts to demonstrate that a Sufi pilgrimage is part of the process of globalization. She starts from the dargah of one Zinda Pir located in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (former North-West Frontier Province) area of Pakistan and follows the spread of the cult to Birmingham in the UK. She reminds the reader that Sufism has never respected national boundaries (2003: 5) and she soon states that ‘Sufism . . . represents a counter-globalising trend to political Islam’ (idem 7). However, she does not really try to elaborate on the issue of pilgrimage (2003: 15) and fails to distinguish between Sufism and pilgrimage. Along the way, she criticizes Turner’s influential theory of communitas, arguing that ‘sacred pilgrimage creates not “anti”-structure but “counter”-structure’ (2003: 18). Focusing on the festival, she understands it as part of a single structured ritual process. Her main concern is to find and understand the sources of Zinda Pir’s charisma, since she is convinced that they constitute the nexus and pivot of the pilgrimage shrine. The book’s main input lies in its contribution to the debate regarding locality and universality in the context of Islam, i.e. to what she describes as ‘the historical significance of South Asia Islam’s unique hybridity’ (2003: 288). The issue of gender has only recently been addressed in the study of South Asian Muslim pilgrimage. Abbas (2002) and Pemberton (2010), for example, are keen to introduce women as key actors, especially through their singing of Sufi poetry, rather than concentrating on a place or a space. Yet, they do not associate gender with pilgrimage as a category, even though ziyarat is included in their glossaries. A more recent trend with regard to gender involves the study of transgender. In Kasmani’s study (2016) pilgrimage is depicted as a place of transgression where a new sexual identity is

62  Michel Boivin performed: the third sex. The Khadra or Hijra (transgender) interviewed by Kasmani clearly states that her real sexual identity was revealed to her while she was undertaking pilgrimage at the shrine of Sehwan Sharif. Because the expression of transgender identities can be found everywhere in such South Asian places and, as Kasmani argues, because the Khadra is a marginal person, a different kind of spiritual mediation is performed at the dargah that escapes the control of the local actors. In social sciences, the issue of emotion is attracting attention as a number of research projects demonstrate, and has become a topic in relation to Sufism—although, according to my limited knowledge, a thorough study has yet to appear. The issue of emotion is related to some specific practices performed during pilgrimage, such as trance and ecstasy. Nonetheless, Richard Wolf has addressed the issue of emotion in the context of the processions of Muharram (Wolf, 2000, 2014). His seeks to answer a core question: how and in what circumstances does music represent or generate the often subtle range of emotions characteristic of mourning rituals for participants in those rituals? Yet, once again, neither the issue of pilgrimage nor procession is seen to be crucial for the analysis. With regard to visits to South Asian Muslims sacred spaces another category of ziyarat has interested scholars: visits to ‘sacred footprints.’ In the second edition of the Encyclopedia of the Islam, J. Burton-Page dedicates some lines to the qadam sharif or qadam rasul Allah, literally ‘sacred feet’ or ‘feet of the prophet of Allah’, in India and Pakistan. His contribution follows upon another one signed by Thomas W. Arnold (1864–1930) and published in 1927, which goes back to the first edition of the Encyclopedia. Arnold explains that, according to late Arabic sources, the Prophet left an indelible imprint when he walked on the rock, sometimes his footprints and sometimes his sandals. In South Asia, the term of qadamgah, literally ‘location of feet’, is used for shrines which shelter footprints left by a sacred figure of Islam who is venerated by the devotees. Burton-Page explains this practice in terms of the Islamization of Buddhists and the devotees of Vishnu. However, this explanation seems to contradict Arnold’s note which mentions numerous qadam sharif in Algeria, Syria and Egypt, as well as in Jerusalem. The qadamgahs from Muhammad in Delhi and Ghaur in Bengal were also the object of articles by Hasan (1993) and Welch (1993), who were both specialists in architecture and art history and, therefore, do not focus on the visitation proper. It remains surprising that so little interest has been taken in other footprints, especially the qadamgahs attributed to the first Shia imam, Ali. Nile Green is probably one of the first to draw attention to these qadamgahs in an article published in 2003, then republished in his book, Making space: Sufis and settlers in Early Modern India (2012). He points out that next to the imambara (the building where the flags and other ritual objects of Muharram processions are kept), there are these ‘secondary sanctuaries’,

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 63 which worked as key instruments in the acculturation of Islam in South Asia. They also played a fundamental role in the conversion of the populations to Islam—in Bengal, for example. However, research would need to locate visits to these sites within the frame of pilgrimage. Sometimes the architectural structure is close to the Sufi dargah, identified by its dome, but other sites do not have distinctive design, such as the recently renovated qadamgah in Hyderabad, in the province of Sindh (Pakistan). The building is very simple but huge and one can have access to the heart of the shrine by climbing the stairs. The main room is divided in two parts, one for men and the other for women, by a huge veil. The footprints of imam Ali are in the middle of the room and their size is very big, if not giant-like. The qadamgah Mowla Ali, as the place is locally known, is obviously a very popular sanctuary and one can suppose that the devotees are mainly Shias, but also Sunnis, Hindus and Christians. All around the qadamgahs are ritual objects, which are exhibited during the Muharram processions, such as miniature tombs or tazias, cradles or jhulas etc.

Final Comments In the context of Muslims in South Asia, the study of pilgrimage is very recent compared with pilgrimage studies in other parts of the world. The reluctance in using the word, which translates the Arabic-originated word of ziyarat, better translated as ‘visitation’, reflects a number of questions belonging to the field of Islamic studies. In her glossary, Shemeem Abbas defines ziyarat as the ‘ceremonial viewing or attendance where the devotee offers fateha (prayer) for the dead saint’ (Abbas, 2002: 159). She thus focuses on the process of viewing among Sufis in South Asia, which is also known as didar (mystical vision) or darshan in the Hindu context. Similarly, Kelly Pemberton translates ziyarat as pilgrimage, then adds that it is ‘used to describe the display of relics said to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad’ (Pemberton, 2010: 211). However, most of the time, the word ‘pilgrimage’ is used to locate the issue in the framework of the hajj, the canonical pilgrimage to Mecca. Since the only pilgrimage accepted by the scriptural sources is the hajj, what is the relevance of using this word for other religious journeys? Second, sociologists and anthropologists have tended to explore the issue of place rather than mobility until recently (see Coleman and Eade, 2004). Hence, Sufi centres have been understood as fixed places involved in social regulation as well as integrative processed involving both Muslims and Hindus. Thirdly, the reluctance to use the word pilgrimage mirrors a key question in Islamic and Sufi studies: do visits to the Muslim saints’ shrines depend on Sufism? In this regard, while most of the scholars do not deny the relation between Sufism and saint worship, the terms used in recent

64  Michel Boivin publications on South Asia, especially the word ‘deviation’, demonstrate that the issue is still quite controversial (Bennett and Ramsey, 2012). While more and more doctoral theses are devoted to what is elsewhere called ‘pilgrimage’ (many of which have emerged as books), the use of the word or even the vernacular ziyarat is not increasing. Recent research has focused elsewhere, such as the therapeutic function of shrines (Pirani, 2009) or material culture (Boivin, 2011). Although beyond the scope of the present survey, it would be interesting to understand this reluctance to use the term ‘pilgrimage’, since studies of shrines in other parts of the Muslim world use it (Mayeur-Jaouen, 2004; Chiffoleau and Madoeuf, 2005). It is tempting to provide an explanation in terms of the cleavage between Anglophone and Francophone research. However, it is necessary to state here there are not so many works published in French on the topic of pilgrimages related to Sufism. The first Francophone scholar to broadly use it may have been Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen in her study devoted to the mouled of Tantâ in Egypt (Mayeur-Jaouen, 2004). Thus, pilgrimage is here a translation of the Arabic word mouled, which refers to the anniversary of the saint’s death. In the introductory chapter of her book she discusses the topic of sainthood and popular religion, citing the works devoted to Christianity. As a historian, she focuses on the changes that the pilgrimage went through under the impact of colonization but, even more importantly, Islamic reformism. In 2005 the volume edited by Sylvia Chiffoleau and Anna Madoeuf, following a conference organized in Damascus, constituted another milestone since it was probably the first time that the issue of pilgrimage as ziyarat was explicitly discussed in their thirty page introductory chapter. Although the volume’s subtitle—Public spaces, spaces of the public —indicates the editors’ perspective, they discuss the relevance of pilgrimage as a term and point out that the reluctance to use it, even in Middle East studies, comes from the association between pilgrimage and the hajj. They, therefore, use the term ziyarats to refer to ‘secondary pilgrimages’ (idem 7) and after drawing comparisons with Christian pilgrimages in the Middle East, they describe pilgrimage as a ‘polymorphic phenomenon.’ The study of South Asian Muslim pilgrimage by social scientists has been influenced by developments within social sciences, in general. Hence, research on Sufi places published from the late 1970s to the early 1990s focused mainly on the social role of the Sufis and their contribution as transmitters of knowledge—in other words, as major actors in the field of religious and literary life. The 2000s saw new trends where the pilgrimage was analyzed in association with other issues such as globalization, emotion or gender. Last but not least, a special mention should be made of studies which address old issues through new approaches, the most significant of which is the peaceful fabric achieved by Sufism. Some thorough studies have improved the knowledge of how this fabric was implemented, in which contexts and who were the main actors.

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 65

Notes 1 For an introduction to the word hajj and ziyarat, see the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam (1986 and 2002). 2 For example, see his book on the religious life during the Delhi sultanate (Nizami 1971). 3 Khwaja Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez Shirazi (1325–1389) was a Persian poet born in Shiraz whose poetry is usually seen as the apex of poetry in the Persian-speaking countries. It is important to bear in mind that Persian was the official and literary language in many states until the coming of the British. The new rulers removed Persian in 1835 and replaced it by English and vernacular languages in the different parts of the Indian empire. 4 The Vedanta is the name given to the sacred scriptures known as the Upanishads, as well as to the philosophical and theological system they expressed. They teach final emancipation from the cycle of birth and death. 5 Husain is one of the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, with his brother Hasan, who died in 680 C.E. at Karbela, see note 8 below. 6 The puja is a set of basic Hindu rituals performed for the veneration of a god or a goddess. Durga is a major figure of the goddess Devi, especially in her fierce form. 7 On this important issue, see Dirks (2001). 8 The processions commemorate the tragedy of Karbela when, in 680 C.E., the third Shia imam, Husain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, was slaughtered with his family. Processions are performed during the first ten days of the Islamic month of Muharram. On the observance of Muharram in South Asia, see Bhalloo and Boivin (forthcoming). 9 Richard Burton translated The Thousand and One Nights into English and was also one of the first Europeans to perform the hajj to Mecca disguised as a merchant. 10 Morgan’s book is sometimes seen as one of the first ethnographic studies, centering on the study of the social structure as well as the political organization of the Iroquois. 11 The dargah and the mazar are the two most used words for naming the tombs of the Muslim saint. The mazar nevertheless refers to a more important building. The urs is the annual commemoration of the death of the saint, which is interpreted as his mystical wedding with God. It is the main annual celebration, when pilgrimage reaches its apex in terms of visitors. Many specific rituals are also performed, such as that of the mendi or henna, symbolizing marriage in the South Asian context. 12 The Anglo-Muslim College of Aligarh was founded by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in 1877. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98) was a leading Muslim reformist, who sought to modernize Muslim intellectual life through a return to the scriptural sources of Islam, as well as engaging with European sciences. Aligarh later became a university. 13 In 1996, another book published by Mohammad Ali Amir Moezzi centred on ‘places of Islam’ (Amir-Moezzi, 1996). Like Chambert-Loir and Guillot, he asked for a survey from specialists working in various areas of the Muslim world. Some contributions were devoted to India and Pakistan but once again they focused on ritual.

Bibliography Abbas, S. (2002) The female voice in Sufi ritual: Devotional practices of Pakistan and India, Austin: University of Texas Press.

66  Michel Boivin Albera, D. and Couroucli, M. (eds) (2009) Religions traversées. Lieux saints partagés entre chrétiens, musulmans et juifs en Méditerranée, Arles: Actes sud. Amir-Moezzi (Muhammad Ali) (1997) ‘Lieux saints d’islam. Cultes et cultures de l’Afrique à Java’, Archives de sciences sociales des religions, vol. 98, no. 1, pp. 46–48. Assayag, J. (1995) Au confluent de deux rivières. Musulmans et hindous dans le Sud de l’Inde, Paris: EFEO. Bellamy, C. (2011) The powerful ephemeral: Everyday healing in an ambiguously Islamic place, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bennett, C. and Ramsey, C. (eds) (2012) South Asian Sufis: Devotion, deviation, and destiny, London: Continuum. Bhalloo, Z. and Boivin, M. (forthcoming) Moharram in South Asia between vernacularization and globalization, Berlin: Klaus Verlag. Bigelow, A. (2010) Sharing the sacred: Practicing pluralism in Muslim North India, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Boivin, M. (2011) Artefacts of devotion: A Sufi repertoire of the Qalandariyya in Sehwan Sharif, Sindh (Pakistan), Karachi: Oxford University Press. ——— and Delage, R. (eds) (2016) Devotional Islam in South Asia: Shrines, journeys and wanderers, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Burton, R. (1964/1855) Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to Al Medinah and ­Meccah, vol. 1, New York: Dover Publication. Chambert-Loir, H. and Guillot, C. (1995) Le culte des saints dans le monde musulman, Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient. Chiffoleau, S. and Madoeuf, A. (eds) (2005) Les pèlerinages au Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient. Espaces publics, espaces du public, Damascus: IFPO. Coleman, S. and Eade, J (eds) (2004) Reframing pilgrimage: Cultures in motion, London and New York: Routledge. Deleury, G. (1991) Les Indes florissantes. Anthologie des voyageurs français (1750– 1820), Paris: Robert Laffont, collection Bouquins. Dirks, N. (2001) Castes of mind: Colonialism and the making of modern India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eaton, R. (1978) Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700: Social roles of Sufis in medieval India, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Encyclopedia of Islam, Leiden, Brill, 2nd edition, 12 volumes, 1986–2004. Ernst, C. (1992) Eternal garden: Mysticism, history, and politics at a South Asian Sufi centre, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Ewing, K. (1997) Arguing sainthood: Modernity, psychoanalysis, and Islam, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Frembgen, J. (2008) Journey to God: Sufis and dervishes in Islam, translated from German by Jane Ripken, Karachi: Oxford University Press. Gaborieau, M. (1993) Ni brahmanes, ni ancêtres. Colporteurs musulmans du Népal, Nanterre: Société d’ethnologie. Garcin de Tassy, J. (1869) Mémoire sur les particularités de la religion musulmane en Inde, d’après les ouvrages hindoustani, Paris: Labitte. Green, N. (2012) Making space. Sufis and settlers in Early Modern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hasan, P. (1993) ’The footprint of the Prophet’, Muqarnas, vol. 10, pp. 335–343. Hughes, A. (1996 /1874) Gazetteer of the Province of Sind, Karachi: Indus Publications.

Sufism, Pilgrimage and Saint Worship in South Asia 67 Ibbetson, D. (1994/1884) Panjab castes, being a reprint of the chapter on ’The Races, Caste and Tribes of the People’ in the Report on the Census of the Panjab, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications. Kasmani, O. (2016) Off the lines. Fakir orientations of gender, body and space in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan, Unpublished PhD., Berlin Free University. Klostermeir, K. (1998) A concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Oxford: Oneworld Publication. Mayeur-Jaouen, C. (2004) Histoire d'un pèlerinage légendaire en Islam. Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle à nos jours, Paris: Aubier. Nizami, K. (1961) Some aspects of religion and politics in India during the thirteenth century, Aligarh: Muslim University. Pemberton, K. (2010) Women mystics and Sufi shrines in India, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Pirani, F. (2009) ‘Therapeutic encounters’ at a Muslim shrine in Pakistan: An ethnographic study of understanding and explanations of ill health and help-­seeking among attendees, unpublished PhD thesis, School of Health and Social Sciences, London: Middlesex University. Sharif, J. (1972/1832) Islam in India: The customs of the Mussulmans of India, revised and rearranged by William Crooke, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation. Subhan, J. (1970/1938) Sufism, its saints and shrines: An introduction to the study of Sufism with special references to India, New York: Samuel Weiser Inc. Welch, A. (1993) ’The shrine of the Holy Footprint in Delhi’, Muqarnas, vol. 14, pp. 166–178. Werbner, P. (2003) Pilgrims of love: The anthropology of a global Sufi cult, London: Hurst. Wolf, R. (2000)’Embodiment and ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram drumming’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 32, pp. 81–116. ——— (2014) The voice in the drum: Music, language, and emotion in Islamicate South Asia, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press.

5 Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West (Peninsular) Malaysia Yeoh Seng-Guan

Introduction In Malaysia, the religious mosaic and, by extension, the pilgrimage universe is extraordinarily diverse and plural. Its 30 million citizens are not only polyglot in an array of Asian and non-Asian languages and are multi-ethnic but a large majority also profess and practice one of the major religions found in this middle-income level Southeast Asian country. Despite rapid modernization and urbanization in the past two or three decades—powerful sociological forces conventionally believed to undermine and disperse religious belief and practice—only a minuscule percentage of Malaysians declare in the periodic national census that they do not have a religious affiliation.1 Of those that do, significant numbers continue to live according to the basic tenets, worldviews and habitus of their respective faiths in their everyday existence. Superficially, this is especially evident during the special moments and holy days of their respective religious calendars. Large numbers of devotees fulfil their ritual obligations and seek boons at an array of places of worship that includes not only mosque, temples, gurdwaras and churches but also at graveyards and nondescript shrines. Most of these festivities and religious events are usually given extensive coverage by the state media to project an aura of harmonious religious pluralism and multiculturalism. Additionally, for the major religions formally recognized by the state—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianist-Daoism, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism—a selection of their holy days are accorded as national public holidays. Despite this apparent efflorescence of lived piety, the present corpus of ethnographic work on ‘pilgrimage studies’ per se in Malaysia is paradoxically quite thin, if not hardly existent compared with some of the other countries or regions discussed in this volume. As will be highlighted, one of the key motifs of most contemporary studies of religious diversity in West (Peninsular) Malaysia has involved sociologically situating changes in ritual practices in tandem with a globalizing modernity, ‘deteriorating’ inter-ethnic relations and the pervasive influence of state-sponsored Islamic piety during the last three or four decades (e.g. Nagata, 1984; Ang et al., 2008; Liow, 2009; Peletz, 2013).

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  69 This chapter focuses on anthropological studies of religion conducted in West (Peninsular) Malaysia where ethno-religious pluralism is arguably more prevalent and also currently more fraught. A key factor in understanding contemporary religious (and pilgrimage) practices in Malaysia is their diasporic, localized, and hybridized constitution due to changing socio-economic and political contexts. In some cases, innovations have been so radical that some diasporic deities have become in substance ‘home-grown’ (e.g. Sinha, 2005). Moreover, decades, if not centuries, of osmotic modification, adaptation and assimilation are now being revised and recalibrated in the current milieu of trans-local flows of religious and non-religious social imaginaries. Faster and easier connectivity in communication and transportation networks have allowed wider and ­ ­synchronized corporate reflexivity and their deployment in identity politics by various social actors. These secular processes have facilitated ritual innovations and the commodification of sacred objects in the religious marketplace (see, for example, Pattana, 2008). More so than before, these substantially changed material conditions foment a public culture of the pilgrimage universe where there is a greater traffic of inter-subjective comparison and entrepreneurial innovation at various pilgrimage shrines of different scales. Closely related to the above is ‘pilgrimage studies’—originally derived from European Christian contexts and associations with Christian travel— and studies on the nature of religious experiences in general. As Ian Reader (2014) and others have observed, scholars in the past have tended to overemphasize the dichotomy between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, and taken at face value the rhetoric of pilgrimage promotion. In some religious cosmologies, the ‘sacred’ can be easily manifested through an array of persons, animals, places and inanimate objects—‘the sacred is present in and part and parcel of the mundane world’ (Reader 2014: 48). Conversely, it is not always the case that pilgrimage has to be enveloped within an ‘extraordinary’ aura. In the contemporary modern world, it may very well be ‘ordinary’ in the sense that pilgrim journeys to pray at shrines have become normative and quotidian because of both the alienating processes and conveniences of modernity. For many, pilgrimage might be part and parcel of ‘everyday religion’ (Ammerman, 2007). I elucidate these varied themes by revisiting some of the key anthropological studies conducted on a range of religious festivals and places where pilgrimage practices are likely to be found. Where relevant, I also suggest areas and themes for future research.

Religious Pluralism and the Diaspora in Malaysia A key marketing trope of present-day Malaysia promoted by state discourse and tourist advertisements is the country’s polyglot and harmonious multireligious and multi-ethnic populace. While arguably aspirational rather than

70  Yeoh Seng-Guan actually existing, how this variegated ethno-religious mosaic came to be and how it has been administratively managed during the colonial and post-colonial periods, nonetheless requires a thumbnail historical re-telling. Given its strategic geopolitical location along the key commercial land and sea trading routes between the two ancient civilizations of the Indian subcontinent and China, different parts of the ‘Malay archipelago’ have fallen under the sway of successive empires with Hindu-Buddhist and Islamic religious polities emanating from various regions in South and Southeast Asia as outposts and tributary states before distant European powers entered into the fray to gain control of the spice trade (e.g. Coedes, 1968; Reid, 1988). In addition to their material cultural remains, these external powers have also left behind their intangible imprints on local native and Malay languages, folklores and ritual practices. More specifically, the contemporary popular cultural tradition of local Malays is conventionally viewed as a complex ‘syncretic’ or ‘hybrid’ amalgam of animistic, Indic and Islamic elements, notwithstanding the present drive to ‘purify’ this tradition of accretions according to an ‘authentic’ Sunni and modernist Islamic modality (e.g. Roff, 1998; Peletz, 2002). Roman Catholicism was introduced in the early 16th century by the Portuguese when they conquered Melaka, the seat of the prosperous Islamic Melaka Sultanate and an important regional port centre attracting a cosmopolitan populace of merchants, traders and adventurers from near and far. After a period of Dutch rule, Melaka was ceded to the British in 1824. By then, the British, through the East India Company, had already acquired Penang Island (in 1786) from the Sultan of Kedah further north in the peninsula and Singapore Island (in 1819) by Stamford Raffles, an enterprising agent of the East India Company. Together, these settlements—collectively called ‘the Straits Settlements’— quickly became the destination for a diverse array of Christian missionary groups. The missionaries saw the flow of entrepreneurial migrant traders and impoverished labour from China, India, Java, Sumatra and beyond, facilitated by the liberal migration policy of the British authorities, as providing golden opportunities for evangelism. Through initiatives like schools, adult literacy, medical clinics, hospitals and orphanages, they competed to persuade these sojourners, including local native Malays, to join their fold. However, the colonial administrators were ambivalent towards these missions and the relationship between the two was often vexed. They were aware of the need to manage religious diversity in British India (especially after the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857) and security considerations stimulated by the frequency of Muslim-led rebellions in neighbouring Dutch Indies and the increase in recorded pilgrimages from the region to Mecca and Medina with the opening of the Suez Canal attracting more shipping lines. More intent on securing maximal resource extraction, the British consequently made strategic treaty concessions to the various Malay sultans and chiefs with respect to their elite status and as guardians of the Islamic faith (Andaya and

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  71 Andaya, 2001: 156ff.). For instance, the seminal Pangkor Treaty of 1874 recognized Islam as the only religion of the Malays. The British adoption of an overt posture of administrative non-intervention in the ‘Malay religion and customs’ became a legislative template that would be repeated elsewhere throughout British Malaya. By contrast, in relation to other non-Christian religions professed by the newly arrived migrants, the British authorities were liberal in providing land grants for an array of religious places of worship such as Indian-Muslim mosques, Chinese, Buddhist and Hindu temples, Christian churches and Sikh gurdwaras to be built. Vineeta Sinha (2011: 60ff.) has argued that this was to appease migrant workers, mitigate feelings of alienation and to provide incentives to settle and a ready source of much needed human labour. As the British expanded their rule to the rest of the peninsula and incrementally created a network of new urban commercial centres connected by rail and road transportation, primarily along the west coast, pioneering and entrepreneurial migrants followed suit. Wherever they settled down, they built places of worship and buried their dead for spiritual protection and community well-being. They also celebrated their religious festivities according to their respective calendars, many of them in public spaces. The colonial archives and contemporary newspaper reports give a sense of the vibrancy and dilemmas that these events generated. For instance, the festivities and funeral street processions of Chinese, Hindu and Indian-Muslim devotees were frequently described as ‘loud’, ‘chaotic’, ‘strange’ and ‘disturbing’ by European observers. Indeed, debates among the European public and local Christian elites arose on the permissibility of these ‘manifestations of non-Christian religiosity in a space’ that was ceded to a British authority (Sinha, 2011: 61ff.; see also DeBernardi, 2006: 25ff.). While these processions were often banned in the aftermath of riots and disturbances, they had become routine in urban centres throughout the country until the onset of Islamic revivalism and fractious inter-ethnic relations made such processions less common from the 1970s onwards. Early on, in view of numerous disputes between different religious entities often ending in litigation, the authorities decided to introduce legislation modelled along the English Charity Commissioners Act in India that required all places of worship to be accountable to governing boards. For Muslims, the British authorities also assisted in codifying a diverse range of oral customary laws (adat) found in different states, which eventually developed into a more homogeneous and overarching Syariah law. Thus, despite the official stance of ‘non-interference’ in religious matters, what was actually set in motion was ‘a new managerial approach to religion, one that was dominated by the need for order and regulation increasingly achieved through legislation’ (Sinha, 2011: 81). While certainly not exhausting the many folds and intricacies of individual or group spiritual experiences, this legal-administrative logic towards religious practices, nevertheless, has been hegemonic in framing state-religion

72  Yeoh Seng-Guan relations in post-colonial Malaysia in contrasting ways. Before formal independence was granted in 1957, Malay-Muslim ethno-nationalist sentiments had been mobilized to ensure that the Federal Constitution entrenched Islam as the official religion of the new nation-state in response to non-Malay claims for equal citizenships. Although a freedom of religion clause was also inserted, proposals to allow Muslims to freely convert out of Islam and not be prosecuted for apostasy under Shariah law were not approved (Yeoh, 2011). In sum, as succinctly characterized by Raymond Lee and Susan Ackerman (1990; see also Lee and Ackerman, 1997), decades of a secularist governmentality of ‘race’ and ‘religion’ along uneven and differential lines have produced two ‘distinct arenas’. While non-Muslims operate primarily in a laissez-faire religious climate and can profess a range of voluntarist, privatized and plural religiosities, Muslims are subject to tighter surveillance through Islamic legislation and policing institutions. Indeed, over the past two decades, since the 1988 amendment to Article 121 of the Federal Constitution which created two parallel and competing jurisdictional realms, a formidable religious state apparatus has grown up. Islamic groups and teachings deemed to be improperly ‘syncretic’, ‘deviant’ or ‘un-Islamic’ from the point of view of the Shafi’i school of Sunni Islam are subject to prosecution and other punitive actions (e.g. Hamayotsu, 2003; Liow, 2009; Peletz, 2002, 2013; Yeoh, 2014).

Mutable Muslim Religiosities: Keramat Shrines and the Hajj Building on the preceding discussion of changing historical contexts, I will begin by bringing together two contrasting kinds of pilgrimage practices among Malay-Muslims in order to show how state-induced institutional changes have reshaped everyday Muslim religiosities. While one trajectory is deemed today to be improperly ‘syncretic’ and criminalized by state Islamic authorities, the other, by contrast—the hajj to Mecca—has been promoted and centrally administered by the state since the early 1960s. Their different fortunes index the changing nature of the politics of religious change among Malay-Muslims in Malaysia and, by implication, pilgrimage practices. A striking feature of the folk Malay worldview as embedded in folktales and shamanic incantations and chronicled by a number of early British scholar-administrators (inter alia Skeat, 1900; Winstedt, 1924, 1925; cf. Mohd. Nor bin Ngah, 1985) is the belief in semangat (‘soul substance’). Succinctly put, semangat is believed to suffuse all existence, from living beings to inanimate forms like rocks, waterfalls, springs, minerals, clothing, ornaments and so forth. For humans, the semangat is deemed to have quasi-human attributes and can be detached from their corporeal owners during sleep, trance and illness (e.g. Skeat, 1900: 47ff.). Because of its potential partibility and mobility, the semangat of humans must be protected against abuse by other beings which bear malice or ill-intent. Hence, there are numerous taboos on everyday practices that may compromise the

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  73 integrity of semangat either through loss or theft. By the same token, propitiation rites have to be carried out to appease any infringements and offence towards these spiritual entities, which are construed in anthropomorphic terms to have appetites, desires and the like. This worldview overlaps with that of the keramat complex. The Malay word, keramat, is derived from the Arabic, karamah, (singular; karamat plural) to refer specifically to a charismatic miracle worker who is considered a close friend of God (waliullah). Winstedt’s article provides an indication of how this expression has translated into local animist contexts. Based on Malay folklore, he categorizes keramat in terms of sacred places and persons. More specifically, they can be found in a) natural objects such as rocks, hilltops, capes and whirlpools etc., b) sacred tigers and crocodiles, c) graves of magicians, d) graves of the founders of settlements, e) graves of Muslim saints and f) living Muslim saints (1924: 264). With respect to the last two categories, scholars generally agree that the practice of saint veneration is a legacy of mystical Sufi Islam brought over by Arab Muslim and South Asian Muslim (particularly Tamil Muslim) traders to the Malay archipelago over several centuries. This practice also spread to Indonesia, Brunei, southern Philippines, and southern Thailand. It is evident from these early accounts that the Malay landscape was dotted with numerous keramats and that the cult of saints, which centred on both the tombs of the deceased and living persons, commanded a popular following. The shrines and graves of saints were popular places to seek for intercession and blessings. Likewise, ordinary Malays freely resorted to the living saints ‘for advice in legal disputes or as to the success or failure of an enterprise or as intercessor for the sick or to get a child or to remove blight or plague or confound enemies’ (Winstedt, 1961/1925: 47). In Penang, annual ritual feasts (Malay, kenduri) were organized around some of these tomb shrines (Persian, dargah or durgha meaning ‘portal’), the most notable being Nagore Dargah (founded 1801) located in the city centre. Besides spiritual transactions, these feasts helped to reinforce ‘complex socio-religious patronage and multi-generational family relationships, and as such was critical to community-building in traditional Tamil Muslim society’ (Khoo, 2014: 67). More recent Islamic reformers in Malaysia, by contrast, have been ambivalent about these kinds of piety. Pilgrimages to the graves of saints and other sacred places are reckoned to be syirik, i.e. theologically antithetical to the Islamic affirmation of faith (the shahada): that ‘there is no god but Allah alone and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’. By the time the Malaysian anthropologist Cheu Hock Tong (1982, 1998) conducted his research on the keramats in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, much appeared to have changed. Especially since the advent of Islamic revivalism in Malaysia in the 1970s, state Islamic authorities have discouraged visits to these keramats by destroying them or nullifying their efficacy through re-education. Moreover, the younger generation of urbane Muslims has tended to view these practices as not very appealing. In this

74  Yeoh Seng-Guan context, Muslims wishing to seek aid from keramats have to do so in a clandestine manner. Another transformation has taken place with the apparent decline of Malay keramat worship. As Cheu succinctly puts it, many of these old keramats have been taken over and ‘sinicized’ by Chinese devotees in Malaysia. ‘Datuk Kong’ (‘grandfather’ in Malay and Chinese, respectively) or Datuk Keramat is ‘the cult of a venerated deceased person, usually of Malay or native origin, or the spirit being guarding a particular sacred place, either known or unknown in local history or legend’ (Cheu, 1998: 35). The Datuk Kong is generally worshipped as a tutelary deity having jurisdictional control over forces operating in specific geographic localities. By giving obeisance to Datuk Kong, devotees believe that the locality will be cleansed of insecurity and danger. While Datuk Kong is often personalized into a figure of an elderly man, spiritual entities can also manifest themselves in a range of animate and inanimate forms. As a consequence of the transformation in the ethnicity of the devotees, the ritual paraphernalia used in a sinicized keramat and Malay keramat differ. While the former has Chinese ritual objects such as spirit tablets, small idols and joss sticks at the shrines, Malay keramats are usually aniconic and built around natural formations like anthills and rocks. Instead of retreating, the number of Datuk Kong shrines has in fact multiplied with urban development and can be found in Chinese residential, commercial and industrial areas. This is so because ‘Malaysian worshippers believe that the sites where they live today were formerly occupied by jungles where spirit beings had established their age-old sanctuaries’ (Cheu, 1988: 41). By erecting shrines and providing them offerings and sacrifices as compensation, it is hoped that their displeasure and wrath at being deprived of their original abodes would be placated. This belief is also borne out in Goh Beng Lan’s study of the ritual practices of 20 private developers (either wholly Chinese-owned or multi-ethnic partnerships) in Penang Island during the property boom of the mid-1990s. Goh revealed that ‘developers have gone to great lengths to conduct propitiation rituals and build permanent shrines believing that these efforts were necessary to protect their workers and ensure smooth operations’ (2005: 311). Significantly, all of these developments were situated next to hill slopes. The foregoing ethno-religious transformation and dispersed management of a diverse array of keramats stands in stark contrast to Malaysian pilgrims going on hajj to the Holy Land. Significant numbers of pilgrims from various parts of Southeast Asia (collectively called ‘Jawa’ in the colonial archival records), especially from present-day Indonesia and Malaysia, are known to have taken the long arduous and dangerous journeys to Mecca since at least the 14th century, if not earlier (Tagliacozzo, 2013). Like local visits to keramats, performing the hajj largely involved personal and individualized activities. However, from the late 19th century onwards until the outbreak of the Second World War, European concerns about a growing pan-Islamic

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  75 movement and the geo-politics of the Red Sea prompted maritime surveillance and the keeping of detailed records of pilgrim activities from their respective colonies. The seeds of this legacy have been durable. For Robert Bianchi, ‘the hallmark of the modern hajj is that it is an affair of the state’ (2004: 70), an observation that resonates with Mary McDonnell’s doctoral study (1986) of Muslim pilgrims from Malaysia over a hundred year period (1885–1985). She charted significant shifts in the scale, conduct and composition of the Malay hajji (male pilgrim) or hajja (female pilgrim). Moreover, the experiences of a typical pilgrim have been substantially altered as a consequence of faster and safer long distance travel—from ships to planes—and the close involvement of an array of entities ranging from the Saudi Arabian government, local travel and hotel agencies and, most significant of all, the setting up of the Lembaga Urusan Tabung Haji (Pilgrims Management Fund Board)—or Tabung Haji in short—in 1969 by an act of parliament and placed directly under the Prime Minister’s Department. British records of hajj activities indicate that every year around 2,500 Muslims from the Malay archipelago performed the hajj in the late 19th century. By the 1920s, the figures had doubled. After a lull during World War Two, numbers have steadily increased. In 2013, the figure stood at 22,320 pilgrims. Undoubtedly, the numbers would have been higher if not for the quota of a maximum of 0.1 per cent of the total Muslim population of the sending country imposed by the Saudi Arabian government since the early 1990s. At the turn of the 20th century, the typical pilgrim would be a wealthy member of the traditional elite, male and elderly. By the 1920s, the spectrum expanded to include newly moneyed but financially unstable elderly peasants, emerging middle class, the intelligentsia and university students. Over the decades, three groups have become more discernible: the traditional religious and secular elite, petty bureaucrats and their student sons and elderly pensioners and peasants. Already by the late 1960s, women pilgrims formed the majority and this demographic pattern has continued till today (McDonnell, 1990: 115; Bianchi, 2004: 69). In Malaysia, Tabung Haji is the only officially recognized entity for the selection of pilgrims performing the hajj. It also oversees pre-travel pilgrim courses, travel and accommodation logistics, and support systems (like banking, clinics, assistance for the disabled) at the holy land of Mecca and Medina. Tabung Haji is aided by about two dozen licensed travel agencies. For the past few years, the costs of all selected pilgrims (‘muasassah hajj pilgrims’) have been subsidized by about a third with returns drawn from Tabung Haji’s investments in a wide array of portfolios which are Shariahcompliant. These include sectors like real estate, trading and services, consumer products, and oil and gas. While a majority of these investments are in Malaysia, some are found in places like London, New York and Melbourne. In the past decade or so, upward social mobility and competitively priced travel packages have allowed significant numbers of middleclass Malay-Muslims to go for repeat umrah (‘mini pilgrimages’) to Mecca

76  Yeoh Seng-Guan outside the hajj season because of a more lax regulatory regime. Moreover, ‘Muslim travel’ to regions outside of Saudi Arabia is a fast growing niche market that has spawned numerous travel agencies that take cognizance of the halal (religiously permissible) requirements not only in terms of food but also an itinerary that allows for regular prayers unlike secular tourism.2 Given the religious salience of the hajj, a returning hajji/hajja has a privileged status among Muslims. Arguably, this aura was more palpable in the past because of the hazards and rigours of these journeys. In her study, McDonnell observed that the hajj of old was often undertaken at particular important junctures of the human life cycle—after finishing studies, before marriage, upon retirement or with the approach of death. By comparison, while these choices may still endure, the financial security provided by Tabung Haji, and the shorter and safer travels to/from Mecca and Medina have reshaped the sense of enormity in performing the hajj. By the same token, while present-day hajji/hajja is not often regarded as the dispenser of blessings (berkat) as before, they still command some respect in terms of religious symbolic capital, a point not missed by elite Muslim politicians in Malaysia. Robert Bianchi’s (2004) case study of Malaysia, framed on his wider analysis of the politics of pilgrimage in the Islamic world, makes this point particularly clear. Tabung Haji is thus important not only in helping to raise the economic standing of its Malay depositors but also in courting political patronage among undecided Muslim voters through the hajj vis-àvis other Muslim-based political parties. Conversely, how well Tabung Haji annually performs in earning its bonuses for their depositors and how it selects its depositors for the hajj are favourite topics for critical commentary and speculation by its detractors. By selectively juxtaposing these two contrasting modalities of MalayMuslim religiosities, I suggest that there is scope for scholarly exploration of the psychology, micro-politics and moral economy of pilgrimage practices among Malay-Muslims in Malaysia. To my knowledge, there is as yet no monograph in English that offers a nuanced ‘thick description’ of these disparate and yet intertwined processes among specific individuals, families, social classes and local communities. Moreover, the seminal studies of Cheu Hock Tong and Mary McDonnell are in need of updating to the present milieu. The affirmative action of the New Economic Policy (and its subsequent incarnations) has led to the formation of a Malay-Muslim middle class residing in culturally complex and cosmopolitan urban contexts. In this regard, fine studies by Johan Fischer (2008) on the dilemmas of Islamic consumption, by Sylvia Frisk (2009) on the religiosity of urban Muslim women, and by Gerhard Hoffstaedter (2011) on Malay-Muslim identity politics provide some suggestive leads. Among others, how do new consumptive habits, the allure of Muslim global travel, the social imaginary of global Islam, ethno-religious nationalism, and gendered religiosity articulate with and inform pilgrimage beliefs and practices? Conversely,

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  77 how does the doing of pilgrimage reconfigure social networks among different social classes and diverse ideological worldviews of Malay-Muslims in Malaysia?

Vows, Trance and Ethno-religious Relations: Thaipusam and the Nine Emperor Gods The previous section has reviewed how state-religion relations have historically framed Muslim religiosities in Malaysia. While privy to direct state patronage, they are also subject to tighter surveillance in comparison to non-Muslims. In this section, I re-visit major ethnographies of the Hindu festival of Thaipusam and the Chinese popular religious festival of Nine Emperor Gods, both of which involves elements of pilgrimage practices, in order to draw out some of the salient themes uncovered. Despite the obvious difference in religious provenance and foundational mythologies, aspects of their respective worldviews and ritual logics share a family resemblance with each other. Indeed, because of these overlapping cosmologies, it is not uncommon to see adherents of each religion participate in each other’s rituals. What these festivals also evince is the embedding socio-political context of perceived ethno-religious marginalization vis-à-vis Malay-Muslims, arguably felt more sharply among working class Hindu-Tamils. I begin with Thaipusam. Lasting three days, these festivities, especially at the Batu Caves shrine in Kuala Lumpur, arguably boast the single largest public gathering of pilgrims, visitors and tourists in Malaysia with estimated crowds in excess of one million not unusual. Their popularity has attracted a number of studies. Each contains varying degrees of ethnographic details, reports from different time periods and locations and has varied theoretical concerns (e.g. Babb, 1976; Ward, 1984; Lee, 1989; Collins, 1997; Belle, 2004; Clothey, 2006; Willford, 2007). Briefly, Thaipusam is a Hindu festival in honour of Lord Murugan, the Tamil deity that later became associated as one of Lord Siva’s sons. Different myths about Lord Murugan emphasize different aspects of his character and attributes. The festival was originally centred in Palani, Tamil Nadu (South India), and was patronized by local capitalists known as the Chettiyars from the 17th century onwards when they started trading and money-lending in the area. Together with impoverished Tamil migrant workers, who carried with them their devotion to village goddesses and guardian deities, the Chettiyars also transplanted Tantayutapani, the form of Murugan enshrined in Palani, to British Malaya. A central feature of the festivities involves a chariot procession bearing the idol of Lord Murugan, which is pulled and accompanied by pilgrims walking barefoot. Short stops are made at selected established Hindu temples along a well-honed processional route and for devotees to provide offerings (archanai) to the deity. In the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, Lord Murugan is transported from the oldest Hindu temple in the city, the

78  Yeoh Seng-Guan Mariyamman Temple, to the Batu Caves shrine situated some 12 kilometres away, a journey that usually takes about eight hours to accomplish. At the Batu Caves shrine, a veritable tirtha (‘crossing point’), Hindu pilgrims perform their prayers, ask for boons and fulfil their vows. A large proportion come from neighbouring rural plantations, small towns and even from distant places throughout the country. To save on hotel costs, many choose to use the vast temple grounds, underside of flyovers and elevated highways, their vehicles and whatever available nearby spaces to camp for a night or two during the festivities. There is a vibrant carnival atmosphere with hundreds of temporary stalls offering an array of food, clothing, kitchen ware, devotional books, videos and music, Hindu ritual paraphernalia as well as entertainment. The ritual feature that has attracted most attention with scholars is the pilgrim entering into a trance—usually possessed by lower ranking and nonAgamic deities—before inserting into their tongues and bodies an array of small skewers (vel) and hooks—what Fred Clothey calls ‘sacred wounding’ (2006: 176)—and carrying an assortment of ‘ritual burdens’ (kavadi) of different sizes usually decorated with peacock feathers. The pilgrims carry these kavadis from the edge of a river situated nearly two kilometres from the Batu Caves shrine, and up the 272 steps before entering into the huge cavern where the inner shrine is situated to fulfil their vows. In recent years, many of these kavadis have grown progressively larger and more decoratively elaborate. If the pilgrim performs his vows at night, these kavadis inevitably have flashing colourful lights installed. From at least the 1930s, the ‘orgiastic’ and ‘exhibitionist’ expressions of Hindu religiosity during Thaipusam have been a perennial target of Hindu reformers like the Tamil Reform Movement. Pleas not to make Thaipusam ‘a carnival’, ‘a comic spectacle’ and a ‘mockery of Hinduism’ are still made, but they do not appear to have any major or widespread effect on the pilgrims. How have scholars interpreted the growing popular appeal of Thaipusam and the various ecstatic trances witnessed during this event? For its brevity and clarity, I cite Fred Clothey at length: For Malaysian Tamils the festival serves many purposes and can be interpreted at various levels. It is a means for expressing and affirming identity as Indian Malaysians, as Tamils, and as members of sub-ethnic communities. It becomes a way of expressing political power within the Indian community and especially to the Malaysian Indian Congress and through that party to the government. It embodies the fractures and discrepancies between some lower-class Tamils rooted in the plantation ethos who are frequent participants in extreme penitential activities and middle- to upper-class Indians whose vision of Hindu identity is quite different. It becomes the occasion for demonstrating individual worth as in a rite of passage, wherein one proves one’s merit to oneself and one’s social network. Not least of all, the festival provides an occasion

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  79 for expressing gratitude and paying off debts to the deity, and for seeking a change in life’s station. (2006: 176) Except for the relevance of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC)—much discredited since the Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Force) street demonstrations of 2007 which highlighted MIC’s political impotence in addressing economic marginalization, racist police mistreatment and a spate of working class temple demolitions (e.g. Yeoh, 2009b; Willford, 2014: 236ff; Belle, 2015)—this general observation continues to be valid. From the preceding, it is evident that Thaipusam as celebrated in the two major urban centres of Kuala Lumpur and Penang has been well researched from different theoretical perspectives over the years. What needs more ethnographic and scholarly attention are the mythologies and ritual practices at pilgrimage shrines dedicated to other Hindu deities in different localities in Malaysia. For instance, although comparatively much smaller in numbers, there have been local re-enactments in Malaysia of the arduous Sabarimalai pilgrimage in the mountainous region of Kerala, South India. While conducting fieldwork in a Roman Catholic pilgrimage shrine in Penang (more later) during the late 1990s, I had chanced upon a retinue of male pilgrims who said they had walked most of the 110 kilometres from the northern state of Kedah to Penang Island. Prior to the journey, they had started a vegetarian and abstinence fast ranging between 45 and 60 days. On their heads, they carried the trademark item of the Sabarimalai pilgrimage, the iru muti (‘double crown’)—two-pouched cloth bag. While the front pouch contained coconuts, ghee, camphor, and other offertory items for the celibate deity, Lord Aiyappan, the other pouch contained the pilgrim’s provisions for the journey. The pilgrims’ destination was a small cave shrine situated above the Waterfall Temple, which a few weeks later became the site of the more populous Thaipusam festival. Today, it appears that the Malaysian enactment of the Sabarimalai pilgrimage has gained more ground throughout the country.3 This phenomenon, as well as the pilgrimage spatial and bodily practices of other Hindu communities found in Malaysia such as the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (‘Hare Krishna’), Sathya Sai Baba and transgender hijras awaits ethnographic study. One key research question to track, in the vein of Vineeta Sinha’s (2005) intriguing study of the radical transformation of a transplanted guardian deity (Muneeswaran) from Tamil Nadu to Singapore, would be the innovations of pilgrims many generations removed from their ‘homeland’ and in a substantially different social and political context. In comparison to Thaipusam, anthropological studies on the Chinese popular religious festival of Nine Emperor Gods in Malaysia are sparse. There are only two and both are dated in terms of fieldwork data. Cheu Hock Tong’s doctoral fieldwork research was conducted in the mid-1970s and was subsequently published in 1988. He examined spirit mediumship, trance and the ritual structure of the festival as celebrated in the Nantian

80  Yeoh Seng-Guan temple situated in Ampang New Village, once considered rural but now swallowed up in the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan sprawl. By comparison, Jean DeBernardi’s monograph on the Chinese community in Penang (2004) contains a chapter on the Nine Emperor Gods as a case study illustrating her overall project of tracing the revitalization of Chinese popular religious culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Her fieldwork of this period was later followed up by archival research on past celebrations of Chinese festivals in Penang in order to track their changes. In brief, the Nine Emperor Gods is celebrated in the ninth month of the Chinese lunar-solar calendar with the climax of the festival on the ninth day (the auspicious double nine). Although of ancient genealogy and linked to a Daoist mythological reading of the Big Dipper constellation, some elements of its complex mythology and ritual practices have nevertheless undergone changes in Malaysia. For instance, DeBernardi suggests that based on an analysis of the pantheon of deities found at the important Temple of Clear View on Paya Terubong Hill (where devotees trek to during the festival period), ‘the monks who established worship of the Nine Emperor Gods in Penang practiced a syncretic religion that honoured Buddhism while emphasizing veneration of the Daoist gods of the north that govern human fate’ (2004: 188).4 Similarly, based on the local folktales surrounding the identity of the Nine Emperor Gods (alternatively, the Nine Divine Brothers), Cheu argues that while its underlying mythological structure remains the same, some ‘local’ elements like the Malay cults of the dead and Hindu spirit cults have been incorporated (1988: 21). During the festivities in Penang, spirit mediums perform extraordinary feats of physical endurance without the hint of pain after being possessed by these deities—‘they process with long spears through their cheeks, sit on dragon thrones made of spikes and swords, wash their hands in boiling oil, climb sword ladders, play with red-hot iron balls, and beat their backs with balls of spikes’ (DeBernardi, 2004: 189). As these exhibitions are rare in China, DeBernardi suggests that local spirit mediums have ‘borrowed and adapted the astounding selfmortifying practices that they observed at southern Indian Hindu festivals like Thaipusam, which they would have had the opportunity to observe in multiethnic settlements like Penang’ (DeBernardi, 2004: 189). But unlike the possessed devotees in Thaipusam, the key objective of these ‘fearsome displays is to impress demons and hungry ghosts with the invincible power of the mediums deriving from their possession by the gods, so that whenever they have occasion to attack them, they will have to flee in terror before their assault’ (Cheu, 1988: 37). By doing so, there is ‘ritual renewal and rebirth for the whole of Ampang community, and, indeed, the whole nation and cosmos’ (Cheu, 1988: 166). Similarly, for the Penang Chinese: They come together with their potent saviour deities to expel impurity, chaos, and danger from their community and to restore inner and outer order . . . at the same time, these events mobilise the Chinese

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  81 community to become aware of itself and its boundaries. These boundaries are defined by ritual purity, moral excellence, and a ritual practice that defines centrality and power in the tropes of Chinese tradition, imagined from the perspective of the diasporic periphery. (DeBernardi, 2004: 215) In terms of the locations of these dramaturgic actions, there are marked differences of scale between the two localities. Whereas in Ampang New Village the arena is largely confined to the vicinity of the temple grounds, in the case of Penang the festival is on an ‘enormous scale’ as the city streets become the stage for spiritual battle. This is logistically possible because of the large concentration of Chinese temples in the city centre and the Chinese being in the majority. Both studies focus on the foundational mythology of the Nine Emperor Gods, the dramatic actions of the spirit mediums and the logic of the rituals enacted. They give less ethnographic space and analytical attention to the narratives of devotees as well as the many traders and businesses that contribute to these festivals. For enlightened devotees, various ritual demands and taboos need to be observed if the deities are not to be offended. In particular, pilgrim-devotees—those who reside temporarily in segregated dormitories in the Nantian Temple in Ampang for instance—are required to follow a vegetarian diet during the festival. Prohibitions also exist for women who are deemed to be ‘unclean’—when they are menstruating or are still within the 100-day period of confinement after childbirth. Ritually, ‘impure blood’ is considered dangerous and will attract and provoke ‘impure spirits’ like ghosts and demons (DeBernardi, 2004: 194f.). As with Hindu pilgrimages in Malaysia, there are gaps in the literature. Most salient are the perspectives of devotees-pilgrims participating in this and other Chinese popular religious festivities at an array of temples and shrines throughout Malaysia in order to draw out the interplay between social identity, place and mythology. On a related, albeit contrarian note, various reformist Buddhist groups of both Theravada and Mahayana traditions have been sceptical of Chinese popular religious festivals such as the Nine Emperor Gods not only because of their spectacular displays but also their syncretic mythologies. Their critique and re-orientation is typically done through Dharma talks emphasizing familiarity with Buddhist scriptures, practicing Buddhist charity and ethics daily, and on uttering chants and meditation as transformational spiritual exercises. Others, like the Nalanda Buddhist Society, have gone one step further.5 This entity has been organizing ‘study tours’ for its members to the Bujang Valley in northern Malaysia where the remains of 2,000-year-old Buddhist stupas exist. Trips even further afield to the well-known Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India like Sarnath, Lumbini and Bodh Gaya—the latter two of which are UNESCO World Heritage sites—have been conducted. Although not drawing in sizeable numbers of Malaysian Buddhist travellers at the moment, this trend

82  Yeoh Seng-Guan requires more ethnographic attention to compare with studies of Buddhist pilgrimage in countries like Thailand and Burma.

Material Religion and Religious Pluralism at a Roman Catholic Feast In this section, I re-visit my own research conducted in the late 1990s on a major Roman Catholic pilgrimage shrine in northern Malaysia (Yeoh, 2006, 2009a, 2012) as a point of comparison with the foregoing themes already highlighted. Every year, in the third week of July, the Chinese ‘market junction’ town of Bukit Mertajam swells with pilgrims and visitors participating in the Roman Catholic patronal feast of St Anne that unfolds at the shrine by the same name for nine days. Precise figures are, of course, difficult to ascertain but the newspaper articles from the early 1980s to the 1990s that I consulted put estimates ranging from 50,000 to 350,000, a big contrast to 1954 when a local Catholic magazine reports ‘more than a thousand pilgrims.’ Of all the Roman Catholic feast days celebrated throughout the country, it is common knowledge that this particular event at Bukit Mertajam attracts the most crowds, a significant proportion of whom are not Roman Catholics or even Christians. For this diverse ecumenical crowd, the drawing power of the shrine is because of widely circulated stories of answered prayers and to fulfil vows made earlier, some even by the pilgrim’s forebears a generation or two before. Before the neo-Gothic church was built in 1888, a small chapel outpost had served as a rallying place for regular worship for about 30 to 40 years. It was erected by a French Catholic priest hailing from the Paris Foreign Missionary Society to serve a small congregation primarily consisting of Hakka-Chinese farmers and Tamil-Indian labourers, who had been drawn to the area through the availability of vacant land (for the former) and of work in the cash-crop plantations set up by French and British planters (for the latter). For reasons that I have not ascertained definitively, the chapel was built about a mile away from the congested town centre, on the slopes of a prominent hill from which the town has taken its name, ‘the hill of mertajam trees’. Together with the pilgrim narratives of answered prayers noted earlier, its relative seclusion and the sacred geography of the shrine have become integral to the perceived efficacy of prayers made at this particular place. For instance, some of the non-Roman Catholic Chinese pilgrims referred to the Chinese geomantic notion of feng-shui to explain the sacred power (ling) felt at the site and which they tap into, hopefully to gain auspicious luck. Other reasons revolve around more familial explanations. Many Chinese pilgrims I spoke to ‘mis-recognize’ St Anne as Guan Imm (Hokkien), the Buddhist bodhisattva Goddess of Mercy well known for her compassion to all sentient beings. Similarly, for Hindu pilgrims, it is the family

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  83 resemblance of the matriarchal saint with Amman, a mother goddess, which draws in their devotion. An elderly lay parishioner of the shrine told me that apart from Protestant Christians, even Muslims have been known to turn to St Anne for help. For the latter, because of the fear of being reported to the Islamic authorities, they have asked close friends to burn candles on their behalf and collect ‘St Anne’s water’ for their personal use (Yeoh, 2012). Roman Catholic pilgrims, too, have their own ways of explaining the saint’s accessibility in comparison to other saints. As St Anne is the maternal grandmother of Jesus, many reasoned that any prayers to her will be readily relayed to her filial grandson for consideration and probable action if she is so moved. These pilgrim narratives were not shared by some members of the Roman Catholic clergy and especially a lay Roman Catholic charismatic group with whom I spoke. Indeed, they assessed them as inappropriately ‘syncretistic’, misguidedly transactional in tone and lacking an understanding of the key theological emphasis of modern Roman Catholic teachings. Nevertheless, while they may have personal misgivings about this pluralistic state of affairs, their concerns are conveyed diplomatically through sermons, leafleting or individual counselling at the shrine grounds. By contrast, fundamentalist Protestant Christians have been more robust in their critique. Mobilized by what they see to be ‘idolatry’, some groups in the past have been known to organize prayer meetings and street demonstrations during the feast period as an expression of ‘spiritual warfare’ against these ‘false gods’ (Yeoh, 2009a). Because the shrine attracts not only Roman Catholics but pilgrims from other religions, what is evident is an array of visible bodily grammars of devotion. These different ritual habitus index how they would usually approach a divine entity in their own respective places of worship (Yeoh, 2006: 17–18). In some cases, these devotional bodily gestures are shared. For instance, only Hindus and Indian Roman Catholics choose to perform madipitchay (Tamil, ‘alms from the waist’) for an hour or two under the hot tropical sun—standing and asking for alms that will later be deposited at the donation box. Hindus and Roman Catholics are also known to deposit into the donation boxes votive plaques pressed into the likeness of human body parts or whole human figurines. According to pilgrims, these plaques either act as representations of their prayers or as testimonies to answered prayers for healing and for children. Despite their different religious provenance, pilgrims all share in procuring one much sought after item at the shrine—‘St Anne’s water’. Originating from underground water on sacred ground, the water is believed to have curative, purificatory and apotropaic qualities. Back home, pilgrims explained that it could be drunk, applied to afflicted body parts, added to their bath, and used to bless or cleanse homes and newly purchased items through sprinkling. Many pilgrims also collect it for their relatives and friends, who are unable to make the trip to the shrine for various reasons.

84  Yeoh Seng-Guan In the past, pilgrims themselves would have to laboriously draw ‘St Anne’s water’ from a well. Modern pump technology and a wall of taps have aided the collection of this seemingly banal substance. Another innovation started during my fieldwork was the sale of small plastic sculpted bottles in the likeness of St Anne and her daughter Mary containing the prized religious commodity—a practice long-established at the famous Lourdes shrine in France. From the foregoing discussion, it is evident that the Bukit Mertajam shrine is perceived by many to exude an aura that invites characteristic pilgrimage beliefs and practices found not only in Malaysia but also elsewhere in the world. While retaining both the historically and locally specific elements of a Roman Catholic patronal feast in Malaysia (e.g. Sarkissian, 1999, 2000), its wide multi-religious appeal in this case is over-determined by a convergence of factors—among others, a growing inter-generational stock of personal narratives of miracles and answered prayers, a family resemblance of cosmologies and cultural beliefs, an arresting landscape and, equally significant, a much improved transportation network for affordable long distance travel. As for the other religions discussed, there is much that we still do not know of the variegated pilgrimage narratives of Roman Catholics hailing from different ethnicities, social classes and localities in relation to established shrines as well as to controversial new ones. As elsewhere, apparitions of Mary in various places have been reported both in West and East Malaysia, generating a minor pilgrimage to these varied locations. On a different scale, for decades, Roman Catholics have been travelling to places like Jerusalem, the Vatican, Lourdes, and Medjugorje among others. In the past decade or so, competitively priced pilgrimage packages and increasing affluence have seen a significant rise in pilgrim numbers from Malaysia. Although not of the same register as the Muslim hajj, the ways in which their religious and ethnic identities are re-framed and reshaped by this mix of local and international encounters are fertile areas of enquiry.

Conclusion Given the vitality and pluralism of the religious universe in West Malaysia, my review has focused on discussing key anthropological literature on a de-limited spectrum of pilgrimage festivals, loosely understood. Because of the limitations of space, however, I have neglected other important religious traditions found in the country—among others, those of indigenous peoples and on Sikhism in West Malaysia. In the foregoing, I have highlighted that as a consequence of the strategic crossroad location of the peninsular, many centuries of exchange through trade and imperial conquest compounded with local contexts have contributed to fomenting an intangible array of shared, if not hybrid, practices at the everyday level. In recent decades, however, under substantially changed

Religious Pluralism and Pilgrimage Studies in West Malaysia  85 material and geopolitical conditions, this long trajectory has been undergoing re-signification. In Malaysia, these ongoing transformations are not only codified in formalized state-religion and inter-religious relations but also felt in the intimate spaces of everyday religion, including pilgrimage beliefs and practices. As noted in the case studies showcased, various scholars have shown the porosity of these realms, and the mutability of rituals and sacred spaces in expressing ethnic solidarity and re-drawing boundaries. To this must be considered the influence of improved travel infrastructure and communication in contributing to the rising popularity of religious tourism as opposed to more traditional space-bound notions of pilgrimage in Malaysia. At the moment, there is a dearth of a variety of pilgrimage studies per se in Malaysia. Most of the current anthropological studies cited are more focused on socially deciphering ritual events and are geographically limited to few urban centres. While they do help us to appreciate the broad contours of what I would call a public culture of the pilgrimage universe in Malaysia, there is still room to plumb the varied practices of an array of pilgrims in relation to these sites and events. Finally, as elsewhere, not to be left out are also studies on new kinds of ‘pilgrimages’ that are at first sight non-religious or secular in form. In this genre, the growth of ‘heritage tourism’ or ‘heritage pilgrimage’ as a particular kind of journeying that appreciates the pluralistic cultural heritage of the country would be a case in point.

Notes 1 The 2010 national census reported the following breakdown: 61.3 per cent Muslims; 19.8 per cent Buddhists; 9.2 per cent Christians; 6.3 per cent Hindus; 1.3 per cent Confucianist, Daoist and other Chinese folk religion; others 0.4 per cent; none 0.8 per cent; and 1 per cent unspecified. In recent decades, the Muslim population has increased significantly vis-à-vis other religions because of the faster demographic growth of the ethnic ‘Malays,’ who are also defined by Article 60 of the Federal Constitution, among other identity markers, as professing Islam. 2 Interview with KAG travel agency on 21 September, 2015. 3 Conversation with Sudheesh S. Bhasi, Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity on 1 October, 2015. 4 For a comparison between how the festival is celebrated in Penang and in the sacred Wudang mountain in China, see DeBernardi, 2008. 5 For details on the activities of this group, see www.nalanda.org.my. I thank Ms Sandra Ng, a PhD candidate at Monash University Malaysia for sharing with me some aspects of her current research on Buddhist pilgrims in Malaysia and Singapore.

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86  Yeoh Seng-Guan Andaya, B. and Andaya, L. (2001/1982) A History of Malaysia, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Ang, S., Choon, L.M. and Foong, L.S. (eds) (2008) Religious liberty after 50 years of independence, Petaling Jaya: NECF Malaysia Religious Liberty Commission. Babb, L. (1976) ‘Thaipusam in Singapore: Religious individualism in a hierarchical culture’, Sociology Working Paper No. 49, Department of Sociology, University of Singapore. Belle, C. (2004) ‘Thaipusam in Malaysia: A Hindu-Festival misunderstood’, PhD dissertation, Deakin University. ———. (2015) Tragic orphans: Indians in Malaysia, Singapore: ISEAS. Bianchi, R. (2004) Guests of God: Pilgrimage and politics in the Islamic world, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cheu, H.-T. (1982) ’The Datuk Kong spirit cult movement in Penang: Being and belonging in multi-ethnic Malaysia’, Journal of the Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 381–404. ———. (1988) The Nine Emperor Gods: A study of Chinese spirit-medium cults, Singapore: Times Books International. ———. (1998) ’The sinicisation of Malay keramats in Malaysia’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 71, Part 2, pp. 29–61. Clothey, F. (2006) ’Trance and “sacred wounding”: Interpretations of Tai Pucam at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’ in Clothey, F. (ed.) Ritualizing on the boundaries: Continuity and innovation in the Tamil diaspora, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Coedes, G. (1968) The Indianised states of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: East-West Center. Collins, M. (1997) Pierced by Murugan’s lance: Ritual, power and moral redemption among Malaysian Hindus, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. DeBernardi, J. (2004) Rites of belonging: Memory, modernity, and identity in a Malaysian Chinese community, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DeBernardi, J. (2006) The way that lives in the heart: Chinese popular religion and spirit mediums in Penang, Malaysia, Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. (2008) ‘Commodifying blessings: Celebrating the double-yang festival in ‘Penang, Malaysian and Wudang mountain, China’ in Kitiarsa, P. (ed.) Religious commodifications in Asia: Marketing gods, London and New York: Routledge. Fischer, J. (2008) Proper Islamic consumption: Shopping among the Malays in modern Malaysia, Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Frisk, S. (2009) Submitting to God: Women and Islam in urban Malaysia, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Goh, B.L. (2005) ‘Malay-Muslim spirits and Malaysian capitalist modernity: A study of keramat propitiation among property developers in Penang’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 307–321. Hamayotsu, K. (2003) ‘Politics of Syariah reform: The making of the state religiolegal apparatus’ in Hooker, V. and Othman, N. (eds) Malaysia: Islam, society and politics, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Hoffstaedter, G. (2011) Modern Muslim identities: Negotiating religion and ethnicity in Malaysia, Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Khoo, S.N. (2014) The Chulia in Penang: Patronage and place-making around the Kapitan Kling Mosque, 1786–1957, Penang: Areca Press. Lee, R. (1989) ‘Thaipusam in Malaysia: Ecstasy and identity in a Tamil Hindu festival’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.), vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 317–337.

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88  Yeoh Seng-Guan Winstedt, R. (1924) ’Karamat: Sacred places and persons in Malaya’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 2, part 3, June, pp. 264–279. ———. (1961/1925) The Malay magician: Being Shaman, Saiva and Sufi, London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Yeoh, S.-G. (2006) ‘Religious pluralism, gender and kinship in a pilgrimage shrine: The Feast of St Anne, Malaysia’, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Arts and Belief, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 4–37. ———. (2009a) ‘For/against hybridity: Religious entrepreneurships in a Roman Catholic pilgrimage shrine in Malaysia’, Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 7–28. ———. (2009b) ‘The streets of Kuala Lumpur: Cityscape, “race” and civil disobedience’ in Butcher, M. and Velayutham, S. (eds) Dissent and cultural resistance in Asia’s cities, London and New York: Routledge. ———. (2011) ‘In defence of the secular? Islamisation, Christians and (new) politics in urbane Malaysia’, Asian Studies Review, vol. 35, pp. 83–103. ———. (2012) ‘Holy water and material religion in a pilgrimage shrine in Malaysia’ in Bautista, J. (ed.) The spirit of things: Materiality in an age of religious diversity in Southeast Asia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program. ———. (2014) ‘Actually existing religious pluralism in Kuala Lumpur’ in Formichi, C. (ed.) Religious pluralism, state and society in Asia, London and New York: Routledge.

6 Studying Religious Mobility Pilgrimage, Shrine Visits and Religious Tourism from the Maghreb to the Middle East Katia Boissevain Religious pilgrimage and holy visits to sanctuaries are a widespread phenomenon in the Maghreb and Middle East. Hajj (pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca), on the one hand, and ziyara (visits to shrines), on the other, are seen by most people, devout or not, as distinct social practices and not to be compared or thought in relation to one another. Nevertheless, anthropologists and historians of the Muslim world have shown how the two share a common symbolic history and similar practices. The numerous local pilgrimages are always emically considered secondary to the pilgrimage to Mecca but despite the clear distinction in local discourse, they may under certain conditions be presented as pilgrimages of substitution. Consequently, the notion of pilgrimage in the Muslim world, whether Arab or not, has long been studied through the model of and in relation with hajj. While people prepare throughout the year for hajj, from Morocco to Iran and further east, in urban or rural settings, holy men and women are visited and worshipped at any time for the intercession they provide. Hence, although hajj and ziyara can be studied for themselves, they should not be totally separated from one another. Every year millions of Muslim pilgrims and/or visitors ‘hit the road’ and this mass movement has been the focus of a thriving scholarly field ever since the early twentieth century. In this chapter I will begin by considering how scholars have underlined the complex articulations and interplay between hajj and ziyara. I will then retrace the ways in which the social phenomenon of pilgrimage and local shrine visit has been studied in this region of the world according to different scholarly traditions. Despite the geographical and historical divide between the eastern and western area of the region, called in pre-independence terminology North Africa and the Near and Middle East, a common denominator is that the founding works of colonial ethnographers mainly explored rural settings and when studying religion, they did so from the angle of religious rituals. By the 1970, the focus changed from religious ‘survivals’ (thought to be found in the countryside) to that of ‘popular Islam’, which took urban settings into consideration. Anthropologists of religion began to engage with sociological considerations and ‘popular Islam’ came to mean the religion of poor, illiterate people.

90  Katia Boissevain After a post-independence decline during the 1960s and 1970s, historians and anthropologists have taken a renewed interest in sacred sites and sainthood across the Maghreb and Middle East. They have re-examined colonial historiography and unlike, for example, the French author, Émile Demerghem, they no longer envisage the topic as solely a subject relevant to religious studies or as folklore but also as a field of inquiry that is part of a wider social and political picture. This approach was advanced in the important study by Kerrou (1998), who examines the basis of the saint’s authority, and Mayeur-Jaouen (2004a), whose case study of Sayyid al Badawî of Tanta (Egypt) is set within centuries of Egyptian ordinary religion. Finally, I will show how scholars have explored the development of religious tourism and cultural heritage and its relationship with such important processes as globalization, the promotion of regional Islam and more generally, local politics.

Hajj and ziyara: A Complex Interplay In an important book, Chiffoleau and Madoeuf (2005) insist on the various types of pilgrimage in the Middle East (hajj, ziyara, mouled, mawasim, Muslim, but also Jewish and Christian) and the links between them, showing them in all their diversity in their relation to the public sphere, be it political or economic. The hajj or Great Pilgrimage is the last of the five pillars of Islam.1 It takes place during the twelfth month of the Muslim year—Dhûlhijja (pilgrimage month)—and in recent years it involves around three million pilgrims in Mecca. The holy city is also the place of the small pilgrimage or umrah, which can be accomplished at any time of the year. The hajj is completed over five days and all participants, men and women, old and young, perform the same rites as equals. For example, the Great Mosque of El Haram at Mecca is the only place in the Muslim world where men and women pray side by side. Besides this major pilgrimage, numerous rural and urban shrines, called zawiya-s, welcome pilgrims and visitors on a weekly basis, for rituals called ziyara-s (visits), or on special dates, such as the birth of a particular holy man or (less frequently) woman. These celebrations are called moussem in the Maghreb or mawasim in the Machreq, in Egypt, (Reysoo, 1991; Mayeur-Jaouen, 2004b, 2005) and are often (but not systematically) linked in some way to a Sufi tariqa (brotherhood), and people from all walks of life and social background would potentially pay a visit. Zawiya-s may contain the tomb (qbar) of a holy person, where the body is present, or most often, a catafalque (thabût), an empty wooden box, covered by colourful material and religious objects such as the Koran, candles, oil and water from the well, where the holy person’s blessing (baraka) is intense. Their architecture varies from elaborate buildings with a great number of rooms to welcome visitors who wish to spend a few nights near the saint, a prayer room, patios, kitchen and slaughtering courtyard (madhbah), sometimes kuttâb (schools

Studying Religious Mobility 91 for religious education) or a single little square room with the thabût in the middle. All of these buildings are crowned by a dome or qubba, which gives a distinctive look to Muslim shrines in the region. These mawasim and mawlid-s have been compared with medieval feasts and we have vibrant descriptions of these occasions in Egypt (MacPherson, 1941; Lane, 1963; Mayeur-Jaouen, 2004b; Madoeuf, 1997; Chih, 2000). During this special time, visits to the saint’s tomb are continuous and disciples, pressed by the crowd, have to make their way to the maqsûra, the fence which most often protects the catafalque of the saint. Once there, the visitor recites the fatiha (opening verse of the Koran) and while kissing the fence or rubbing his hands or clothes for baraka, makes a petition to the saint (health, fertility, good fortune . . . ). While the wish is formulated, there is a promise of a gift in return. According to the space and the architecture, the disciples will walk anti-clockwise (circumambulation) round the tomb. The same ritual is accomplished around the Ka’ba in Mecca during the hajj and as Mayeur-Jaouen writes (2004b: 372): Silently, implicitly, ziyara itself is linked to hajj: today, we hang ex-votos on the shrine’s walls, photos of the Ka’ba or the Prophet’s tomb. The decoration we find in so many Muslim interiors is inoffensive but it definitely evokes the hajj at the heart of the ziyara. The ritual parallels between hajj and ziyara can be found elsewhere: circumambulation, incubation, touching the tomb (or the black stone in Mecca) and drinking the water from the sacred well. Many places in the Muslim world clearly work as substitute destinations to Mecca. The volume of articles collected by Chambert-Loir (1995) on saint worship mentions a few of them from the Maghreb to Asia, such as the mosque at Kairouan in Tunisia which, if visited seven times, equates to a full hajj. Besides the parallels between hajj and ziyara, it is also interesting to note the links between them: for example, the gesture of bringing back a gift from hajj for a local saint seems to be increasing. This ritual symbolically brings the two places in relation through gifts which can be made of carpets, chandeliers, religious paintings to be hung on the wall or other goods which fall in the ‘household’ category of objects. We must add to these rituals that of bringing some religious paraphernalia back home to friends and families (water, rosaries, incense, small trinkets). Nevertheless, the fact that ziyarat and hajj practices are intertwined should not hide the fact that visits to local shrines are often disapproved of on religious grounds. There is an inherent tension with regard to the practice of visiting shrines because it contradicts the idea of the unity of God and the impossibility to associating anyone or anything with Allah. Such practices are called shirk (associationism) and bida’ (innovation). Similarly, deciding that some places are holy and worth a devotional visit because a holy person is buried there or because miracles have happened there due to

92  Katia Boissevain a spring, grotto, tree or well, goes against the belief that the surface of the earth uniformly reflects Allah’s power and benediction.

A Short History of Spiritual Mediation in the Muslim World The origin of such tensions is intrinsic to the ambivalence concerning the relationship between God and human beings in monotheist religions, unmediated and direct or eased along by the intercession of intermediaries (Brown, 1984), in this context, walîs (male) or waliya-s (female) close to God. The notion of sainthood is absent from the original teachings of Islam, which only recognizes God as ‘holy’ (quddûs) (Andézian, 2001)—a term referring to separation, transcendence and absolute purity. Goldziher (1971) underlines that the belief in the unity and absolute power of God, as well as that of the total separation between the human and divine world, does not leave room for intermediaries between Allah and human beings. In the beginning, even the Prophet Muhammad was seen as only a messenger, who did not have access to divine mysteries (Koran: XVII, 93 and XVIII, 110). On the other hand, the Koran does mention examples of pious men and women, who will benefit from a special place in paradise, but it specifies that this grace cannot be transmitted to humans. In practice, Muslim society was quick to invent particular figures of men and women, who, sanctified while alive, are consulted as intermediaries between human beings and God and special rituals were developed such as visits, prayers, votive gifts and sacrifices. Their intercession was expressed through miracles during their lifetime and cults around them emerged after their deaths. Popular pressure imposed the idea of sainthood or holiness at a doctrinal level during the ninth century, when a change in the way the Prophet was represented occurred. Muhammad went from being seen as solely human to half human/half divine. This new representation of the Prophet coexisted with the belief in the unity of Allah and led to the veneration of his tomb and those of his family (Ahl al Bayt) and his Companions. As Chodkiewicz (1995) suggests, the cult of saints and the visits to their tombs can be seen as extensions of this devotion. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the celebration of the Prophet’s birth (mawlid-al-nâbi) was institutionalized and founders of Sufi turûq (ways, paths, brotherhoods) began to benefit from the same type of veneration. A collection of articles edited by Popovic and Veinstein (1995) retraces the different histories and particularities of the various important paths and saints in the Muslim world, some of which have given rise to ongoing pilgrimages. The doctrinal elaboration of the notion of sainthood (walâya) is closely linked to that of the place of the Prophet, therefore. Simultaneously close to human beings and Allah, the walî becomes an intermediary whose intervention calls on special rituals, such as shrine visits. This definition of sainthood and the ritual practices, which frame it, were continually discussed and contested. As early as the fourteenth century, Ibn Taymiyya criticized

Studying Religious Mobility 93 the criteria by which saints and their miracles (karamat) were recognized (even though he admitted the reality of men ‘close to God’, see Chodkiewicz, 1995) and refuted the power of mediation of saints and prophets, which he called ‘associationism’ (shirk). By the eighteenth century with the Wahhabi movement, the discussion is amplified and gives way during the twentieth century to the salafiyya, a political, religious and cultural movement. Sufism, especially in its religious brotherhood variant, is the favourite target of this movement in their fight for a ‘return to the original Islam of the pious founders’. The confluence of the Salaf movement and the modernization of political and social structures in Muslim countries have severely impaired the practice of shrine visit, even though people still visit them on certain occasions. In Tunisia the historian Latifa Lakhdar (1998) explains that deep historical relations have been maintained between political power, ‘ulema (sing. ‘âlim), specialists in religious law and scriptures, and saints from medieval Ifriqiya until the early twentieth century. Green (1978) has also shown how many families could have ‘ulema among its members, as well as prominent cheikh-s of Sufi brotherhoods, involved with the mystical side of religious practice. This social interweaving explains why the ruler or Bey of Tunis continued up to the country’s independence in 1957 to visit sacred shrines, practice ziyara, and value the protection of holy figures. Furthermore, in the 1920s the Bey, advised by the ‘ulema, refuted Wahhabi ideology, especially in its anti-sainthood guise. Up to the early twentieth century he would visit all the capital’s important saints on various religious occasions, such as the Aïd el Saghir, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. These religious journeys were at once ways to put himself under their protection while reactivating, through his worship, the saints’ power over the territory of Tunisia, as if a protective mesh was thrown across the land. Studies of the Hajj as Template or Mould Many nineteenth-century scholars became fascinated by Mecca and its ‘exclusive’ dimension as a city solely reserved for Muslims. This Orientalist fascination led to incognito’ travellers such as Burckhardt (1822), Sir Richard Burton (1855) or Snouck Hurgronje (1885), who gave detailed accounts of the rituals of the Great Pilgrimage and daily life in Mecca. Since then, description or analysis of hajj and umrah at Mecca has taken two forms. First, Muslim anthropologists have analyzed the complete experience, coming from abroad and going through the complete ritual process. Hammoudi (2005) insisted on the personal and emotional experience intertwined with the globalized aspect of the event, while Saghi (2010) embarks on a sociological journey which takes the reader to Mecca while engaging with issues of religious anthropology and the anthropology of tourism. He argues that hajj and umrah now take on a different meaning compared with twenty years ago. What was once the pilgrimage of a life-time—which it still is for

94  Katia Boissevain the older generation—is now sometimes a regular occurrence, motivated by a combination of religious fervour, desire for holiday break, and socially valorized activity. This is especially the case among the younger, wealthier generation, from Europe or the Muslim world’s bourgeoisie. Non-Muslim scholars have rejected adopting the undercover position of their predecessors and concentrate on the travelling process rather than the shrine itself, following Eickelman and Piscatori (1990) in their argument that the journey is part of the ritual. Sylvia Chiffoleau, for example, is a historian who was first interested in the medical supervision of the transnational event, and later worked on the international politics of pilgrim travel (Chiffoleau, 2015), arguing that from the nineteenth century European colonial states were worried by the possible contamination of disease and Muslim ideas (from pan-Arabism to Muslim Reformism). Others have analyzed the state and family politics at work in the organization of the event (Boissevain, 2015), or study the hajj in terms of the relationship between the significance of pilgrimage for the religious lives of individuals and the wider contexts in which they are embedded (Mols and Luitgart, 2015). Besides the pilgrimage to Mecca, important regular gatherings take place throughout the Muslim world and celebrate an intimate relationship with the Prophet, members of his family (Ahl el Bayt), or a saint. As we have seen, they are called mawlid-s (mouled-s in the Maghreb) and are yearly occasions. Fred de Jong (1976, 1999) dates this practice back to the Fatimid period when it was an aristocratic phenomenon but became more popular when the Mamelouks instituted the celebration and the term mawlid was extended to saints’ birthday celebrations. Eric Geoffroy (1995) explains that the Sufis made an important contribution to the institutionalization of this ceremony as cheikh-s would bring along their numerous disciples.

From Religious Ritual Survivals to the Social Dimension of Pilgrimage During the late nineteenth century, French colonial administrators and European scholars documented religious organization and rituals in the Maghreb. Around the turn of the twentieth century major studies were written on the cult of saints, which included descriptions of the religious rituals, the organization of the brotherhoods and their relation to the territories and the central state. One example of these studies is Goldziher’s article entitled ‘Le culte des saints chez les musulmans’ (1880). Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen states how fundamental his work has been, since up to the 1970s it shaped most of the research on pilgrimage to holy men and women in the Muslim world. His main idea was that of a continuity between the religion of the pagan Gods and the cult of saints, which were illegitimate additions to the pure and original Islamic religion. Following in his footsteps, the central concern for anthropologists at this time was mainly to evaluate the type of political authority which could be

Studying Religious Mobility 95 mobilized through the disciples. The ‘nature’ of the rituals was thought to be linked to the question of survivances (survivals) and what items could be detected in local customs from a distant Berber or Roman past. This concern gave way to very detailed ethnographies on such topics as ‘magic and religion’, ‘weddings’ and ‘traditions’ (Rinn, 1884; Depont and Coppolani, 1897; Mouliéras, 1899; Doutté, 1900). These studies, conducted mainly in Morocco and Algeria, form the basis of later research but at the time they crystallized the idea of religious brotherhoods as potential resistance groups (against the Ottoman invaders and then the French). French Orientalists publicized the cult of saint under the name ‘maraboutism’, from the Arabic word murâbit. (Chabbi proposes that murâbit refers to its root rbt, which means ‘tied to’, ‘attached’, understanding walîs are ‘tied’ to Allah). Their main hypothesis was that these rituals should be understood as survivals of a pre-Islamic world, where wells, springs and grottos were worshipped behind the façade of Islam. An important analyst of the mid-twentieth century Maghreb is Emile Dermenghem, who was sent to Algiers in 1942 for the development of the Islamic collection of the General Governor’s library. This job enabled him to conduct fieldwork on local folklore over a number of years (1954). By the 1960s both French and Anglophone anthropologists in the Maghreb had shifted focus from Algeria to Morocco (Geertz, 1968; Gellner, 1969; Jamous, 1981) and became interested in the local political dimension of religious authority. The issue was no longer the position of religious brotherhoods in relation with French colonial authorities, but rather the local rationalities of political action. Other scholars began to observe religion and visits to holy men in urban settings (Crapanzano, 1973), analyzing ecstatic religious brotherhoods and possession cult rituals, such as the Hamadshas in Fès. This change in field occasioned a change in questioning, too, since moving around urban localities led them to consider such issues as development, poverty, illiteracy in a literate context (the city) and eventually the question of gender. From the 1970s most studies saw visits to saint’s tombs as the main expression of women’s religiosity. Provensal (1975), drawing on her research in Algeria, proposes that women play a more important role than men in the reproduction of these religious phenomena. Most of the time, these rituals appear to be autonomous from the men’s observances and always on the margins (Mernissi, 1977; Dwyer, 1979), the main argument being that visits to saints are rituals, which enable forms of resistance against a patriarchal society. In associating ziyara-s with women’s religiosity, the cult of saints is here clearly relegated to the realm of popular religion, is always acquainted with illiteracy and poverty and is far removed from the scriptural world of men.2 From the 1970s through to the 1990s debates concerning the different levels of Islam, framed within the Great/Little tradition model, were fueled by researchers’ fieldwork experience and attempts to bring together male and female worlds. Nancy and Richard Tapper (1987), for example, were

96  Katia Boissevain able to access and compare different gendered realms of Turkish society and thus re-evaluate the idea that local pilgrimages were specific realms of women’s devotion. Reysoo (1991), in her work on Moroccan moussem, also noted how men and women’s rituals during this type of pilgrimage interact and related to each other. As Kerrou and Valensi have reminded us (Kerrou, 1998) ziyara-s have been considered a lesser form of religious practice and were associated with rural life, women adepts and popular classes. This approach was similar to the way Christianity was studied before Peter Brown (1984) demonstrated that this way of dividing the world was an elitist and static representation of Christian beliefs. Similarly, the perception of a radical opposition between two forms of Islam—that of the ‘ulema on one side and of mystical Islam on the other—is incorrect. First, among great Muslim thinkers, many were at once men of law and mystics (Ghazâli for example) and the presumed ‘illegality’ of certain ritual practices has been legalized by religious men in power during various periods (Andézian, 2001: 19). Even famous reformists, such as the Egyptian Mohamed ‘Abduh, have expressed their attachment to Sufism. Mystical rituals, as well as possession cults which take place in many shrines, can be analyzed through the question of territorial belonging and the debate about the relationship between religion and the nation during the 1960s, which was a time of national construction, after the struggles for independence. It is common for a local saint to be associated with a variety of territories, places and intellectual spheres. Often, a holy person belongs at once to both the town and the countryside, appears to be learned—through religious education acquired from a religious master—and mystical through direct initiation and contact with the divine. Often, the rituals performed in zawiya-s refer at the same time or alternately to the great scriptural tradition (through the performance of rites celebrating religious brotherhoods or tariqa-s) and/or to possession cult rituals, which refer to another dimension of religious tradition, that of jnûn and spirits. It is this complexity and mixture of genres, which is mainly criticized by contemporary reformist Muslims.

Pilgrimage, Holy Visits and the Wider Issues Gradually, contemporary scholars are studying pilgrimage and holy visits to shrines from a broader perspective. While ritual remains an important issue, other aspects of visits to shrines are being considered, such as the journey to get there, the regional context in which the journey takes place, urban development and the political issues raised by these pilgrimage routes. Significant examples of this shift of preoccupation can be found in the volume edited by Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Travellers (1990), or Moussaoui’s work on the south of Algeria, where the author includes in his analysis the question of space, mobility and sacrality. During the same period two important

Studying Religious Mobility 97 edited volumes appeared which brought together chapters on saint cults across the Muslim world in order to underline both their diversity and common elements. The first was edited by Henri Chambert-Loir and Claude Guillot (1995) and the second was edited by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (1996) and stretches geographically as far as South East Asia. These volumes go beyond the study of rituals per se to examine other dimensions, such as the importance of local history in religious transformations. Over the last thirty years there has been a renewed interest among historians and anthropologists in holy sites and sainthood across the Maghreb and Middle East. These studies have re-examined colonial historiography, but as a field of inquiry which engages with the wider social and political picture. The innovative feature of this research lies in its desire to take both sides of saint worship into account: analyzing not only the lives, histories and legends of saints through their hagiographies, for example, but also understanding the social issues involved through an exploration of the rituals practiced during the journeys to and time spent at the shrines (Kerrou, 1998; Mayeur-Jaouen, 2002; Boissevain, 2006; Amri and Gril, 2007). Hence, anthropologists see saint worship as a devotion to the divine and the holy person and an embodiment of social relations, while also taking into account the preoccupations of pilgrims and visitors. Scholars have underlined the multiple motivations for visiting a saint and the possible tensions or peaceful collaborations which are at play between different groups in this locus of power (Aubin-Boltanski, 2007; Albera and Couroucli, 2012). Furthermore, from a theoretical point of view, studies on pilgrimages in the region have been seen through three main perspectives—that inspired by Durkheim, where pilgrimage is understood as social cement, the Turnerian approach to pilgrimage as a search for communitas and the contestation perspective, building on Eade and Sallnow (1991), where pilgrimage is seen as an arena for multiple and often conflictual discourses and practices. Of course, far from being mutually exclusive, these perspectives can and should be mobilized jointly to analyze pilgrimages in the most complete manner possible.

Heritage Policies, Religious Tourism and Religious Practice From the 1960s, the general assumption in scholarly research on saint devotions, visits to shrines and local pilgrimages was that these practices would slowly disappear due to modernization, nationalism and the hegemony of religious reformism. Yet, while it is true that local pilgrimages have declined, they have not completely vanished (Luizard, 1993). As Mayeur-Jaouen states about the context of Egypt: The success of Reformism has led, undoubtedly, to a greater moderation in religious practices. It has contributed to constraining, among rural folk and the poor, practices that Egyptians used to observe unanimously,

98  Katia Boissevain such as the mouled. Yet, the tenacious resistance of devotions and their ability to adapt to the Reformist’s discourse show their deep roots. (1996: 131, my translation) Elsewhere, from Morocco to Iran, new configurations have developed and given way to new hierarchies, with some major historical mausoleums maintaining their attractive power despite changing political forces. Nevertheless, some shrines have clearly declined. A recent paper by Neveu (2016), for example, reports that in the small Jordanian town of Ma’an, famous saints—notably women saints—were visited and venerated until the 1970s but are nowadays only vaguely remembered through oral literature and no longer benefit from any type of religious ritual. Although shrine devotion survives in certain areas, regular individual and collective ziyara-s, whether in cities or villages, are not generally as frequent as they were forty or even twenty years ago. As El Ayadi, Rachik and Tozy (2002) show in their important work on religious practice in Morocco, many urban or rural families no longer practice holy visits as part of their regular religious obligations. To many families, a ziyara is nowadays synonymous with an extraordinary family or individual event, such as the preparations for a wedding, where the future bride is presented to the saint to be granted protection in her future life as a full woman (both wife and mother), or where a newborn baby is introduced to the saint, or where there is a particularly difficult situation (grief due to the loss of a child, a close one or a job or a dire financial situation). Another occasion for a visit would be the return from hajj or umrah, when pilgrims bring presents for the saint in the shape of chandeliers, carpets or paintings. Where regular individual weekly visits do occur, they usually take place in two contrasting but connected contexts: weekly Sufi rituals or religious/therapeutic possession rituals (Andézian, 1995; Boissevain, 2006). The decline in local pilgrimages has been partly due to the influence of reformist discourse and government strategies, such as the nationalization of habus or waqf during the 1960s in order to weaken religious brotherhoods. Yet, they have survived in particular areas because they are embedded in local culture and heritage, especially in the Maghreb. Some have been drawn into the politics of regional culture where governments have not hesitated to incorporate them within national and international tourism strategies (which may include migrant workers and their families returning for summer holidays). For these moussem-s, the calendar may sometimes be changed and feasts, which were originally based on an agricultural calendar, may be moved to mid-summer for practical reasons. These changes have been observed since the early 1990s (Reysoo, 1991; Berriane, 1992) and have gathered momentum ever since, going as far as to modify the structure of the rituals through an increasing number of ‘performance rituals’ and a strong dose of folklorization. Despite some official religious condemnation, the evolution and changes of these traditional religious practices are the

Studying Religious Mobility 99 result of a joint process, that of ‘politicization’ and ‘heritagization’, often under the wing of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Tourism. As a consequence, over the last twenty years the Maghreb countries have introduced many renovation programs at shrines, and different countries have organized recurring festivals where local or national saints are the main focus, e.g. Hadra in Tunisia and the Festival des musiques sacrées in Fès. The process of heritagization is promoting a national or regional religious identity and the top-down mobilization of folklore. At the same time, ‘ordinary’ religion lives within this religious modality without thinking twice about its cultural dimension. Of course, no ‘popular culture’ is independent of the national or global cultural and political context, but the renewal of religious sociability around holy shrines in rural and urban areas is a reality. Therefore, the recent visibility or renovations of saints’ shrines must not only be interpreted solely in terms of heritagization policies.

Pilgrimage, Religious Tourism and Economy In the past forty years in anthropology, a distinct field of scholarship has been concerned with tourism, but few studies have yet analyzed the relationship between religious mobility and tourism in this region. Very recent research (some still in process) in the Middle East shows how tourism with a religious motivation is of great concern to nation-states. For instance, Norig Neveu (2016) documents how in Jordan since the 1990s the late King Hussein and his son, King Abdullah II, have rebuilt mausoleums of pre-Islamic prophets and the Companions of Prophet Muhammad all over the country, especially along the Jordan Valley. These reconstructions have been used as memorial sites for the monarchy and have led to the sacralization of the Jordanian national territory as part of an Islamic Holy Land. Yet as Neveu notes: ‘The renovated sites have become today, in the eyes of the monarchy, representative of Islamic heritage. While they were initially used by local population, they tend today to welcome Muslim tourists from the whole world’ (2010). In addition to the political strategy, the economic dimension is very present, with the increase of siyyaha el dinniyah (religious tourism) in the region. In the south of the Jordan territory, Marc Dugas is analyzing the emergence of a spectacular new religious site for his doctoral research. Since the beginning of 2000, the Jordanian authorities have been developing an ‘authentic Jesus baptism site’ on the Jordan River, almost facing the Israeli site. The ambition is to transform this site into a major Christian pilgrimage and religious tourism centre, which could have a positive economic impact on the region. These examples show how strongly political-religious tourism can be and this is brilliantly brought to light by Jackie Feldman when he underlines the ways in which narratives concerning pilgrimage in Israel

100  Katia Boissevain are shaped according to the pilgrim’s religion. While the discourse is about a shared Biblical territory, practices vary considerably according to religion of the pilgrim/tourist/visitor (Feldman, 2007). As these examples remind us, commerce, knowledge and religion can be closely associated. In a Christian context, Claverie (2003) has shown how the small town of Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina has developed into an international pilgrimage centre with a thriving economy. Further east, Chatelard has also underlined the radical economic changes in the cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iran following the recent development of Shi’a pilgrimage to these cities.

The Increase of International Travel and Changes in Pilgrimage As we have already mentioned, comparison between studies of Muslim pilgrimages shows how visits to shrines are linked to the Great Pilgrimage to Mecca through practices, discourses and symbols. In places very distant from Mecca, many important shrines may be called ‘the poor person’s Hajj’. Nevertheless, with the democratization of travel and the relative ease with which many pilgrims can now organize a plane trip, this relation between the holy land of Islam and smaller more peripheral shrines seems to be taking on a new dimension through the development of religious package tours. Indeed, religious package trips have long existed and travel agents have been searching for ways to keep the pilgrim/customer longer. The Hajj itself only lasts five days for the mandatory rituals but most pilgrims spend longer on site. The Hajj is therefore often a special time, extended by the possibility of visiting other holy places in Saudi Arabia, such as Mohamed’s birthplace in Medina. In the last ten years changes have been introduced which make pilgrimages in the Middle East, whether they be Muslim, Christian or Jewish, similar in their tourist features. The general idea is to offer a larger package than simply a return ticket to Mecca. The package is more specifically tailored for a segment of believers, pilgrims or visitors, includes other significant destinations and enhances the feeling of the ‘once in a life-time experience’. Hence, Senegalese travel agents offer trips to Mecca which may include a stop in Fès, which enable their Tijâni pilgrims from Dakar to pay a religious visit to the zawiya of Sîdî Ahmed el Tijâni, the founder of their tariqa, (Lanza, 2014). Another frequent destination is Jerusalem, Islam’s third most holy city. Despite the political situation and some Muslim voices opposing visits to Jerusalem while it remains under Israeli occupation, the city is often included in the trip on the way to or back from Mecca (Grugeon, 2015). It can be argued that this trend renews, albeit with a different, contemporary rhythm, the pre-flight travelling practice of visiting cities of important religious interest along the way to Mecca, as described by Chiffoleau (2015).

Studying Religious Mobility 101 It should be underlined that the inclusion of secondary holy sites in religious package tours can only be sustained if the holy sites themselves are renovated and maintained. Governments throughout the region are investing in and restoring their religious architecture and are making the large pilgrimage sites accessible to as many pilgrims as possible. A paradoxical case is that of Mecca itself. Indeed, in radical opposition to this logic, the Saudi government is increasing its possibility of welcoming visitors and in the process undertaking an important destruction of sites of historical or religious importance. The major developments in Mecca and Medina follow the logic of ‘purifying’ the site of bida’ (religious innovation), such as visits to the Prophet or to Ahl el Bayt, the Prophet’s family. This entails important changes with regard to its relation to the past and the city’s religious history. At the same time, secondary places of worship are seeing the number of visitors increase considerably. To the example I have mentioned of Sîdî Ahmed el Tijâni in Fès, which is visited by Senegalese from Senegal as well as from France and by Moroccan pilgrims from Morocco or Europe, we could add many more, such as the ziyara of the Boutchitchiya tariqa in Madagh (Morocco), which benefits from a direct Ryanair flight from Beauvais to Madagh, or the Sayyda Zeinab shrine in Damascus, which attracted Shi’a pilgrims from neighbouring Iran before the recent conflict (Mervin, 1996).

Conclusion This brief overview shows that anthropological research on various forms of pilgrimages in the Maghreb and Middle East has gradually moved from a strict interest in ritual practices and religious cosmogonies linked with colonial agendas to a focus on popular religion, mainly understood as partaking in the female religious world and associated with therapeutic and magical practices. More recently, it has broadened its focus to include the political and economic processes which affect these sanctuaries. These processes involve the marketplace and the crucial expansion of transport systems (see Bennafla, 2005; Saghi, 2010; Chiffoleau, 2015). The study of pilgrimage today in this part of the world has to take into account international travel and the complex changes linked to the politics and practices of tourism. In terms of religious practice the survival of contemporary saint veneration and pilgrimage is perceived by many as an archaic practice which is bound to disappear (and has been perceived as such since the late nineteenthcentury reformists). However, nation-states in the Maghreb and Machreq have also encouraged people to visit the shrines as ‘tourists’ in order to valorize local, historically implanted Islam against an alien, ‘fundamentalist’ version of Islam. The pilgrims to Mecca I interviewed (Boissevain, 2015) are totally aware of these doctrinal tensions: they respect Muslim saints while understanding that for ‘orthodox’ Muslims there should be no intermediaries between God and the believer. Despite this knowledge, when in Medina, metres away from the man who received God’s revelation, they

102  Katia Boissevain report that it was highly frustrating for them not to be able to touch and caress the tombstone, to take in some of the baraka of the Prophet through contact, to sit in a corner of the sanctuary and reflect, meditate, pray, or simply be in co-presence of the man who represents Islam in all its variety, complexity, transcendence and humanity. Yet, even if this proximity is disapproved of and prevented in the holy city of Mecca, it is still entertained in other religious sites, which in part explains their continued survival and prosperity. The opening of religious rituals towards tourism and heritage contributes to the economic success of the phenomenon. The financial contribution made by tourists, visitors and pilgrims sometimes helps to renovate a mosque or sanctuary and encourages some of the religious performances. Consequently, under certain conditions, tourism strengthens the religious realm. Pilgrimage practices and religious tourism can be understood as new practices, which are transforming contemporary religion—a development which Danièle Hervieu-Léger, for example, noted in the context of France some twenty years ago (1993).

Notes 1 After shahada (profession of faith), salat (prayer), ramadhan (month of fasting) and zakat (alms giving). 2 For a helpful discussion of the anthropological literature on women and Islam, see Andézian, 1995.

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104  Katia Boissevain Feldman, J. (2007) ‘Constructing a shared Bible land: Jewish-Israeli guiding performances for Protestant pilgrims’, American Ethnologist, vol. 34, pp. 349–372. Geertz, C. (1968) Islam observed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gellner, E. (1969) Saints of the Atlas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Geoffroy, E. (1995) Le soufisme en Syrie et en Egypte sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers Ottomans. Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels, Damascus: IFEAD. Goldziher, I. (1971) ‘Veneration of saints in Islam’ in Stern S. (ed.) Muslim studies, II, Chicago, New York and Aldine: Atherton. Green A. (1978) The Tunisian ulama, 1873–1915: Social structure and response to ideological currents, Leyden: Brill. Grugeon, E. (2015) oral contribution: ‘Visiter ou non la mosquée al-Aqsa à Jérusalem: enjeux de la mise en tourisme d’un lieu saint en contexte coercitif’ in Boissevain and Neveu, op. cit. Hammoudi, A. (2005) Une saison à la Mecque, récit de pèlerinage, Paris: Le Seuil. Hervieu-Léger, D. (1993) La religion pour mémoire, Paris: le Cerf. Jamous, R. (1981) Honneur et baraka: les structures sociales traditionnelles dans le Rif, Paris: Éditions de la MSH. Jong, F. de (1999) ‘Opposition to Sufism in Twentieth Century Egypt (1900-1970). A preliminary survey’ in F. de Jong and B. Radtke (eds) Islamic mysticism contested: Thirteen centuries of controversies & polemics, Leiden: Brill. Jong, F. de (1976) ‘Cairene ziyara days. A contribution to the study of saint veneration in Islam’, Die Welt des Islam, vol. 17, pp. 26–43. Kerrou, M. (1998) L’autorité des saints. Perspectives historiques et socioanthropologiques en Méditerranée occidentale, Paris: Édition recherche sur les Civilisations. Lakhdar, L. (1998) ‘Réformisme et maraboutisme dans la Tunisie du début du XXe siècle’ in Kerrou, M. (ed.) L’autorité des Saints. Perspectives historiques et socioanthropologiques en Méditerranée occidentale, Paris: Éditions Recherches sur les civilisations. Lane, E. (1963/1835) An account of the manners and customs of modern Egyptians, London: J. M. Dent. Lanza, N. (2014) ‘Pèleriner, faire du commerce et visiter les lieux saints: le tourisme religieux sénégalais au Maroc’ in Bava, S. and Boissevain, K. (eds) Routes migratoires africaines et dynamiques religieuses, quels enjeux sociaux? in L’Année du Maghreb, Paris: CNRS Editions, no.11. Luizard, P.-J. (1993) ‘Un mawlid particulier’, Égypte/Monde arabe, Cairo: CEDEJ, no. 14. Macpherson, J.-W. (1941) The Moulids of Egypt, Cairo: Nile Mission Press. Madoeuf, A. (1997) Images et pratiques de la ville ancienne du Caire: le sens de la ville, thèse de doctorat en géographie, Université de Tours. Mayeur-Jaouen, C. (1996) ‘Coupoles et minarets d’Egypte’ in Amir-Moezzi, Mohammed-Ali (ed.) Lieux d’islam. Cultes et cultures de l’Afrique à Java, Paris: Éditions Autrement. –––––––. (2002) Saints et héros du Moyen-Orient contemporain, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. –––––––. (2004a) Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle à nos jours, Paris: Aubier. –––––––. (2004b) Histoire d'un pèlerinage légendaire en Islam. Le mouled de Tantâ du XIIIe siècle à nos jours, Paris: Aubier.

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7 Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania Betwixt and between National Concerns, Academic Trends and Local Ontologies Anna-Karina Hermkens Pilgrimage studies as a distinct field of interest started to emerge only recently in Oceania, which encompasses Australia, and the islands and nations of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.1 Most of the work has been undertaken by Anglophone scholars working in history, religious studies, and tourism studies. French scholars working in New Caledonia and French Polynesia have shown little interest in pilgrimage studies, and dissemination between Anglophone and Francophone scholarship is, also in this part of the world, limited. Characteristic is the stark divide that exists between mainly historical, religious and tourism studies scholars working on Australian, or ‘western’ travel and pilgrimage, and anthropologists working in indigenous communities in Oceania. While the former predominantly focus on nationhood and self within the contexts of war and tourism pilgrimages, the latter often focus on indigenous relational religious and spiritual ontologies, and related notions of alterity.

Pilgrimage Studies in Australia: Secularism and Nation-Building Unlike many European contexts where pilgrimage studies are often related to ‘folk studies’ and are presumed to have intrinsic religious roots and outlooks, its antipodean equivalent reveals a strong emphasis on secular meanings, purposes and identity concerns. This focus is very much related to Australia’s colonial and political history, which evoked a dismissal of religion and embrace of secularism in the process of nation-building (Wilson, 1983; Maddox, 2010). Despite a majority of Australians depicting themselves as religious in census data and religious groups contesting the secular outlook of Australia, Australia is portrayed as a secular society and has been coined the first post-Christian and even post-secular country (Seal, 2007: 144). The origin of Australia’s embrace of secularism lies in its historical contested religious landscape forged by initial Catholic and Protestant colonial settlers. This landscape was changed ‘by the dual processes of secularization and multiculturalism, which have increasingly characterized Australian culture since the 1960s’ (Cusack, 2005: 28). As argued by Marion Maddox,

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 107 in Australia the secular gained substance through its rejection of religious enculturation (2011: 288). These processes and the concomitant public indifference to religion (Maddox, 2011: 290–291) alongside a strong political focus on nation-building have significantly shaped Australian pilgrimage studies. It appears that historians (and also other disciplines) have often ignored religion as a key aspect of Australian experiences and attitudes (Seal, 2007: 144). Instead, there is a continued emphasis on the ‘secular’ within pilgrimage studies, with a large body of work focusing on the interplay between pilgrimage, nation-building and tourism. Battlefield, Cemeteries and War Memorial Pilgrimages Considering the ambivalent position of religion and the importance of nation-building in Australia, it comes perhaps to no surprise that among the first and most popular studies on pilgrimage concern, what scholars term, ‘secular pilgrimages’ to World War memorials in Australia, and battlefields and cemeteries in Turkey, Papua New Guinea, Greece and North Africa. Anzac Day (the 25th of April) is Australia’s most important national occasion, and this is reflected in the relatively large amount of scholarly work on the topic (amongst others: Hall, 2002; Scates, 2002; Slade, 2003; Hannaford and Newton, 2008; Hede and Rentschler, 2010; Hyde and Harman, 2011). The acronym Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and Anzac Day marks the anniversary of the first major military action by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War and the many lives lost at the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. Those who perished were not repatriated, but buried where they died. Although people of diverse backgrounds and connections have been making pilgrimages to their graves since 1919 (White, 1987; Lloyd, 1998), up until the 1990s only few Australians and New Zealanders could afford the long and costly journey. The majority of Australians have been making pilgrimages to the many memorials that were erected in practically every Australian village, town and city. These memorials, which are essentially substitute graves (Inglis, 1992: 54–55), became of great importance and took on greater importance than those in Europe (Inglis, 1992, 2005; Ziino, 2007; Winter, 2009: 612). During the inter-war period the ‘Great War’ (Beaumont, 2013) was perceived as a ‘rite of passage to nationhood’ (McLachlan, 1989: 187–208). In fact, the qualities of the Australian servicemen were believed to have contributed to their success: qualities that were and still are ‘idealized as the unique qualities of the nation’ (Lloyd, 1998: 10, Hall, 2002: 84; see also Donoghue and Tranter, 2015). As the Anzac tradition privileged ‘the achievements of Australian ex-servicemen, rather than the collective achievement of the nation’ (Lloyd, 1998: 11), not only women and indigenous Australian people who had contributed and participated in the war effort were excluded, but also the bereaved (Damousi, 1999).

108  Anna-Karina Hermkens Today, pilgrimages to the cemeteries of the Great War continue to grow in size and number (Scates, 2002: 1), and have increasingly become pilgrimages performed by descendants of servicemen and Australians in general, young and old. While family histories and personal quests are paramount in pilgrims’ motives for visiting places like Gallipoli, emphasis is also placed on community building and the national character and importance of these sites for Australians. The importance and ‘sacredness’ of Anzac for Australians (Inglis, 1992, 1998; Seal, 2007) is also evident in how communities like Albany in Western Australia lay claim to the special commemorative status as the last Australian place of anchor for the fleet that carried Australian and New Zealand troops to Egypt and eventually the slopes of Gallipoli in 1915. Recently, this claim has been given credibility by the National Commission on the Commemoration of the Anzac Centenary in Australia, a federal body set up to guide the Anzac centenary celebrations beginning in 2014. Albany’s aim is to mark out spaces of pilgrimage and ritual and to place itself at the ‘beginning’ of the Anzac narrative and tourist-pilgrim journeys to Gallipoli. John Stephens (2014) explores this ‘sacralization’ of the Albany landscape and how it becomes part of a pilgrimage route to the shores of Gallipoli. Bruce Scates, whose book Return to Gallipoli (2006a), is considered to be the first major study of recent pilgrimages to Gallipoli, argues that the pilgrims’ travel to Gallipoli ‘was a journey to a sacred place . . . [which] involved an emotional ordeal that led ultimately to personal enrichment’ (Scates, 2002: 2). He also states that the motives for travelling to Gallipoli ‘have remained the same since Victor and Edith Turner’s classic study: there is a sense of a “quest”, a journey “out of the normal parameters of life [and] entry into a different other world”, a visit to a landscape saturated with meaning, and a return home to an everyday world, exhausted but renewed by the experience’ (Scates, 2002: 2). The work of Scates and other scholars is mostly qualitative (but see Hyde and Harman, 2011), and concentrates on pilgrims’ ‘hunger for meaning’ (Scates, 2002: 2) and their individual memories and perceptions in relation to national identity. While pride and nationalism loom large in pilgrims’ responses (Scates, 2007: 316), several Australian scholars have also shown that Gallipoli and Anzac Day commemorations are contested spaces and events (Digance, 2003, 2010; McQuilton, 2004; Ziino, 2006, 2007; see also McKenna and Ward, 2007: 151). They thereby follow John Eade’s and Michael Sallnow’s (1991) ‘contesting the sacred’ paradigm, which was developed in response to Turner’s communitas model. Justine Digance shows that the image of homogeneity that surrounds the events at Gallipoli and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra is ‘not a true representation of those who attend Anzac day ceremonies, but rather represents issues relating to access and use of contested space’ (2010: 121). John McQuilton reveals that the commemorative landscape at Gallipoli has become contested ground, with Turkey reclaiming the peninsula as its own national space since the 1960s. Bart Ziino (2006)

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 109 gives an overview of the intimate connection between Australian politics and Gallipoli in the context of Australian-Turkish relationships. He argues that historically, Australians have related to Gallipoli in exclusive terms, claiming the Turkish peninsula as a sacred spot to and of Australia. In 2003, Australian Prime Minister John Howard re-asserted this exclusivity ‘when he nominated Anzac Cove as the first site for Australia’s new National Heritage List’. Howard insisted that ‘although it’s not on Australian territory, anyone who has visited the place will know that once you go there you feel it is as Australian as the piece of land on which your home is built’ (Ziino, 2006: 5). At the same time, there is growing acknowledgement of the shared histories between Australia and Turkey (Ziino, 2006: 1, 8; see also Scates, 2002, 2006a). Like the battlefields and memorials related to the Great War, World War II pilgrimage sites are becoming extremely popular and Australians have been travelling to these places in search of ‘the stories of lost loved ones, to mourn the dead and to come to grips with the past’ (Scates, 2013). Although there is in comparison to the Great War relatively little scholarly work done on World War II pilgrimages, Scates suggests that pilgrimages to Papua New Guinea, Greece and other World War II sites ‘might come to rival the muchtravelled path to Gallipoli’ (2013: 4). Scholars have focused on the various histories of the sites and the reasons and sentiments of pilgrims visiting these places (Scates, 2013; Weaver, 2013). Others detail the reasons why Australian and Japanese World War II veterans have made post-war pilgrimages to New Guinea and describe their different experiences in the context of their respective national memories (James and Monden, 2007). The recent edited collection by Gillian Carr and Keir Reeves (2015) and the work of scholars such as Greg Dvorak (2014) highlight the enduring impact of World War II on the small communities of the Pacific Islands. The Kokoda Track (or ‘Kokoda Trail’) in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, which was a fierce battleground between Australian and Japanese soldiers, has particularly attracted scholarly attention. The track has become an important and popular pilgrim site for generations of Australians (Scates, 2013: 230–253), partly as the result of the Australian government’s move ‘to locate the symbols and sentiment of the nation close to home’ (Nelson, 2007: 76). While Australians have made the battles on Kokoda one of the bestknown events in Australian history and the foundation of nation-building, in Papua New Guinea the Kokoda battle and the experiences of World War II in general have yet to generate that same sense of a common identity (Nelson, 2007: 87). The different significance of World War II for Australia and the Pacific Islands (see also Reed, 1999; Murray, 2005) is reflected in scholarly interest, with relatively little work being done on indigenous experiences of Papua New Guinean and other Pacific Islands’ war pilgrimage sites (but see Reeves and Cheer, 2015 on the present-day significance of war heritage and commemoration to the ni-Vanuatu community). Other war sites in the AsiaPacific that have attracted Australian veterans and tourists alike are located in Singapore (Blackburn, 1999), Ambon and Solomon Islands.

110  Anna-Karina Hermkens It is remarkable that despite the religious settings of the war cemeteries and the religious rituals held at these sites, the journeys to and events at these places are in general considered to be ‘non-religious’ and ‘secular’. Anzac Day pilgrimages are bound up primarily with national identity where the myths of Australian manhood and nationhood are particularly paramount (Reed, 1999; Hall, 2002; Scates, 2002; Seal, 2007; West, 2008, 2010; Digance, 2010; Hyde and Harman, 2011). This is in striking contrast to the influence of traditional religion on British war commemoration (Lloyd, 1998: 5–6). While the concept of ‘secular pilgrimage’ has been criticized for establishing a too rigid binary between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ pilgrimage (Reader, 2014), in the Australian context the ‘secular’ remains of great importance. This is partly due to its emic significance and deployment in local politics. In Australia, discourses concerning the secular do not so much sustain a counter-ideology within society, as has been argued for Britain by Linda Woodhead (2012: 4), but rather, secularism is (or was) the national ideology.2 This political emphasis and its particular framings of religion seem to have informed etic analyses. This becomes apparent in studies of war pilgrimages, which some have labelled as ‘civil religion’ (Inglis, 1992; Lloyd, 1998: 6; West, 2008, 2010), a term coined by Robert Bellah (1968) for America. These studies elucidate how Australian commemoration is conceptualized as the ‘secular’ expression of the nation’s ‘religious’ values, with specific dates and spaces of commemoration becoming sacred. This shows that the sacred and the secular cannot in any way be opposed to each other in a Durkheimian manner. Yet, the etic distinction between sacred and profane, as well as the religious-secular binary, strongly informs Australian pilgrimage studies, including, as we will see next, studies that focus on the nexus between tourism and pilgrimage.

Tourism and Shopping as Pilgrimage The second field that dominates Australian pilgrimage studies, and which overlaps with research on war pilgrimage, focuses on tourism. Many of the scholars working on war or battlefield pilgrimages, and pilgrimage studies in general, have engaged, or rather struggled, with this category (amongst others Pearson, 1991; Digance, 2006; Scates, 2006a; Timothy and Olsen, 2006; Winter, 2009, 2011; Dunkley et al., 2011; Stephens, 2014: 31–32). Although the notion persists that pilgrimage and tourism are different and even opposed (Winter, 2009), most scholars refrain from categorizing battlefield and war memorial visitors as either tourists or pilgrims. This is probably due to emic conceptualizations of these terms. For example, many Australian visitors of Gallipoli, including backpackers who often include a visit to Gallipoli as part of their European tour, state they are pilgrims, while they label other visitors, often in a derogative manner, as tourists (for example Scates, 2006b: 188–209; Hyde and Harman, 2011). In general,

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 111 Australian scholars state that in practice there is either no distinction (Norman and Cusack, 2015b: 2) or the two categories overlap substantially (Scates, 2002; Kahl, 2012). With regard to the latter position, scholars often quote Victor Turner and Edith Turner’s (2011, 20) memorable statement that ‘a tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist’ (Digance, 2003: 145; Olsen and Timothy, 2006: 2; Hyde and Harman, 2011: 1344). Others, perhaps more fruitfully, seek to free the debate by focusing on processes of identity formation (Stephens, 2014: 31). Importantly, the study of tourists/pilgrims travelling to battlefield and war memorials diverges from studies that focus on the intersections between tourism and pilgrimage in other settings. While the first body of work focuses predominantly on ‘secular’ or ‘non-religious’ meanings and the motivations of travellers to cemeteries and battlefields, the latter often focuses on the spirituality of various events, such as shopping, and the spirituality and liminality inherent in processes of identity formation and selftransformation (Digance and Cusack, 2001; Norman and Johnson, 2011; Cusack, 2013). Scholars have framed events such as the 2000 Sydney Olympics (Cusack and Norman, 2012), the annual Melbourne Cup (Cusack and Digance, 2009), World Youth Day (Norman and Johnson, 2011), visits to gay bathhouses in Sydney (Cusack and Prior, 2010), Australian outback heritage tours (Smith, 2012) and even shopping experiences in terms of pilgrimage. In fact, much of the work done by prominent Australian pilgrimage scholars, such as religious studies scholar Carole Cusack, focuses on intersections between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’. Cusack uses Turner’s insights on liminality in detailing what she labels as ‘secular spirituality’ in the context of experiences in gay bathhouses (Prior and Cusack, 2008) and retail therapy (Cusack and Digance, 2008). The academic popularity of the interplay between tourism and pilgrimage in Australia comes to the fore in the recently published series Religion, Pilgrimage, and Tourism edited by Alex Norman and Carole Cusack (2015a), which includes reprints of several of their own and their colleagues’ work undertaken in Australia (namely: Altman, 1989; Digance, 2006; Scates, 2006b; Cusack and Digance, 2008; Narayanan and Macbeth, 2009; Norman and Johnson, 2011; Norman, 2012; Smith, 2012; Cusack, 2013). Norman and Cusack emphasize that their selection of 70 articles does not follow a particular paradigm (2015b: 7–8). Instead, they emphasize the importance of travel since it ‘both literally and conceptually inscribes the narratives and imaginings of people, however they classify themselves’ (2015b: 2). They define pilgrimages as ‘journeys redolent with meaning’ (Digance, 2006: 36), and argue for the need to move beyond sacred pilgrimage, profane-tourism dichotomies and ‘recognize the validity and applicability of multiple models of religious travel’, including especially non-western combined forms of travel and religiosity (Norman and Cusack, 2015b: 8). Yet, although they join others in critiquing these dichotomies (see, for example, Eade, 1992; Badone and Roseman, 2004; Grimshaw, 2013;

112  Anna-Karina Hermkens Reader, 2014), Norman and Cusack keep referring to such binaries by using terms as ‘secular travel’, and naming Volume IV of their series: ‘Secular pilgrimage and spiritual tourism’ (see also Norman, 2011, 2012). New Zealand post-modern theologian and religious scholar Michael Grimshaw has deconstructed such concepts by showing that both tourist and traveller represent modernist theological positions (2008). He demonstrates the ways in which universal, essentialized definitions hinder our investigation of the locations, movements, and identities, as well as institutions, ideologies, processes and power relations that are crucial in creating pilgrimage (see also Asad, 1983: 252).

Mobility, ‘Self’ and Space in Australian Pilgrimage Studies The acknowledgement of emic conceptualizations and vernacularizations of pilgrimage (Bingenheimer, this volume) is most apparent in studies that focus on analytical themes, such as movement, identity and self, in relation to pilgrimage. For example, in her edited volume on Pilgrimage in the age of globalisation, Nelia Hyndman-Rizk (2012a) strongly engages with the ‘mobility turn’ (a focus on the flux, movement and fluidity across physical and social space associated with modernity) and what light this can throw on pilgrimage’s distinctiveness as a form of mobility (Hyndman-Rizk 2012a: xvi). Her conceptual framework resonates strongly with Simon Coleman and John Eade’s earlier work on reframing pilgrimage as various understandings of movement (Coleman and Eade, 2004: 16–18). Hyndman-Rizk argues that ‘pilgrimage privileges a distinctive spiritual conceptualisation of mobility, which emphasizes inner transformation over physical mobility linked with purely quotidian pursuits of material advancement’ (Coleman and Eade, 2004: xvi). Thus, she argues, pilgrimage is about self-realization through motion, which brings the inner and physical journey together. This focus on identity in terms of the self and self-realization is also quite apparent in studies that deal with the popularity of walking the routes to Santiago de Compostela among Australian and New Zealanders (Hannaford, 2001; Harrigan, 2010; Cusack, 2013), and Australian studies that deal with pilgrimages to spiritual healers such as João de Deus (John of God) in Brazil (Rocha, 2009) and to ‘traditional’ healers in Peru (Ainsworth, 2014). Australian scholars from disciplines such as psychology have also picked up this global trend in the search for meaning and healing through their studies of pilgrimage from a psychological, health and wellness perspective (Courtney, 2013, 2015; Warfield et al., 2014). Others have focused on particular Australian memorial and other sites as difficult places that involve shame and pain, but also healing (Batten, 2009; Murphy, 2012), and even terror (Osbaldiston and Petray, 2011). The ‘spatial turn’ in humanities has also influenced studies that deal with the interplay between tourism, landscape and spirituality. The mechanisms that turn places like Albany and spaces such as the desert ‘sacred’ have been

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 113 explored in the context of ANZAC pilgrimages (Stephens, 2014) and travels to the Australian desert (Narayanan and Macbeth, 2009), to Uluru, in the heart of Australia (Du Cros and Johnston, 2002), and in the context of tourists (white fellas) following Australian aboriginal trails (Healy, 1999). The intersection between pilgrimage, landscape and spirituality is also apparent in a recent study on Fantasy pilgrimages in New Zealand (Goh, 2014). This study shows how Peter Jackson’s epic film trilogies of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit novels in his native New Zealand, has given the country a major boost in tourism. Once again tourism and pilgrimage intersect since, as Robbie Goh notes, ‘the zeal with which many tourists visit these sites has similarities to the religious pilgrimage, not only in terms of the degree of enthusiasm invoked, but also in rituals of knowledge, ardour and “spiritual” envisioning’ (2014: 263).

Indigenous Travels and ‘Religious Pilgrimages’ in Oceania The indigenous people of Oceania have been travelling to ritual centres and places to engage in communal rituals both in and outside their home (Is) lands for centuries (see amongst others Pouwer, 1964; Barth, 1971; Ballard, 1994, 1998; Binney, 2004; and many other anthropological studies). For example, the central spirit houses (haus tamberans) of the Mountain Ok people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), functioned as ‘indigenous pilgrimage centres’. They operated as ritual centres to which youths from surrounding villages would come for initiations, and the rebuilding of these houses occasioned large gatherings of populations from upwards of twenty villages or so. Initiations in many areas ceased by the mid-1980s or so, but the sites remained important (even after the demise of the houses themselves) (Dan Jorgensen, personal communication, 2015; Jorgensen, 2005, 2014). Also the Huli from the PNG Highlands and some of their neighbours went on sacred journeys (Ballard, 1994, 1998). Carlos Mondragón (2009, 2012)3, for example, explores the interplay between travel, place, space and identity in Vanuatu, showing how in the Pacific the living milieu is ‘a complex interweaving of land- and sea-scapes, personhood, and “topogeny”, which is continuously imagined and reiterated through the flow and movement of people and things’ (2009: 116). Likewise, indigenous Australians have a long tradition of travelling to sacred sites. Travelling is a major motif in ‘traditional’ Aboriginal societies, with the spirit ancestors’ epic travels creating places, plants, animals and people as components of an interconnected organic system (Kerwin, 2010). John Mulvaney (1976, 2002) describes how the Aboriginal landscape was criss-crossed by mythological tracks and paths, with elders at each nodal point being familiar with the traditions and permissible routes. Ceremonies recalled these travels and Aboriginal groups travelled to different places, including significant sites. According to Nicolas Peterson (personal communication 2015), major ceremonial gatherings occurred at

114  Anna-Karina Hermkens locations where there was a superabundance of resources. He argues that in these instances of travel, the destination was defined by the resource, not by a sacred site. Mulvaney (1976) uses the term pilgrimage metaphorically to refer to groups that travelled south along the QLD/NT border to a red ochre quarry in northern South Australia. Another example of an ancient indigenous pilgrimage is the ringbalin, which involves travelling 2,300 kilometres from the headwaters in Queensland to the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia. Every night along the way, traditional elders and their supporters stop at the banks of the river to perform their specific dances, songs and stories (see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012–04–17/ pilgrimage-along-the-murray/3955030). Although some scholars recognize that the above-mentioned examples of indigenous forms of travel can be conceptualized and analyzed by scholars as pilgrimages (Norman and Cusack, 2015b: 1), most of the predominantly cultural anthropologists working in indigenous Australian and Pacific communities do not use the term pilgrimage, nor do they refer to pilgrimage studies to discuss indigenous’ ritual centres and travels. Following the emic perspective, they generally support the view that indigenous forms of travel are radically different from travel in western parts of the world, and that they bear little resemblance to the ‘religious pilgrimages’ we are most familiar with through the work of Anglophone scholars of pilgrimage (see, for example, Turner and Turner, 1978; Eade and Sallnow, 1991; Coleman and Elsner, 1995; Tweed, 2002). ‘Religious Pilgrimage’ Studies in Oceania Despite the growing popularity of Australian Catholic pilgrimage sites, relatively few studies engage with pilgrimages to these places. One of the most well-known sites is the plaster image of Mary at Our Lady of Yankalilla Church in South Australia (Kahl, 1999; Hannaford, 2001; McPhillips, 2006). The shrine of Yankalilla is also closely connected to an important site associated with Australia’s first saint, Mary MacKillop, who opened one of her first schools in a cottage near the church in 1867 (McPhillips, 2006: 147). In 2010, over 8,000 non-indigenous and indigenous Australians travelled to Rome to witness the canonization of Mary MacKillop. Kathleen McPhillips (2006), in her discussion of contemporary Marian devotion in Australia, contends that the shrine of Yankalilla, where the image of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus appeared through plaster on one of Church walls in 1994, is related to two other Marian apparitions and pilgrimages in Australia, viz. the apparition of Mary at Coogee in 2003 (Cusack, 2003), and the weeping statue of Mary in a northern suburb of Perth in 2002-03. All three events, she argues, are ‘spectacles of contemporary enchantment that blend traditional elements of pilgrimage and devotion, with spiritual practices characteristic of the New Age’ (McPhillips, 2006: 148).

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 115 Another field that engages with pilgrimage is migration and diaspora studies. Various scholars have been interested in the pilgrimages performed by Australian immigrants to ancestral homelands (Hyndman-Rizk, 2012b) and places of religious significance, such as Medjugorje (Skrbiš, 2007) and Mecca (Haq and Jackson, 2009; Nebhan, 2009). However, few scholars have shown interest in indigenous Christian and Islamic pilgrimages (but see Stephenson, 2011). This is surprising considering the long histories of conversion and the fact that indigenous Australians and Pacific Islanders do go on pilgrimages, both in their own countries, as well as abroad. My own work aims to fill this gap and focuses in particular on indigenous Catholic pilgrimages and sites in Papua New Guinea in relation to societal problems and personal experiences of civil and domestic violence (Hermkens, 2009, 2014). Various anthropological studies also mention pilgrimages to local Catholic shrines or sites where apparitions of Mary have taken place (see amongst others Flinn, 2010). Furthermore, several studies examine pilgrimages in the context of the commemoration of early missionaries and conversion to Christianity (Dixon, 1988; Hanley and Bushnell, 1991).4 These studies on indigenous Christian pilgrimages combine etic and emic perspectives and engage with Anglophone pilgrimage studies alongside local ontologies and meaning-making. However, most anthropological studies refrain from using pilgrimage as a ‘trope for understanding indigenous Christianity’ and mobility (Coleman, 2014). For example, a recent study focusing on a new religious movement in Solomon Islands, details its leaders’ regular travels to Israel in order to receive the word of God. This work also describes local pilgrimages to the Temple of King Solomon, which is believed to be located on top of a local mountain range (Timmer, 2012). As with many other anthropologists working in Melanesia, Timmer’s focus is on emic theologies and ontologies, and does not relate his work to ‘pilgrimage studies’ as such. This is due in large part because ethnography requires an exploration of indigenous vocabularies and conceptualizations, which might be difficult to translate into abstract nouns, such as ‘religion’ and ‘pilgrimage’ (Bingenheimer, this volume). Yet, the lack of anthropological engagement with pilgrimage studies also stems from the relatively recent academic interest in indigenous Christianity in this part of the world, and academic perceptions about the impact of Pentecostalism and Catholicism in local communities, in particular. As Simon Coleman argues (2014), scholars interested in the ‘Anthropology of Christianity’ have been equating Christianity predominantly with Pentecostalism, which is related to process of dynamic change, development and modernity. Catholicism, on the other hand, has been associated with early conversions, loss of culture and stasis, while pilgrimage is represented ‘as a nostalgic retreat from modernity into heritage’ (Coleman, 2014: S283). Hence, both Catholicism and pilgrimage have often been ignored in anthropological studies of Christianity, and this seems to be particularly the case in Oceania.

116  Anna-Karina Hermkens

Conclusion Journeying to sacred and ritual sites has a very long history in Australia and the Pacific, predating European colonization of this part of the world. In fact, the specific historical and cultural context of this vast region has generated a multiple array of pilgrimage forms: from indigenous pilgrimages and more classical pilgrimages that are part of the Abrahamic religions, to journeying in the context of new religious movements, war pilgrimages, pilgrimages that commemorate missionaries and conversion to Christianity, and tourist pilgrimages to the Australian outback and indigenous sacred sites such as Uluru in the heart of Australia. My brief overview shows that pilgrimage studies in Oceania are very much caught between national concerns, academic trends and local ontologies. Australia’s large field of war and commemoration studies seems to be fundamentally informed by a political emphasis on nation-building and secularism. The broad field of tourism and pilgrimage studies seems to be likewise informed by Australia’s particular context, in which alongside secularism and a public indifference towards specific religions, there is also a growing interest in spirituality. In this field, pilgrimage seems to be used as an etic, essentialized trope to frame ‘secular’ and/or ‘profane’ events and activities as ‘spiritual’. In contrast, most anthropological studies of Christianity in Australia and the Pacific refrain from engaging with pilgrimage studies, but focus on the radical alterity of travel and movement in indigenous communities through an emic perspective. In short, the region first of all highlights the extent to which pilgrimage practices and pilgrimage studies are related to national and local structures of knowledge and identity production. Second, it also shows how different linguistic and disciplinary traditions have limited the dissemination of knowledge both regionally and globally. In order to develop a more nuanced field of pilgrimage studies, there is a need to build (more) bridges between different disciplines and geographical areas within the region. This would surely lead to greater insight into the abundance, variety and significances of pilgrimage in contemporary Oceania.

Notes 1 There are different opinions on what constitutes Oceania. Moreover, like the term Oceania, the subregions or culture areas of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia are colonial inventions and constructs. 2 Marion Maddox argues that the secular truce in Australia has been cancelled, as politicians have increasingly appealed to Christian values and the notion of Australia as a Christian nation, privileging Christian projects and schools (Maddox, 2011: 288, 305). 3 Carlos Mondragón, who is based in Mexico City, specifically writes on pilgrimage in Melanesia from his perspective on North Vanuatu. His work is foremost directed at a Spanish-speaking Latin American audience.

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 117 4 The importance of evangelization and the memorialization of conversion are eminent in projects such as the 2012 Sea Journeys Project with Erub Artists. http:// www.langford120.com.au/uploads/7/6/8/0/7680920/catalogue_2012-sm.pdf

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120  Anna-Karina Hermkens ———. (1998) ‘Return to Gallipoli’ in Lack, J. (ed.) Anzac Day remembered: Selected writings of K.S. Inglis, Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne. ———. (2005) Sacred places: War memorials in the Australian landscape, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press. James, K. and Monden, K. (2007) ‘Return to New Guinea: Comparing Australian and Japanese memories of the New Guinea campaign, 1942–1945.’ Paper presented at the conference ‘War and Our World,’ University of Manchester, UK, July 19–21. Jorgensen, D. (2005) ‘Third Wave evangelism and the politics of the global in Papua New Guinea: Spiritual warfare and the recreation of place in Telefolmin’, Oceania, vol. 75, pp. 444–461. ———. (2014) ‘Mining narratives and multiple geographies in Papua New Guinea: Ok Tedi, the Emerald Cave and lost tribes’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, pp. 138–139. Kahl, J. (1999) ‘Miracle image of Yankalilla, South Australia’, Australian Religion Studies Review, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 32–39. ———. (2012) ‘Review essay. Some recent trends in the study of pilgrimage and tourism’, Literature & Aesthetics, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 257–270. Kerwin, D. (2010) Aboriginal dreaming paths and trading routes: The colonisation of the Australian economic landscape, Brighton, Portland and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press. Lloyd, D. (1998) Battlefield tourism: Pilgrimage and the commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919–1939, Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers. Maddox, M. (2010) ‘Indigenous religion in secular Australia’, Information and Research Services. Research Paper No 11, Canberra: Department of the Parliamentary Library. ———. (2011) ‘A secular cancellation of the secularist truce: Religion and political legitimation in Australia’, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, vol. 2, pp. 287–308. McKenna, M. and Ward, S. (2007) ‘ “It was really moving, mate”: The Gallipoli pilgrimage and sentimental nationalism in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 38, no. 129, pp. 141–151. McLachlan, N. (1989) Waiting for the revolution: A history of Australian nationalism, Melbourne: Penguin. McPhillips, K. (2006) ‘Believing in post-modernity: Technologies of enchantment in contemporary Marian devotion’ in Hume, L. and McPhillips, K. (eds) Popular Spiritualities: The politics of contemporary enchantment, Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. McQuilton, F. (2004) ‘Gallipoli as contested commemorative space’ in MacLeod, J. (ed.) Gallipoli: Making history, London: Frank Cass. Mondragón, C. (2009) ‘A weft of nexus: Changing notions of space and geographical identity in Vanuatu, Oceania’ in Kirby, P. (ed.) Boundless worlds: An anthropological approach to movement, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. ———. (2012) ‘Entre islas y montañas: Movimiento y geografía cultural en Melanesia y el Tibet’ in Fournier, P., Mondragón and Wiesheu, W. (eds), Peregrinaciones ayer y hoy. Arqueología y antropología de las religiones, vol. 4, México: El Colegio de México.

Pilgrimage Studies in Oceania 121 Mulvaney, J. (1976) ‘The chain of connection: The material evidence’ in Peterson, N. (ed.) Tribes and boundaries in Australia, Canberra: AIAS. ———. (2002) ‘. . . these Aboriginal lines of travel’. Historic Environment, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 4–7. Murphy, F. (2012) ‘The house on the hill: An analysis of Australia’s stolen generations’ journey into healing through the site of trauma’ in Skinner, J. (ed.) Writing the dark side of travel, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Murray, S. (2005) ‘Catastrophe on Peleliu: Islanders’ memories of the Pacific War’ in The Asia-Pacific War: History and Memory, special issue, Iias Newsletter, vol. 38. Retrieved from http://iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL38_17.pdf Narayanan, Y. and Macbeth, J. (2009) ‘Deep in the desert. Merging the desert and the spiritual through 4WD tourism’, Tourism Geographies, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 369–389. Nebhan, K. (2009) ‘Australian experiences of the Meccan pilgrimage’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 23, pp. 40–48. Nelson, H. (2007) ‘Kokoda: and two national histories’, Journal of Pacific History, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 73–88. Norman, A. (2011) Spiritual tourism: Travel and religious practice in western society, London: Continuum. ———. (2012) ‘The varieties of the spiritual tourist experience’, Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 20–87. ——— and Johnson, M. (2011) ‘World Youth Day: The creation of a modern pilgrimage event for evangelical intent’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 371–385. ——— and Cusack, C. (2015a) (eds) Religion, pilgrimage and tourism, Four Volume Reprint Series, Routledge. ———. and Cusack, C. (2015b) ‘General introduction’ in Norman, A. and Cusack, C. op. cit. Olsen, D. and Timothy, D. (2006) ‘Tourism and religious journeys’ in Timothy, D. and Olsen, D. (eds) Tourism, religion and spiritual journeys, London and New York: Routledge. Osbaldiston, N. and Petray, T. (2011) ‘The role of horror and dread in the sacred experience’, Tourist Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 175–190. Pearson, M. (1991) ‘Travellers, journeys, tourists: The meanings of journeys’, Australian Cultural History, vol. 10, pp. 127–129. Pouwer, J. (1964) ‘A social system in the Star Mountains. Towards a reorientation of the study of social systems’, American Anthropologist, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 133–162. Prior, J. and Cusack, C. (2008) ‘Ritual, liminality and transformation: Secular spirituality in Sydney’s gay bathhouses’, Australian Geographer, vol. 39 (3): 271–281. Reader, I. (2014) Pilgrimage in the marketplace, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Reed, L. (1999) ‘ “Part of our own story”: Representations of indigenous Australians and Papua New Guineans within Australia Remembers 1945–1995—The continuing desire for a homogeneous national identity’, Oceania, vol. 69, no.3, pp. 157–170. Reeves, K. and Cheer, J. (2015) ‘ “Tingbaot Wol Wo 11 Long Pasifik Aelan”: Managing memories of World War Two heritage in the Pacific’ in Carr, G. and Reeves, K.

122  Anna-Karina Hermkens (eds) Heritage and memory of war: Responses from small islands, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Rocha, C. (2009) ‘Seeking healing transnationally: Australians, John of God and Brazilian Spiritism’, TAJA, vol. 20, pp. 229–246. Scates, B. (2002) ‘In Gallipoli’s shadow: Pilgrimage, memory, mourning and the Great War’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 33, no. 119, pp. 1–21. ———. (2006a) Return to Gallipoli: Walking the battlefields of the Great War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2006b) “ ‘It’s like a Mecca, like a pilgrimage”. Backpacker journeys’ in Scates, B. (ed.) Return to Gallipoli. Walking the Battlefields of the Great War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2007) ‘The first casualty of war: a reply to McKenna’s and Ward’s ‘Gallipoli pilgrimage and sentimental nationalism’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 38, no. 130, pp. 312–321. ——— with McCosker, A., Reeves, K., Wheatley, R. and Williams, D. (2013) Anzac Journeys: Returning to the battlefields of World War Two, New York and Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Seal, G. (2007) ‘Anzac: The sacred in the secular’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 31, no. 91, pp. 135–144. Skrbiš, Z. (2007) ‘From migrants to pilgrim tourists: Diasporic imagining and visits to Medjugorje’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 313–329. Slade, P. (2003) ‘Gallipoli thanatourism: The meaning of Anzac’, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 779–794. Smith, L. (2012) ‘A pilgrimage of masculinity: The Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Outback Heritage Centre’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 472–482. Stephens, J. (2014) ‘Sacred landscapes: Albany and Anzac pilgrimage’, Landscape Research, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 21–39. Stephenson, P. (2011) ‘Indigenous Australia’s pilgrimage to Islam’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 261–277. Timmer, J. (2012) ‘Visualizing the lost temple and mapping a straightening world in Solomon Islands: Two cultural products of the Deep Sea Canoe movement’ in Cusack, C. and Norman, A. (eds) Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production, Leiden: Brill. Timothy, D. and Olsen, D. (eds) (2006) Tourism, religion and spiritual journeys, London and New York: Routledge. Turner, V. and E. (2011/1978) Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture, New York: Columbia University Press. Tweed, T. (2002) Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic religion at a Cuban Catholic shrine in Miami, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Warfield, H., Baker, S. and Parikh Foxx, S. (2014) ‘The therapeutic value of pilgrimage: A grounded theory study’, Mental Health, Religion and Culture, vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 680–875. Weaver, D. (2013) ‘Echoes of the Great Pacific Conflict: Australia’s regional war tourism dividend’ in Butler, R. and Suntikul, W. (eds) Tourism and war, New York and London: Routledge. West, B. (2008) ‘Enchanting pasts: the role of international civil religious pilgrimage in reimagining national collective memory’, Sociological Theory, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 258–270.

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8 South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence Shirley du Plooy

Introduction Research and publications on pilgrimage are relatively few and far between in South(ern) Africa—the southernmost region of Africa, south of the Cunene and Zambezi Rivers, including Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, part of Mozambique and the Republic of South Africa. This chapter seeks to bring South(ern) African studies of pilgrimage into the international arena by focussing on particular case studies of different types of pilgrimage and the substantive issues emerging from them. Despite the fervour surrounding pilgrimage studies internationally, the ripple effects have not fully reached the shores of this southern region. There are several reasons for this. First, unlike in many European and Latin American countries it lacks an institutionalized Catholic past infused with a history of journeying. Equally so, practicing Hindu, Muslim and even Buddhist communities are relatively small and regionally bound. Many, having their origins in indentured labour populations from India and elsewhere, their institutionalized influence is only recently acknowledged and felt. The social time and public space they occupy has not been profound (Steil, in this volume). Secondly, precolonial African religious activity in this region tended to involve a response to misfortune rather than devotional activities as articulated in text-based religions (see Tanner, 2003: 127). Third, there are many long-established stereotypes about Africa and her people, as well as a lack of knowledge about local religious and spiritual practices and their histories. Illustrating such ethnocentric views and serving as a case in point are sweeping and ill-informed statements such as this by Bhardwaj and Rinschede, the editors of Pilgrimage in World Religions: ‘Christian pilgrimage centers are virtually absent in Black Africa probably because the veneer of Christianity is thin and the influence of its own nature religions still profound’ (1988, cited in Müller, 2011: 10). Such narrow views are founded on the belief that a ‘ “Christian pilgrimage center” in Africa would resemble its Euro-Asian equivalents’ (Müller, 2011: 10). Yet, being affronted by the narrowness of such comments may also indicate how much pilgrimage studies in general, and in Southern Africa in particular, has changed since 1988.

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 125 The fourth reason relates to the ways in which disciplinary traditions and theoretical debates are entrenched in ‘national structures of knowledge production’ (Albera and Eade, 2015: 1). In South Africa, for example, some sections of the population have been ‘ “invisible” in the public domain’ (Margry, 2008: 16) and their customs and practices have been ignored by researchers. As Roos (2006: 12) notes, ‘any definition and description of “pilgrimage” will depend at least in part on the vantage point of the observer, or whether the observer “sees” the pilgrimage at all’. The power of political censorship and repression cannot be underestimated in the generation of research projects (as was the case in Brazil’s period of military dictatorship, Steil in this volume). Researchers have also failed to appreciate how pilgrimage is changing in the region and the significance of ‘simpler pilgrimage forms’ (Tanner, 2003: 133). Contemporary pilgrimage research is beginning to overcome these obstacles. Early research on religious pilgrimage in South(ern) Africa largely contributed descriptive accounts of cult activities and religious movements with distinct historical and religious slants (see, for example, Becken, 1968, 1983; Riviere, 1986; Ranger, 1987; Werbner, 1989 and Tanner, 2003). These forms of travel and pilgrimages were conceived of and presented as part of the belief system which was the focus of the studies. More recent research has widened the focus through explorations of the ownership of the sacred, the construction of national sacred sites, narrative and identity construction, reclaiming conquered territory, spiritual capital, pilgrimage as big business, inner journeys and a shift beyond ontologies towards ontogenesis. Hence, visits to graves have become significant, while collective memories articulated by different groups have transformed places into places of pilgrimage (Margry, 2008: 18) and journeys into pilgrimage paths and routes. Pilgrimage has been often used in the region as a metaphor to convey the journey of life. It has also sometimes been employed to denote the literal, often arduous, journeys people underwent—see, for example, F. A. Venter’s Swart Pelgrim (1952), Guy Butler’s narrative poem (1987) Pilgrimage to Dias Cross, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1994), and David Levey’s (2001) Alan Paton: Pilgrim and Prophet? Academic research, however, has focussed on pilgrimage as a religious process and located it as part of the belief system. The region’s rich religious practices and beliefs are strongly founded on Traditional African Religions and Christianity, and in pockets Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other faith traditions flourish. Initially the introduction and spread of Protestantism via explorers and missionaries, and later separatist and African Independent Churches (AICs) had a profound influence on the religious landscape of the area. Pentecostal, and more recently, neo-Pentecostal and neo-Charismatic churches (‘born agains’) direct the everyday lives of locals. The study of Southern African place pilgrimage is shaped by the way that Christianity has been taken up and made African, but also by the post-Apartheid African Renaissance’s reinvigoration

126  Shirley du Plooy of everything African, including a rediscovery of African Traditional Spirituality. Pilgrimage research reflects this dominance, in that the primary focus is on Christian pilgrimage. When religious journeys are discussed, an African Religions’ hue is often acknowledged. We know though that festivals and processions in Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish traditions are integral parts of spiritual life (see Boivin in this volume). The Hindu Thaipusam Kavadi in Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg, the annual Festival of Chariots in the mother city and the Lord Ganesha Float Procession Festival in Durban, the ten-day Muslim Muharram Festival in Durban, the lotus flower shaped Buddhist Sri Sri Radhanath Temple of Understanding in Chatsworth and Ixopo Buddhist Retreat Centre, both in KwaZuluNatal, serve as but a few examples to illustrate. However, at the moment there are no systematic studies of these festivals and processions that can enlighten this discussion.

Organized and Informal Pilgrimage in South Africa— Indigenous Churches and Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Organized Pilgrimage and Indigenous Churches Some Christian pilgrimages are formal, organized and attract people from far and wide, while others are informal and domestic and people travel over short distances. In order to understand how these two types of pilgrimage operate I will focus on a few major examples, mainly from South Africa. The first concerns the Nazareth Baptist Church’s (NBC) annual pilgrimage up Mount Nhlangakazi in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. If the NBC is to act a centre of stability in the post-apartheid nation as Liz Gunner suggests (cited in Heuser, 2005: 366), this pilgrimage may begin to occupy a more prominent position on the religious-cultural landscape in the region and in South Africa as a whole. The pilgrimage consists of an eighty-kilometre journey over five days which is undertaken by thousands of NBC devotees (see Chidester, 1992: 131) and is seen as the zenith of the devotees’ pursuit of spiritual revitalization (Hlatshwayo, 2012). Characteristically dressed in white cotton robes or gowns called umnazaretha, befitting of each age and gender grade, and church rank, barefooted church leaders followed by the men, lead the pilgrimage procession. The married women make up the middle platoon and the young maidens bring up the rear. Hlatshwayo (2012) explains the pilgrimage as a ‘hypnotic experience of spiritual praise through song, movement and dance’. According to him, each hymn is individually choreographed and sets the tone and the pace for the snaking procession. The mountain’s summit is the ultimate destination where the activities centre on prayer meetings, sermons and celebrations of song and dance, meditations and healing rituals. A number of altars are marked with white-washed stone or bunches of imphepho.1 The main altar, a circular 70cm high by 182cm in diameter

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 127 altar of packed rock is the focal point of the central service’s proceedings. Laid thick with imphepho flowers brought by pilgrims, one cannot imagine a more beautifully prepared and befitting table (see Becken, 1968: 141). Apparently the imphepho is burned on the last day (see Sundkler, 1961: 199). The current leader himself addresses the masses at the central service. After which, the first ascent is made in his company and pastors (Becken, 1968: 147). Three further services are conducted here during the course of the pilgrimage period, the final of which is a Holy Communion service and the other two are dance-centred. On the last day of the pilgrimage all participants carry a stone to the highest point of the plateau and place it on the large cairn—a symbolic action to obtain good luck (Becken, 1968: 148). Sundkler (1961: 154) considers this pilgrimage a major opportunity for church leaders and followers to build bonds which sound very much like Turnerian communitas. The second example of organized pilgrimage is provided by the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). Müller (2011: 9) explains that there are at least three annual pilgrimages but several have also developed around the visits by ZCC’s leader, Bishop Lekganyane, to neighbouring African countries.2 Hence, at Easter and during the Church’s ‘New Year’ pilgrimage in September, hundreds of thousands of congregants make their way to Zion City (assembly grounds) at Moria. In fact, the Easter pilgrimage sees more than two million ZCC pilgrims in attendance (Roos, 2006: 35, Saayman et al., 2014: 408). Müller describes the atmosphere as ordered and controlled, militaristic, stately, structured, and there is a build up towards a crescendo (2011: 95, 107, 112, 118 and 185). Müller sees the ZCC and the pilgrimages to Moria as revealing a ‘dialectical interplay between free-flowing charismatic chaos and bureaucratic orderliness’ as well as between ‘order and charisma’ (2011: 103, 118). He contends that both these pilgrimages and the journeys undertaken by the Bishop within South Africa and to other countries in the region demonstrate the ZCC’s character as a ‘travelling church’ (Müller, 2011: 11, 2008). They are not ‘engaged in by people nostalgically in search of a lost past, but rather by those who remain hopeful in the possibility of a future, preferable to the travails of the present’ (Müller, 2011). Such a statement seems closely aligned with Jean Comaroff’s (1985) contention about the ZCC’s role in general—it offers hope despite untenable circumstances and presents ‘a vision of wholeness’ (Müller, 2011: 47). Hence, Moria can be considered as an ideal-type sacralized home (Müller, 2011: 117). For the majority of pilgrims, visits here ‘serve the purpose of infusing the imagination with its spirit, so that it in fact accompanies them in their everyday life away from the center’ (Müller, 2011). Even if the Bishop is not personally present, it is believed that he is present in spirit (Müller, 2011: 125). Zion City with all its sites within the ‘Kingdom’s centre’ (Müller, 2011: 113) appears to fit well with Eliade’s concept of a sacred centre—a point which will be discussed in more detail later.

128  Shirley du Plooy The third example concerns the Corinthian Church of South Africa (CCSA) and its annual service held in Mlazi, KwaZulu-Natal, at the end of October. The presence and activity of Spirit/spirits experienced there transforms the ‘church and grounds into a sacred site’ (Wepener and te Haar, 2014: 101) but the Mlazi experience is also mobile. Ash is taken for rituals elsewhere, since it is seen as having greater potency than ashes collected in other places. Visitors also take back their experiences to share them with congregants at home. Rituals performed and participated in at Mlazi are a form of spiritual empowerment, therefore—‘a way of empowering people through spiritual means’ (Wepener and te Haar, 2014: 102). For believers, spiritual empowerment opens up ways to achieve the good life. The empowering rituals performed at Mlazi convey the message that with the help of Spirit/spirits ‘one can lift oneself out of any adverse condition’ (Wepener and te Haar, 2014). Spiritual power can therefore be transformed into spiritual capital, i.e. the ‘people’s ability to access resources believed to reside in an invisible world that can be mobilised for the common good’ (Wepener and te Haar, 2014) through religious rituals. Organized Pilgrimage and Roman Catholics Although Southern Africa lacks an institutionalized Catholic past akin to that in Europe and Latin America, it does not mean that Catholicism and its history of journeying has not contributed to the journeying landscape in the region. Particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, there are a number of Catholic shrines, the most important of which is Ngome Marian Shrine in the diocese of Eshowe, which attract visitation from a range of supplicants (www.icon. co.za/~host/shrines/index.htm). The visions of the Benedictine Sister Reinolda May (aka Sister Mashiane) about a sacred place where seven streams converge coincided with a place already revered by the local Zulu-speaking population. The site was used for prayer and spring water was harvested for its particular properties (www.icon.co.za/~host/ngome/index.htm). Although the first official pilgrims visited Ngome in 1966, it was only in 1992, with the blessing of the diocesan bishop, that pilgrimages were keenly endorsed and undertaken. The shrine’s reputation has not only grown within South Africa but has also become more widely known through the international Movement of the Pilgrim Virgin (Roos, 2006: 151–152). Informal Pilgrimages and African Christianity Moving from formal, organized pilgrimages to those characterized by their informal, domestic and spontaneous nature I will focus on journeys to consult with MaRadebe at Cancele. Journeys to this faith healer in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa are seen by Becken as a model where

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 129 Christian faith is integrated with traditional African worldviews (1983: 126; see also Chidester, 1992: 142). This is achieved by the unconventional use of symbolism and provides an example of hybridity (Christianity in its African shape) rather than syncretism (Becken, 1983: 127–128). Unlike evangelistic campaigns or revival meetings, journeys to Cancele can also be defined as people’s movements, spontaneous movements and religious movements (Becken, 1992: 125) Unlike those undertaken by members of African Independent Churches, such as the NBC or ZCC, they are not linked to certain festival seasons; rather, there is a ‘constant flow going and coming from the sanctuary by day and night, a dynamic popular movement’ (Becken, 1992: 116). In addition, the pilgrims come from both sexes and all ages, speak many languages, wear Western or traditional attire and hail from all regions, from a range of church affiliations, and social strata (Becken, 2014: 119, 125). These studies of pilgrimages are significant for a number of reasons. First, they demonstrate the occurrence of pilgrimages in a region perhaps believed not to have pilgrimages. Second, these studies highlight similar structures and canonical tropes (e.g. organized or formal, and the sacred) as found in research elsewhere following similar theoretical and substantial points of departure. In the third place, the studies of NBC, ZCC and journeys to MaRadebe, the faith healer, reveal their authors’ foundations in religious studies. These authors were not proposing or exploring new paradigms or horizons in pilgrimage studies. Instead, they highlighted the similarities they encountered with Protestant formulae and structure, as well as symbolic recognition of their belief system’s foundational role in the journeys they were describing.

Contestation Nthoi (2006) accepts that conflict and contestation have become viewed as a natural consequence of the polyvocality of pilgrimage arenas. He examines these processes in the context of domestic pilgrimages by individuals or small groups to the Mwali cult or High-God shrines at Njelele in the Matopo Hills of southern Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. These pilgrims come not only from Zimbabwe but also from Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique and even as far as Tanzania. The climax of these pilgrimages involves consulting the oracle or, as Nthoi puts it, reporting to the high authority (Nthoi 2006: 105, 115, 192). The consultation takes place in the early morning ritual where ‘supplicants report and appeal to the High God and other divinities’ (Nthoi 2006: 106). This ritual involves much more than ‘simple spirit mediumship’, since pilgrims make ‘contact with divinity’ and appeal ‘to a higher moral order than is available elsewhere’ (Nthoi 2006). They are brought into the substantive presence of the revered High God but they can also share in a place where lesser divinities are particularly powerful (Nthoi 2006: 128, 139).

130  Shirley du Plooy What is important for Nthoi (2006: 3, 62, 91) is the movement or traffic to and from the sacred centre and the flows of people, goods and services between the centre and peripheral areas. His working definition of pilgrimage is, therefore: a movement focused upon a sacred central place, and undertaken by supplicants in fulfilment of their relationship with a deity or its manifestation. The length of the journey involved, like the catchment area of the sacred center, is highly variable. (Nthoi, 2006: 91) He believes that this is a less deterministic view of pilgrimage since it accommodates the diversity of pilgrims and meanings they associate with the journey and multiplicity of motivations for undertaking pilgrimages. Nthoi’s main thesis is that the sacred is contested. Primarily, this contestation results from the many types of pilgrims visiting Njelele, the variety of cosmological and religious underpinnings these pilgrims subscribe to, the complex array of motivations cited for undertaking pilgrimages and the often divergent views priestly officials, local community members, local traditional authorities and government representatives have concerning the shrines. In exploring these contestations, he considers the intricate process of constructing site imagery (2006: 155–158, 160). This process is shaped by the various stakeholders and interest groups, both obvious, such as shrine priests, and not so obvious, such as uninvolved community members from surrounding villages. Nthoi argues that it is important for our overall understanding of site use, and Southern African pilgrimages in general, to realize that other religious and spiritual beliefs ‘co-exist, co-operate, complement and even compete with the oracular cult of Mwali’ (2006: 27, 126). The infusion of beliefs and practices related to ancestors with those associated with Mwali point to a developing religious hybridity. The extraordinary Mwali pilgrimage cult, which extends beyond ethnic and political borders, is delineated by its heterogeneous pilgrim clientele. The flexibility and fluidity of its organization, which has an adaptive advantage given our changing world, may precisely be a reason why it has taken so long for an in-depth pilgrimage study to be conducted (Nthoi, 2006: 60–62).

Other Dimensions and Types of Pilgrimage Nthoi (2006: 128–129) also contends that religious and cosmological beliefs do not satisfactorily explain the reasons why devotees travel. Pressing problems invariably motivate pilgrims to undertake further pilgrimages (2006: 140–141) and this accords with Tanner’s claim that traditional sub-Saharan African religious activities tend to be crisis reactive (2003: 127). Nthoi (2006: 139) contends that many journeys of reverence in this region are not

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 131 recognized as pilgrimages perhaps because these motivations are unfamiliar to Western and Anglophone social scientists. This lack of local knowledge, combined with the influence of the Turnerian distinction between tribal rites and pilgrimage proper, has prevented researchers from considering journeys, such as rain and first-fruit festivals or grave visitations, under the banner of pilgrimages (Nthoi 2006). The political dimensions of pilgrimage are also explored by David Coplan (2003) in the context of pilgrims journeying to the sacred sites of the Mohokare Valley along the Lesotho-South African border. He claims that site users consider this area as part of their sacred geography regardless of formal declarations saying the area now falls within the bounds of the Free State province of South Africa. And, second, because they consider the fertile river valley and other areas as belonging to the Kingdom of Lesotho, pilgrims are reclaiming this conquered territory (in a process akin to ethnicization) (see Claveyrolas, this volume). However, Philip Nel (2014b: 165–186) takes the contestation debate further by refuting Coplan’s claim that the visits by pilgrims from Lesotho to the sites in the Free State are an act of defiance and a rejection of South Africa’s sovereignty over the area. Instead of considering pilgrimages in terms of faith-based divisions, Beverley Roos (2006) has drawn up a typology based on their functions. Included among others are pilgrimages of loss, veneration, healing, regret, ‘barter’ or exchange. Approaching pilgrimages in this way allowed her to consider journeys not always thought of as pilgrimages, particularly those outside the realm of major world religions (Roos 2006: 6), i.e. journeys to ancient Stone and Iron Age and struggle sites. Common to all these pursuits are the importance which journeyers attach to their journey, the gravity with which they are undertaken and the profound inner journeys. Saayman, Saayman and Gyekye (2014: 407–414) add another dimension by analyzing the economic value of the ZCC Easter pilgrimage to Moria. They found that this pilgrimage boosted the regional economy by ZAR400 million in 2011. As the single largest yearly event in South Africa both in terms of the number of attendees and economic value, the ZCC’s Easter conference is big business. What we see is that the cash injection such a pilgrimage—which falls under the banner of religious tourism—generates, is substantial. Although it does not come close to the US$8 billion revenue generated by the religious travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, it remains sizeable.

Anthropological Studies There are few systematic anthropological studies of these journeys. Here I will consider sites in the eastern Free State province of South Africa which have been recently studied by anthropologists. Situated in the Mohokare (Caledon) River Valley, these sites attract visitors from predominantly Sesotho-speaking areas but others arrive from across the country and

132  Shirley du Plooy neighbouring countries. They are mostly Apostolic, ZCC, Roman Catholic and more recently Protestant congregants travelling in groups or individually mainly over weekends. Seeking to commune with the divine, pilgrims come to report and make prayer-requests, while important motives involve searching for and solidifying ancestor connections and securing their blessings. Some visitors make the trip only once but others return several times a year and some even stay for years. Stephanie Cawood has explored the visitors’ oral narratives from an anthropological perspective (2014: 203–224). She contends that within the ritual landscape of the Mohokare Valley rhetoric, the persuasive nature of narratives and rituals (the mimodramas) are the ‘vehicles through which social reality is reconstructed’ (Cawood, 2014: 203). Oral narratives not only contextualize but also legitimize rituals, and therefore pilgrimages as well since they provide the substance or foundation of the rituals. A collection of oral narratives contributes to the emergence and development of an oral tradition. When the fantasy themes of a group of pilgrims converge, one may speak of the chaining of fantasy themes and the development of a rhetorical vision. Cawood found that the narratives were embedded, dynamic, mythical, pragmatic, influenced by the political economy, a-historical, important forces in the formation of identity and community dynamics (2014: 207– 218). Some of the fantasy themes are also contested, leading to varying degrees of conflict for individual pilgrims, as well as among groups of site users (Cawood, 2014: 206). The point to emphasize here is that the oral narratives, the shared fantasy themes and rhetorical vision—the rhetoric of Mohokare pilgrimages—construct the pilgrimage experience and meaning for pilgrims in diverse, sometimes conflicting ways. I am studying pilgrimage to the Mohokare sites from an anthropological perspective as well. Based on preliminary analyses of data collected at the sites, I have examined the unfolding picture of eastern Free State leeto (journeys) through the themes of narrative and identity (du Plooy, 2014: 117–131). In the first instance, in the absence of a grand or dominant narrative at the site(s), pilgrims encounter and are confronted with a number of stories as they consider, plan, undertake and reflect on their pilgrimages. The polyvocal nature of the sites and all the stations contained in them, the assortment of pilgrim-types, the multiplicity of reasons for undertaking pilgrimages, and variant pilgrimage experiences leads to a situation where pilgrims are involved in a process of narrative interpretation, reinterpretation, reformulation, invention, and reinvention. Narrative content is continuously being developed to authenticate and legitimize the larger sites, the journeys, the stations along the pilgrimage paths, the pilgrims, the motivations and the meanings associated with eastern Free State pilgrimages. Pilgrims are, therefore, constructing the narratives that effectively make pilgrimages to the sacred sites of Mantsopa, Mautse and Motouleng, what

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 133 they are. Similarly, these narratives that pilgrims are involved in creating in turn create and validate the various pilgrim identities evident at the sites. It has also become clear that these pilgrimages become within a complex meshwork of interrelated and entangled trails (du Plooy, 2015; see Hermkens in this volume). Human journeyers, the natural environment, the tangible and the intangible, the absent and the present, the material and the immaterial are all entangled and can be explored in terms of three domains—landscapes, dreamscapes and personscapes. It is precisely then that these non-linear, multi-dimensional and often unpredictable interconnections between domains bring about pilgrimages with their varying characteristics. While I further explore the entanglement and entrapment of these different domains, I am also considering examples of the materialized forms of impermanent or absent things. Once materialized, they have duration and can act back, and engage more concretely, involving and re-involving themselves in a dependence-dependency relational dance of pilgrimages to these sacred sites (du Plooy, 2016). Because of the dependence of human pilgrims on each other, their environment/landscape and their things, they launch each other into a set of joint movements, or what we may call ‘evolving pilgrimage’. Depending on pilgrims’ motivations for embarking on such quests, their debts and obligations entrap them into relationships with the journey. We might even think of pilgrimage as a way in which particularly matted entanglements and entrapments are smoothed or combed out, in so doing achieving desired and unforeseen transformations. Within this complex process, impermanent things can be translated into other forms like landscapes, dreamscapes or personscapes. The absent or immaterial things then gain significance and duration in materialized forms. Their durability ‘acts back,’ and in the process, creates a necessary dependency. In turn, pilgrims invest in the forms, becoming entrapped in their intricacies and logics.

Sacred Places: Their Construction, Appropriation and Ownership Terence Ranger (1987) presents an historical account of land and landscape appropriation and the creation of sacred places and the journeys to these places in Zimbabwe. He draws attention to what made places sacred in precolonial Zimbabwe, the initial missionary contact and mutuality in contrast with the modernizing, centralized church’s agenda, the rise and influence of Apostolic Churches, the Guerrilla War and its aftermath and the development of national sacred sites. While differences in the economic and domestic use of land by precolonial locals and early explorers, missionaries and colonists have been recognized, the study of pilgrimage in Southern Africa has seldom recognized the importance of differences attached to land for spiritual, religious and social expression.

134  Shirley du Plooy Although Ranger’s study (1987) concentrates on the history of holy places and sacred journeys in Zimbabwe, it is particularly insightful for its treatment of pre- and post-colonial perceptions of land, landscape and the sacralizing process. It lays the foundation for an understanding of the intimate connection between land and the continued obligation of the living to maintain relationships with ancestors, thereby forging connection with the afterlife and securing blessings and good fortune in the present. Through this lens, we can begin to understand the significance of graves and grave visitations where family groups travel to the gravesites of departed loved ones to report to their ancestors and also, on a practical level, to weed and tidy the grave area. Ranger’s article also demonstrates the continued rise and fall ‘between the local and central, the popular and the institutional. The holy place and the pilgrimage . . . ’ (1987: 191) and points to the unfolding development of a spiritual hybridity. Since pilgrimages and journeys of reverence are often to a special or even sacred destination, Philip Nel (2014a: 135–146) argues that the issue of ownership cannot be confined within legal parameters. Ownership may include, among others, cultural, spiritual, religious, political, symbolic and historically inherited claims to ownership (Nel 2014a: 137, 139). For visitors, ‘to own is to symbolically appropriate all immaterial associations of the site as part and parcel of one’s own socio-political and cultural-religious landscape, as well as to possess it materially’ (Nel 2014a: 137; see Claveyrolas in this volume). Visiting and using the site, being present (subjective presence), and demonstrating memory or memo-history seems enough for people to claim ownership. Mogomme Masoga’s (2014) analysis of the construction of the Freedom Park in the South African capital of Pretoria does not directly address pilgrimage but it does raise critical issues around how national sacred space(s) is created and its relevance for pilgrimage research. Constructed opposite the Voortrekker monument (a primary symbol commemorating South Africa’s apartheid past), the park contains a 25,000 square metre garden of remembrance, symbolic burial ground for the fallen heroes of the liberation struggle and a wall of names, a lake and trees, eternal flame, amphitheatre and exhibition space and the Pan African archives. This national heritage monument was imagined as a representation of ‘all the country’s unfolding experiences and symbols’ (Masoga, 2014: 268). With a past as contested as South Africa’s the intention was to both comment on and grapple with ‘gaps, distortions and biases [and] to provide new perspectives on South Africa’s heritage, challenging traditional narratives through a re-interpretation of the country’s existing heritage sites’ (Masoga, 2014: 268). However, despite all of the forethought that went into making the site, it alienated certain communities by excluding them from the ‘construction of a national historical consciousness’. Masoga concludes that the park should, rather, ‘mediate the past, present and future’ (Masoga, 2014: 276; see also Masoga, 2014: 268) by concertedly

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 135 and creatively working at developing more common ground across groups (Masoga, 2014: 276). The sacred is increasingly dislodged from centralized religious and political institutions and authorities and even from entitled proprietors . . . to become “owned” by individuals and groups sharing a common interest and memory or in search of the fulfilment of existential and spiritual yearnings. (Nel, 2014a: 145) Yet, battles over ownership continue. In particular, state institutions such as government departments insist on ‘claiming national ownership of living heritage sites’, while various Churches still control access and the management of these sacred sites (Nel, 2014a: 142–145). These official attempts to ‘own the sacred as part and parcel of heritage’ seem to echo Masoga’s critique of the Freedom Park Monument. Such spatial tactical strategies or moves frame what should be regarded as heritage and what not, or what should be regarded as sacred and what not. Felicité Fairer-Wessels (2005) also looks beyond religious pilgrimage by testing the hypothesis that visitors come to Robben Island near Cape Town because of its association with the global icon Nelson Mandela and his twenty-seven-year-long incarceration but particularly because they are inspired to follow in his footsteps after having read his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1994). If the latter were the case, such journeys would be referred to as literary pilgrimage. However, she concludes that instead of being the primary motivator to undertake the trip, visitors chose to read Mandela’s book after the journey.

Discussion—the Links between Research in Southern Africa and Wider Debates It would seem that the primary paradigm for South(ern) African religious mobility was not pilgrimage, but journey (this is compared to processions in Hinduism, Claveyrolas this volume). Yet, most of the scholarship dealing with pilgrimage has very much focused on the destination—the sacred place and persons associated with a particular place. In Ranger’s (1987) article, for example, place is emphasized. Here land and landscape is appropriated and becomes sacralized. The Zimbabwean hills and mountains became sacred, and therefore destinations worthy of visitation, because they are the burial places of deceased leaders. They become the link between living descendants and deceased forbearers. Visiting these places expresses and maintains the continued social bonds between members of the larger social group. The NBC procession up Mount Nhlangakazi also emphasizes place-centeredness (Becken, 1968), while the pilgrims visiting MaRadebe at Cancele do so to consult with a revered faith healer—sacred place and person are intimately

136  Shirley du Plooy related (Becken, 1983). In Müller’s (2011) descriptive account of the ZCC pilgrimage place is once more the prime focus, since he aligns with the Turners and Eliade by claiming that Moria is the hallowed pilgrimage destination of the ZCC—its sacred centre. These three authors treat the geographical places as sacred, then—inherently so. They are thin spaces where the boundaries between the sacred and the profane promote communion with the divine. They are ‘thought of as a meeting-place between the pilgrim and the longed-for destination’ (Roos, 2006: 15). This is in line with the Eliadean view of a pilgrimage centre which is a: historical place associated with the believed manifestation of the source of the sacredness of the place. The pilgrimage deity is still believed to be eternally vital and a living presence in that very place. Owing to the permanent residence of the sacred power of the place, a sanctuary or enclave has been established and is set apart from the profane space surrounding it. (Nthoi, 2006: 77–78) The belief is that at this spot a proverbial stairway to heaven exists, a bridge that can be transcended between heaven and earth, and earth and heaven (see Eliade, 1963: 373). In the natural world mountains rise up from the earth and seem to touch the sky/heaven. For this reason many sacred sites are found on or near mountains—in Turnerian terms, they constitute a ritual or sacred area topography (see Turner, 1973: 205, 206, 223; Claveyrolas in this volume). This approach can be contrasted with that developed by Jonathan Z. Smith (1980, 1987, 2004). In terms of ritual Smith emphasizes place as the key element and the lens that focusses attention. Place does not have the substantive holiness that Eliade perceives. Smith focusses more narrowly on the social emplacement of rituals and the social recognition of a place’s sacrality. In terms of the studies outlined above, the sacred which Cawood (2014), Coplan (2003), Masoga (2014), Nel (2014a, 2014b) and Wepener and te Haar (2014) deal with is not limited to geographical space − the sacred centre in the Eliadean sense − but rather the social process of emplacement as described by Smith. In their analysis of the Isitshisa gathering Wepener and te Haar (2014) turn away from these perspectives by drawing on Bourdieu’s idea of social capital. They contend that the spiritual power gained from partaking in the journey and attending the all night sacrifice service is transformed into spiritual capital by means of the ritual performances at Mlazi. This incredible resource is then drawn from as pilgrims return home and deal with the travails of everyday life. In this case, Mlazi is considered as a place of particular power. Yet, the power is again not inherent to the place; it gains its

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 137 power because of its persoongebondenheid—its connection with a person; in this case, the CCSA founder, and now his widow. This spiritual capital is not unlike that gained from consulting with MaRadebe, the celebrated faith healer who attracts pilgrims with an array of problems to her reception area in Cancele (see Becken, 1983). It is here that she consults with pilgrims, provides treatment regimens and emphasizes the value of her blessed water in recovery. Although this is clearly a person-centred (persoongebonden) journey, the healing water that is taken home is only a material reminder of this spiritual capital. In Nthoi’s Contesting Sacred Space (2006) the analytical perspective changes. Drawing on the criticisms levelled at the Turnerian model, as well as at the functionalist and structuralist approaches to the study and understanding of pilgrimages, he sees ‘pilgrimage as having both integrative and disintegrative functions, and in which communitas is both present and absent’ (2006: 76). He also draws on the notions of flows and movement which evoke Appadurai (1996) and then Coleman and Eade (2004). His interest in flows of people, goods and services then connects well to Reader’s (2014) work on Pilgrimage in the Marketplace—the commercial and economic interest groups and centres without which pilgrimages will not exist. Nel’s (2014a, 2014b) study of the ownership of the sacred links to research in other areas of the world, which explore the issue of different and sometimes competing claims to the same sacred place (see Eade and Katic´, 2014). Indeed, scholars working outside of the Southern African region would learn from Nel’s case study where the legal rights of landowners, religious institutions or even sovereign states seem to play second fiddle to pilgrims’ claims of ownership based on site use, their subjective presence, memory and memo-history. Masoga’s study of the Freedom Park (2014) also links to research elsewhere which looks beyond sacrality defined in religious terms to national sacred sites (see Reader and Walter, 1993; Dubisch and Winkelman, 2005). What is understood to constitute pilgrimage has expanded considerably. In recent pilgrimage studies the focus has been on the individual and personal within the realm of the collective (Margry, 2008b: 37). Hence, a range of conceptions, intentions, expectations and expressions concerning the meaning of pilgrimage and how to achieve desired outcomes are accommodated in the same place and journey, as are very different types of journeys undertaken to both more conventional and new sacred places. These are substantive issues which have been explored in Roos’s (2006) doctoral research, for example. The beautifully vibrant, colourful and complex pilgrimages to the sacred sites of the eastern Free State also call for a rethinking and broadening of the pilgrimage lens. The classic or traditional mainly Anglophone and Western conception of pilgrimage, whether the religious or non-religious label is used, it is too narrow to accommodate the range and complexity

138  Shirley du Plooy of motivations, traditions, people and behaviours in southern Africa. The reconceptualization of pilgrimage requires, on the one hand, an acknowledgement that the symbolic language used to express journeys and journey experiences differ (Fairer-Wessels, 2005: 8). Often journeyers themselves do not articulate their travel and forms of movement as pilgrimages. How they express their journey is caught up in the narratives of others they encounter, thereby legitimizing their experience and interpretation. As alluded to above by Nthoi (2006), it is possible that the symbolic language used by journeyers does not resonate with the categories used by researchers and journeys are excluded from being considered as pilgrimages. I think for example of rain and first-fruits festivals. The point to make here is that researchers do not always explore the emic use of terms, nor the meanings attached to them. In such cases, etic categorizations may be conflated with supposed emic categories and understandings. Further, the relation between the emic and etic analytical distinctions is poorly explored. This is, of course, not to deny that etic definitions can be usefully applied in analyses. What is important, however, is that the relationship between etic and emic has to be empirically analyzed. To illustrate this lack of pilgrimage categorization are the cases of the ZCC and the Mighty Men (Buchan, 2012), who both refer to their annual gatherings as conferences. On the other hand, I do not propose that South(ern) African pilgrimages are magically more complex than pilgrimages elsewhere. I contend that the pilgrimage lens that has often been used in South(ern) African studies of pilgrimages is too narrow to capture the complexity of these pilgrimages. The classic or traditional pilgrimage lens invokes Western European and North American, Christian and particularly Catholic pilgrimages. It disallows many types of journeys because they do not fit these classic/traditional conceptions of pilgrimages. Further, this lens is blind to complex and complicated connections with things (routinely relegated to the background like white noise). These lenses are often used in deterministic and deductive ways. As cases in point, eastern Free State pilgrimage data shows the nonlinear paths along which many of these immaterial and so-called absent things act back, creating unique pilgrimaging encounters. Eastern Free State sites and pilgrimages show a very complex platform or arenas with all kinds of discourses and religious traditions. But the mixture of traditions, motivations, meanings and range of connections just does not fit the classic conceptions of pilgrimage. Being journeys and places of substance required acknowledging the significant role the immaterial plays in all that is pilgrimage. This meant that the culturalist model was inadequate to capture a more complete pilgrimage story. Instead, drawing on the perspective of a relational epistemology and ontology, we can explore the ways in which the entwinement, enmeshment, entanglement and entrapment of the material and immaterial, the animate and inanimate, the present and absent things bring the sacred sites, the pilgrimages and the pilgrims into existence.

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 139

Notes 1 Imphepho (isiZulu and isiXhosa); mphepha in (Sesotho) is a pungent herb, Helichrysum moeserianum used as incense to cleanse relationships with and draw on the authority of ancestors in the majority of traditional practitioner gatherings. According to Becken (1968:141), the variety of Helichrysum is microniaefolium—an evergreen plant burnt as offering to the spirits with a characteristically sweet scent. Helichrysum generally have an array of medicinal applications among others as anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, for respiratory problems such as cough and colds, as well as insect repellent. It is also idiomatically known as kooigoed, the herbaceous plant materials used as bedding by the Khew (Helichrysum petiolare). 2 In Deuteronomy 16:16 the instruction is clear: “All the men of your nation are to come to worship the Lord three times a year at the place of worship: at Passover, Harvest Festival, and the Festival of Shelters. Each man is to bring a gift”. Jeremiah 6:16 talks about the selection of a path: “The Lord said to his people, ‘Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths and where the best road is. Walk on it, and you will live in peace’ ”.

Bibliography Albera, D. and Eade, J. (eds) (2015a) International perspectives on pilgrimage studies: Itineraries, gaps and obstacles, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ———. (2015b) ‘International perspectives on pilgrimage research: Putting the Anglophone contribution in its place’ in Albera, D. and Eade, J. (eds) International perspectives on pilgrimage studies: Itineraries, gaps and obstacles, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Becken, H.-J. (1968) ‘On the holy mountain: A visit to the New Year’s festival of the Nazareth Church on Mount Nhlangakazi’, Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 138–149. ———. (1983) ‘Give me water, woman of Samaria’, The pilgrimage of Southern African Blacks in the 1980s’, Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 115–129. Buchan, A. (2012) The mighty men journey, Vereeniging, South Africa: Christian Art Publishers. Butler, G. (1987) Pilgrimage to Dias Cross: A narrative poem, Cape Town: David Phillips. Catholic Shrines, Retrieved from www.icon.co.za/~host/shrines/index.htm Accessed November 03, 2015. Cawood, S. (2014) ‘The rhetoric of ritual: Sacred sites and the oral tradition in the Mohokare Valley’ in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. Chidester, D. (1992) Religions of South Africa, London and New York: Routledge. Coleman, S. and Eade, J. (2004) ‘Introduction: Reframing pilgrimage’, in S. Coleman and J. Eade (eds) Reframing pilgrimage: Cultures in motion, London and New York: Routledge. ———. (eds) (2004) Reframing pilgrimage: Cultures in motion, London and New York: Routledge.

140  Shirley du Plooy Comaroff, J. (1985) Body of power, spirit of resistance: The culture and history of a South African people, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Coplan, D. (2003) ‘Land from the ancestors: Popular religious pilgrimage along the South African-Lesotho border’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 977–993. du Plooy, S. (in press) ‘Meshworks, entanglements and presencing absence: Pilgrimages, Eastern Free State-style’ in McIntosh, I., Quinn, E. and Keely, V. (eds) Pilgrimages and beyond, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press. ———. (2014) ‘The making of Eastern Free State pilgrimage’ in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. (2015) ‘Landscapes, dreamscapes and personscapes as pilgrimage meshworks’ in Farrelly, M. and Keely, V. (eds) Pilgrim paths: Journeys of transformation, eBook, First Edition, Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Dubisch, J. and Winkelman, M. (eds) (2005) Pilgrimage and healing, Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. Eade, J. and Katic´, M. (2014) ‘Introduction: Crossing the borders’ in Eade, J. and Katic´, M. (eds) Pilgrimage, politics and place-making in Eastern Europe, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Eliade, M. (1963) ‘Sacred places: Temple, palace, “centre of the world” ’ in Eliade, M. (ed.) Patterns of Comparative Religion. New York: World Publishing Co. Fairer-Wessels, F. (2005) ‘Literary pilgrimage to Robben Island as inspired by Nelson Mandela’s “Long walk to freedom” ’, South African Journal of Cultural History, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 1–16. Farrelly, M. and Keely, V. (eds) (2015) Pilgrim paths: Journeys of transformation, eBook, First Edition, Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Heuser, A. (2005) ‘Memory tales: Representations of Shembe in the cultural discourse of African Renaissance’, Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 362–387. Hlatshwayo, M. (2012) ‘Nhlangakazi—the Nazareth Baptist Church’s “Mecca” ’. Archival Platform. Retrieved from http://www.arcivalplatform.org/blog/entry/ nhlangakazi/ Accessed August 20, 2014. Kalu, O. (ed.) (2005) African Christianity: An African story, Pretoria, South Africa: Department of Church History, University of Pretoria. Levey, D. (2001) Alan Paton: Pilgrim and prophet? Shrewsbury, UK: Feather Books. Mandela, N. (1994) Long walk to freedom, London: Macdonald Purnell. Margry, P.J. (ed.) (2008a) Shrines and pilgrimage in the modern world: New itineraries into the sacred, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ———. (2008b) ‘Secular pilgrimage: A contradiction in terms?’ in Margry, P. J. (ed.) Shrines and pilgrimage in the modern world: New itineraries into the sacred, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Masoga, M. (2014) ‘Constructing ‘national sacred space(s)—Notes, queries and positions: The case of the South African Freedom Park monument’ in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. Müller, R. (2008) A traveling church: The pilgrimage culture in South Africa’s Zion Christian Church, Unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton University, NJ. ———. (2011) African pilgrimage: Ritual travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

South(ern) African Journeys of Reverence 141 Nel, P. (2014a) ‘Ownership of the sacred: Complex claims and appropriations’ in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. ———. (2014b) ‘Economic versus symbolic ownership of sacred sites in the Eastern Free State: Contestations of the sacred’ in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. Ngome Marian Shrine, Retrieved from www.icon.co.za/~host/ngome/index.htm Accessed November 11, 2015. Nthoi, L. (2006) Contesting sacred space: A pilgrimage study of the Mwali Cult of Southern Africa, Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press. Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. Ranger, T. (1987) ‘Taking hold of the land: Holy places and pilgrimages in ­twentieth-century Zimbabwe’, Past and Present, vol. 117, pp. 158–194. Reader, I. (2014) Pilgrimage in the marketplace, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ——— and Walter, T. (eds) (1993) Pilgrimage in popular culture, London, UK: Macmillan. Riviere, C. (1986) ‘Pélerinage dans l’Afrique traditionelle’, Le Mois en Afrique: Revue Française d'Études Politiques Africaines, vol. 21, no. 241–242, pp. 121–127. Roos, B. (2006) The inner journey: Pilgrimage in South Africa and the modern world. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Saayman, A., Saayman, M. and Gyekye, A. (2014) ‘Perspectives on the regional economic value of pilgrimage’, International Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 16, pp. 407–414. Smith, J.Z. (1980) ‘The bare facts of ritual’, History of Religion, vol. 20, pp. 112–127. ———. (1987) To take place: Towards theory in ritual, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. ———. (2004) Relating religion: Essays in the study of religion, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sundkler, B.G. (1961) Bantu prophets in South Africa, London, UK: Oxford University Press. Tanner, R. (2003) ‘Pilgrimage in sub-Saharan Africa: A study in the development of religious foci’, Journal of Social Science, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 127–135. Turner, V. (1973) ‘The center out there: Pilgrim’s goals’, History of Religions, vol. 12, pp. 191–230. Venter, F. (1952) Swart Pelgrim, Kaapstad: Tafelberg. Wepener, C. and te Haar, G. (2014) ‘Sacred sites and spiritual power: One angel, two sites, many spirits’, in Post, P., Nel, P. and van Beek, W. (eds) Sacred spaces and contested identities: Space and ritual dynamics in Europe and Africa, Trenton: Africa World Press. Werbner, R. (1989) Ritual passage, sacred journey: The process and organization of religious movement, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Winkelman, M. and Dubisch, J. (2005) ‘Introduction: The anthropology of pilgrimage’ in Dubisch, J. and Winkelman, M. (eds) Pilgrimage and healing, Tuscon, AR: University of Arizona Press.

9 Transcending Symbols The Religious Landscape of Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico Alejandra Aguilar Ros

Introduction Catholicism with a Spanish flavour has shaped social life in Mexico since Spanish colonization in what was known as Nueva España, more than 500 years ago. Various chronicles inform us about shrines dedicated both to St Mary and Jesus Christ during the Spanish colonial period (1592–1810): the historian, Willam B. Taylor (2005, 2010), for example, provides us with an account of devotional images and local practices of shrines in colonial Mexico, while Nájera (2006) develops a good discussion of these chronicles through a compilation of apparitions in Nueva Galicia—an area now represented by the states of Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, Durango, Sinaloa and the Zacatecas. The Guadalupe apparitions have also inspired extensive discussion since the 17th century. Chronicles as well as historical and ecclesiastical traditions are, therefore, very important in Mexico to follow the importance of these sites in the religiosity and, as Taylor succinctly states, to understand ‘the negotiation of colonial circumstances by Indian villagers’ (2005: 947). Despite the important role played by religion in the development of the contemporary Mexican nation-state, research by sociologists and anthropologists has only very recently appeared. The complicated relationship between the Mexico secular state and the Roman Catholic Church is one of the prime reasons for the lack of research on religious beliefs and practices until recently. To understand this paucity one has to consider the historical anticlerical position of the State, which did not entertain the idea of funding this kind of research. Another very important factor was the influence of the secularization paradigm and Marxist ideas on most academics at this time; religion was considered to be on the way to oblivion (Blancarte, 1992). Church officials were interested in religious studies, particularly analyzing what they termed popular religion—a term that emphasized the marginal quality of these religious practices and their inferior religiosity compared with official Catholic beliefs and practices. Although Mexican anthropological studies developed very early in the modern period, they focused on cargo systems and indigenous rituals. Furthermore, although sociological research on religion began as early as the 1930s, it only really took off

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 143 during the 1960s (García, 2004). This is the context in which the work of the sociologist, Gilberto Giménez, has a particular place. He undertook the first sociological study of pilgrimages and sanctuaries through his study of pilgrimage to Chalma in central Mexico (1978). This study established the main themes that research was to pursue in the years to come and also the key questions for exploring them. Most Mexican research has been undertaken in what is known as Mesoamerica, which Krichkhoff in 1954 defined as a cultural area drawing on the culturalist paradigm of American anthropology. Ethnographically speaking, it was not until the beginning of the 21st century that other shrines and pilgrimages outside Mesoamerica were studied. Chalma, Guadalupe, Otatitlán, Tila and Juquila were the first to be explored, followed by San Juan de los Lagos, Zapopan, and Talpa in the Jalisco state, and nomadic groups in the northern desert (Alvarado Solís, 2004). As attention has moved away from Mesoamerica so other issues have come to the fore, such as the ways in which indigenous identities are expressed through pilgrimage journeys and at shrines. I will deal in this chapter with pilgrimage and shrine studies that build on Giménez’s work, analyzing along the way three major concepts and processes

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144  Alejandra Aguilar Ros that he analyzed through his study on Chalma: a) ‘popular religion’ as a concept for understanding ‘marginal’ religious practices, particularly from indigenous and peasant groups (which the secular thesis considered on their way to oblivion); b) the idea of religious peasant practices and the role they played in displaying and representing social identities through religious images, particular places (shrines) and practices (pilgrimages); and c), the idea that these identities are symbolically inscribed in territory. These concepts (popular religion, identity and territory) have been the main lines of enquiry in the study of pilgrimages and shrines in Mexico, largely within a symbolic framework, and it is only until very recently that they have been challenged.

Giménez, Chalma and the Sociological Study of Popular Religion, Identity and Territory In the middle of the discussion on the peasantry (‘la cuestión agraria’) in Mexico that focused on its survival, Giménez sought to understand the beliefs of the peasants themselves. During the 1970s and 1980s the debate was dominated by ‘proletarista’ and ‘campesinista’ approaches (cf. Hewitt de Alcántara, 1984), which were located within a Marxist deterministic theoretical approach (Otero, 2004). Religious practices were understood solely within an economic context of class formation and relations of production. Giménez contributed to this debate through an original perspective, which combined a Marxist approach, phenomenology and hermeneutics. Drawing particularly on Gramsci and on Alberto Cirese´s study of Italian peasant subaltern culture, Cultura egemonica e culture subalterne. Rassegna degli studi sul mondo popolare tradizionale [Hegemonic Culture and Subaltern Culture: Review of the study of the traditional folkworld] (1973), which he translated in 1979, he argued that peasants were peripheral national actors, since their highly traditional character restricted their transition to modernity (for a related discussion of tradition/modernity issues see Steil’s chapter on Brazil in this volume). For the first time, peasants and indigenous groups were presented not only affected by imposed processes of colonization, but also as active, creative agents of their own ways of life and religious resistance. Against the Church’s use of ‘popular religiosity’ in terms of an opposition between official religious practice and those practiced by a marginal economic and cultural strata (Giménez, 1978: 11), he saw this kind of religiosity as ‘as an expression of a subaltern culture’ where peasants resisted the hegemonic power of ecclesiastical authorities. According to him, these processes of autonomy enabled peasants to create symbolic elaborations and transformations that generated historical and creative continuities. Popular rural religion was understood then as ‘the set of symbolic practices considered by small town peasants, within the set of their practices and their social relations’ (1978: 20). Popular culture was, therefore, relatively autonomous and engaged ‘in opposition to the culture of social elites,

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 145 although dominated and overdetermined by it’ (1978: 20). Moreover, popular religious practices involve ‘a transformation process, a dramatization where certain actors in a deprived situation (real or virtual) interact (in their imagination) with supernatural beings searching for certain “salvation values” ’ (translated from the original, 1978: 33). Hence, structure and practice are homologous and the study of religion should focus on understanding the meaning of people´s practices and the subjective perceptions of the pilgrims. Shrines, for Giménez, were the ‘privileged condensers of popular religion’ (1978: 245) and pilgrimage, as a process of movement, was an inseparable part of popular religion. Pilgrimages had to be regarded, therefore, as cultural texts ‘locally rooted and solidly fixed in time and space’ (1978: 31, my translation), and analyzed through their meanings within the whole picture and in relation to each other. Pilgrimages, for him, were more language than talk in a Saussurian sense, more a solidified code than a creative enterprise. The key characteristics of these cultural texts were (a) their emergence through collective elaboration, (b) their fixity in time and sometimes also in space and (c) their grounding in a structure of meaning and their need for a material vehicle to structure themselves. Hence, according to Giménez, popular religion was characterized by the collective elaboration of symbols, ceremonialism, repeatability and the possibility of reproducing the same pattern within an infinite variable model (1978: 31–32). Pilgrimage sought to achieve goods and values from supernatural beings and to remedy the poverty of the devotees through reciprocity (1978: 37), and it had to be understood within the broader structural context of their beliefs. His analysis of the famous shrine of Chalma included a reconstruction of historical accounts of the shrine and followed a pilgrimage from the community of San Pedro Atlapulco, municipio of Ocoyacac analyzing the economic, political and religious aspects of the town, and the brotherhood system (cofradías and mayordomías). Following the pilgrimage journey to the shrine, the staying over and the community´s return to their hometown, he questions who really does the pilgrimage and concludes that the images represent the town’s identity, and therefore, the pilgrimage is a corporate and public process. A strong, institutionalized pilgrimage, it is consistently repeated within a particular social frame related to objectives and prefixed ends (1978: 152), a ritual institution with repetitive, stereotyped and symbolic acts. During his research at Chalma, Giménez drew on these ideas to study aspects of culture that had been hardly touched in Mexico. Besides Gramsci and Cirese, he also introduced to Mexican scholars Bourdieu´s approach and arrived at similar conclusions to Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz by drawing on the work of Descroche and Durkheim. Ideology, power and the role of subordinated groups were seen in a new light, even if researchers did not adopt the frame and method that Giménez used. ‘Popular religion’ became entrenched within the academic argot and his emphasis on how identity and territory are intertwined also remained as a question to be tested by other studies.

146  Alejandra Aguilar Ros

Regional Shrines: Anthropology and the Territory Discussion As mentioned above, the Marxist paradigm rejected the idea that religion could provide a path to understand other cultural expressions; religion was seen as obscuring the ways in which daily and ritual practices were structured. The paradigm also encouraged anthropologists and sociologists to assume that through the process of a dialectical historical evolution, peasants were on their way to becoming urban workers. Religion would eventually disappear under the impact of urbanization and its close associate, secularization. By the 1980s this approach had led anthropologists and sociologists to concentrate on studying the Roman Catholic Church and its relationship with modernity and secularization (cf. García Chiang, 2007; in Brazil Marxism was also influential at the same time due to the emergence of Liberation Theology, see Steil in this volume). Research on pilgrimages and shrines began to really take off during the early 1990s, drawing on the strong Marxist anthropological tradition, which had developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and focused on nationalism and identity issues. As Medina notes, anthropology was the ‘privileged witness of national culture and at the same time, part of it’ (1996: 219). These academic contexts laid the ground for other debates involving Robert Shadow, a research professor at University of las Americas, in Puebla. Through his leadership, pilgrimage studies took another breath. He and his partner, Maria De Jesús Rodríguez-Shadow, went on pilgrimage with Puebla peasants to Chalma, where Giménez had undertaken his classic study. Their research led to Mexico’s very first symposium on pilgrimage at the University of las Américas, Puebla, in 1990 and the publication of an important volume edited by Carlos Garma and Robert Shadow (1994). The book brought together scholars, who mainly drew on the work of Geertz, Turner and Giménez to understand pilgrimages. In a much-referenced chapter of the volume Shadow and RodríguezShadow provided an important review of current pilgrimage research (1994a). He focussed mainly on ethnographic research, although he did acknowledge archaeological and historical sources, and pointed out how the few that existed at that time were very descriptive and took scant interest in theoretical debates. He identified three different research approaches in Latin America—I will not review all the works they discuss, as I am more interested in Mexican developments. The first approach consisted of descriptive studies, such as colonial chronicles and some ethnographic works based on them. The second approach was informed by two analytical traditions. A functionalist model was derived from the Durkheimian tradition and emphasized the idea of ecological niches (see Aguirre 1991) or considered pilgrimage as an expression of inter-ethnic relationships (Cámara, 1972; Reyes, 1972; Cámara and Reyes, 1975), as cohesive and integrative, and a pre-modern form of religiosity. Shrines from this perspective were seen

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 147 as encouraging homogeneity and integration, and reinforcing social structures (Shadow and and Rodríguez-Shadow, 1994a: 26). The other analytical model drew on the symbolic processualism of Victor Turner. For the Shadows, Turner could be used as a bridge between historical materialism and the culturalist and symbolic approaches derived from the North American perspective (1994a: 29–30). Through a structural analysis, Turner (1978) argued that the origin myths, which precede the creation of most Mexican shrines, showed that syncretism was not an easy recipe for understanding religion. Turner, according to the Shadows, demonstrated that Catholicism was involved in a ‘creative process of accommodation, adaptation and transformation experienced due to the interplay of symbols, ideas, dogmas and beliefs’ (1994a: 30) arising from two very bureaucratic societies (Aztec and Spaniard). However, the Shadows did not regard Turner’s model of communitas where ideological communitas refers to utopian, revolutionary movements as very useful. Pilgrimage, according to them, underlines the particular religious themes that emerge in a religious system (1994a: 32) and can only act as an escape valve rather than a rebellion ritual: pilgrimage provides a ritual space located in the margins of society, physical and conceptually separated from people and from real structures, where it expresses freely, although in a limited context, their longing for justice. (Shadow and Rodríguez-Shadow, 1994a: 32, my translation) Two major contributions to pilgrimage studies in Latin America were made by Anglophone researchers at this time. The volume edited by N. Ross Crumrine and Alan Morinis (1991), which explored pilgrimage in Latin America (indigenous, African, Spanish) from the perspective of different disciplines, i.e. history, archaeology, anthropology and religious studies, and Michael Sallnow’s (1987) monograph, Pilgrims of the Andes, on Peruvian regional shrines. Both are very little known among Mexican scholars, since they are not translated into Spanish, but the Shadows did refer to Sallnow’s study as a third approach. They were very interested in Sallnow’s model where communitas and structure are understood not as opposites but tendencies that were intertwined. Contradiction, tension and conflict were the central analytical issues for Sallnow (Shadow and Rodriguez-Shadow, 1994a: 34), who also sees an understanding of geography as crucial. Pilgrims of the Andes was the first work in Latin America that took a regional view, where space, place and landscape are part and parcel of a phenomenological and experiential analysis. However, for the Shadows, Giménez’s book was the first publication in Mexico, which integrated both pilgrimage and shrine by drawing on various analytical traditions. In their opinion Giménez offers a dialectical and more

148  Alejandra Aguilar Ros ample view than Victor Turner. In their own work, the Shadows insisted that observation of the pilgrimage and the dynamics of the shrine needed to step away from functionalist views and focus on the symbolic dimensions grounded in the material conditions that produce these symbols. They shared Giménez’s attention to the socio-political conditions, which these peasants experience and which sustain their popular religiosity where they direct their oppressed conditions to the supernatural in order to transform them. Taking their cue from Geertz’s approach, which had finally penetrated Mexican scholars’ taste for cultural analysis, the Shadows interpret pilgrimage as a text (Shadow and Rodriguez-Shadow, 1994a, 1994b and later on in the complete work presented as a book in Rodríguez-Shadow and Shadow, 2002). Yet, unlike Geertz, they stress the peasants’ unequal social position within Mexican society. Furthermore, according to them, peasants express their suffering during pilgrimage physically, so that they can maintain their commitment to the strict moral code that popular religiosity imposes (1994b: 103). A cultural drama then unfolds (see Turner, 1974), which expresses cultural meanings that can never be completely understood, do not have a unique meaning and can even be contradictory. For them, the cultural meanings and contradictions of ‘popular religion’ are shaped by power structures involved in the dynamics of class struggle (Shadow and Rodríguez Shadow, 1994b: 83) as well as gender, ethnicity and locality. The Shadows considered pilgrimage as involved in a dialectical process where solidarity and conflict coexist. In this sense, they draw on Sallnow’s critique of the Turnerian communitas model, but they also preserve the idea of transformation and integration central to this model. Theirs was the first study in Mexico to embrace the idea of power struggle (cf. Eade and Sallnow, 1991) and to step away from Durkheimian approaches that considered pilgrimage as promoting social integration. They also helped to develop Mexican research by emphasizing reflexivity, since they situated themselves in the narrative, something no Mexican anthropologists were doing at the time. After the publications by the Shadow (1994a and 1994b) and the volume edited by Carlos Garma and Robert Shadow (1994), Mexican researchers built on the approaches advanced by the Turners and Giménez. Giménez’s approach encouraged research to develop in two directions (Shadow and Rodríguez-Shadow, 1994a: 36). One pursued the idea that pilgrimage strengthened boundaries inside the group (identity and function), while the other saw group participation in pilgrimage as challenging structures, particularly ecclesiastical authorities, and emphasized the religious practices of ethnic groups. However, in my opinion, the innate force of this second approach was diluted by terms such as ‘popular religion’ losing their Marxist edge and framework, and thereby failing to challenge power positions and highlight strategies of resistance.

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 149 Returning to the first analytical direction, inspired by Giménez, where pilgrimage is seen as supporting the process of boundary making, the discussion of territory (Giménez, 1996) began to be distinguished from regional research, which had been developed by anthropologists from the 1970s. Region in this context was seen as a space that has only sense and coherence in the lived history that ethnic groups have experienced across time. It also built on the 1950s community studies tradition to which Redfield in Yucatán, Vogt in Chiapas, Foster and Steward in Michoacán, Malinowski and De la Fuente in Oaxaca had all contributed. During the 1970s some anthropological institutes (the Iberoamericana University, for instance) maintained ethnographic stations in the areas they wanted to study. Thus, regional studies were undertaken in Los Altos de Jalisco, el Bajío Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala. Ethnic social relations provided another strand and informed the study of refugee regions (Aguirre, 1991). Influences also came from British social anthropology through the concept of ecology, while researchers also took up the idea of cultural area and historical context from the United States (see Viqueira, 2001). Two works are particularly important in this context: Velasco Toro’s study of the Otatitlán Cristo Negro (Black Christ) in the state of Veracruz (1997a, 1997b, 2000, 2004, 2005, among others), and the research by Barabas in Oaxaca on indigenous symbolism in territory (1994, 2003, 2006a, among others). Velasco Toro was the first researcher to establish the idea that shrines consist of a devoted space and to name it as a devotional region (1997a). The cult can be traced before the Spanish colonization to an Aztec god, patron of commerce, fertility, abundance and health, until now, as a result of the syncretism with Catholicism, and the establishment of the Oaxacan dioceses. Velasco Toro draws on general models in vogue at the time in Mexico: a regional approach, the history of mentalities and the Turnerian framework, particularly its emphasis on the liminal aspects of pilgrimage. The image of the Cristo Negro is located in a shrine that brings together diverse ethnic groups from different states, ecological niches and social classes; it mediates cultural diversity through devotional feelings. The shrine is connected to a variety of cosmic indigenous references, which articulate the past with the present. To develop his research, Velasco uses diverse methodologies: archaeology, ethno-historical sources, historical accounts, archive, oral tradition, interviews and ethnographies. Alicia Barabas also uses a regional approach in her work on ethnic territoriality in Oaxaca (1994, 2003, 2004, 2006a, 2006b). She focuses on the way indigenous groups imprint their cultural meaning on their territories. For her, ethnic groups culturally create their space at both the local level (barrios, localities, domestic spaces), and global spaces through collectivities that spread at different levels; they all construct frontiers where cultural differences, historical memory and forms of social organization give shape to what she calls ethnic territories. In her work we see once more the influence of Giménez’s approach, because she seeks to understand processes of symbolization that societies

150  Alejandra Aguilar Ros create to ‘build texts associated with real or imaginary attributes, remembrances, emotions and collective and individual experiences to build symbol systems in order to name and qualify cultural spaces’ (2006a: 225, my translation). Her work is representative of an approach in Mexico that deals with the understanding of indigenous cosmogony. Thus, she finds in space the cultural imprints of indigenous cosmology—the idea of five sacred cardinal points in the universe, the hierarchy of places and the multiple unfolding of Mesoamerican supernatural beings, for example. This cosmology fits very well within Eliade’s concept of sacred centre or axis mundi, since in the Mesoamerican worldview the centre in the cardinal points plays a core role—it is where all ontological beings and levels communicate. Thus, she starts a typology of shrines in the state of Oaxaca, where she found circuits of shrines that link together and circuits of ethnic shrines that reinforce identity, e.g. pilgrimages to Black Christ sites and various small shrines which, in turn, compound the circuit of people visiting the Juquila Virgin in Oaxaca (2006a: 228). She also found that the tradition of apparitions had survived from the colonial period and still has deep roots in millenarian movements. By emphasizing the colonization process that indigenous people endured, she strives to understand the particular way apparitions in Mexico work, broadening the Catholic apparition model and showing how it shapes identity and territoriality (2006a: 229). Alicia Barabas understands pilgrimages as networks that mark out sacred central and peripheral territories (2006a: 240); they are ritual processes that reproduce social, ethnic and kinship relations, along with forms of reciprocity and social control (2006a: 241). Pilgrimages can also cross ethnic boundaries to central shrines, creating a sacred space of their own, and crossing ethnic territories on their way (2006a: 241). Her theoretical foundation is based on the work of Turner, Giménez and the Shadows, but she stresses the importance of ethnic boundaries and the creation of territories. Research by the Catalan researcher, Prat, also helped her to emphasize the creation of territory during pilgrimage, which had been abundantly investigated in the Mexican context. By using this approach, her analysis of space at different levels (2006a: 243) produced a rich ethnographic study of shrines and pilgrimage across the country where indigenous cosmogonies are at play within Catholic and Mesoamerican frameworks (cf. Barabas, 2003). Thus, during this period of Mexican pilgrimage studies, Giménez’s approach flourished, particularly around themes of popular religion (without its Marxist analytical strand), the symbolic use of territory, and identity. Identity was used as an umbrella category to understand how pilgrimages are an expression of ‘who we are’, as much as a cohesive force to draw frontiers with others; thus, shrines were places where these identities can congregate and express their uniqueness. Identity was crucial to understand indigenous expressions of religiosity, since most studies were conducted in Mesoamerican shrines until the turn of the century. It was seen as indigenous

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 151 resistance to Christian colonization, which states a cultural boundary while hiding religious practices that ‘in reality’ were pre-Hispanic. The study of Marian shrines (Báez, 1995), particularly Marianismo and its impact on Mexican culture through gender, in particular, has only appeared recently (cf. Meelhus (1996). Most research has been produced by those outside Mexico, with the exception of Pastor (2010), and Fernández Poncela (2000a, and 2000b). However, one very significant line of research has dealt with the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City, in particular. This devotion has been discussed since the 17th century but mainly in terms of the ‘truth’ of her apparition until the 19th century. While attention to her authenticity and pre-Hispanic origins spans the entire colonial, independence and modern periods, the Guadalupe shrine’s role in the context of Mexico as a mestizo nation was not considered until Wolf (1958), Reyes (1972), Nebel (1995), Lafaye (2002) and Brading (2002) helped to place it within a wider sociological and historical framework. The 1980s was shaped by the attempt to find the hidden gods behind religious indigenous practices expressed through their resistance to colonization from both functionalist and Marxist perspectives. It was not until the 1990s and Masferrer’s study of the Guadalupe shrine (Giuriati and Masferrer, 1998) that Mexican scholars began to ask about the pilgrims’ social and cultural backgrounds, and the reasons for going on pilgrimage. During the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, the study of pilgrimage and shrines remained largely focused on analyzing meaning and symbols. It was not until other kind of problems appeared that different approaches have developed.

Peripheries, Migration and Tourism: Displacement of the Centre I will locate these studies within three kinds of discussions by anthropologists: those concerning non-Mesoamerican areas such as the north and western areas of the country, migration studies and tourism. The common issue here is the displacement of fixed centres, whether it be the area of study or the consideration of movement in general. Most research had been undertaken in what has been called Mesoamerica, the old pre-Hispanic region that, according to Kirchhoff, has cultural traits in common. Very few works on pilgrimage have been made outside the Mesoamerican boundaries, some of them with the Huichol or Wixaritari, which are one of the indigenous groups with one of the most striking pilgrimages in Mexico from the Jalisco and Nayarit state to their mythic land of Wirikuta in the western part of the country. Their pilgrimage has been documented particularly from the angle of filmography and very little ethnographic research has been undertaken, except by Del Ángel (2002) and Tomé (2008). One of the first important efforts to analyze northern pilgrimages and rituals came from Neyra Alvarado (2004, 2005 2007, 2008),1 with her work

152  Alejandra Aguilar Ros on pilgrimages in the desert (2008), where she analyzes a pilgrimage among mexicaneros and pápagos2 using a French structuralist approach. Alvarado departs from the functional needs of pilgrims (resistance, cohesion, identity), to develop an ethnography of their ritual system (García Lam, 2009: 35). Through her work she introduces ritual analysis into the wider study of Mexican pilgrimage. Like other Mexican researchers, she also stresses the relationship with the landscape but in a new fashion, showing how these indigenous groups live time and space through their bodily practices and the way they symbolize the body. Until her work, the body had not been systematically studied in Mexican pilgrimage research, although a very important line of work dealing with symbolism of the body derived from French structuralism has permeated the ethnographies on ritual symbolism in northern Mexico. In general, the study of the body is still confined with very few exceptions to symbolism in rituals, gender and health and is very little related to embodied practices (Aguilar Ros, 2009and 2012). Migration has been a very important issue for Mexican sociologists and anthropologists but it was not until the turn of the century that publications appeared on the role of religion in this process (Cano, 2002; Durand, 2002; Pratt, 2006; Odgers, 2007; Hirai, 2008, 2009; Fortuny, 2012, among others). These studies show how expanding their connection with the community of origin has deterritorialized devotion to patron saints. They have focused more on the circulation practices of territorialization rather than concentrate on quantitative data and migration policies (but not excluding them). The saints’ roots in local communities when travelling outside their national and local frontiers deepen migration spaces, helping the articulation of different spaces and scales (Odgers, 2007: 36; Aguilar Ros, 2016). Odgers (2007) emphasizes that devotion to patron saints allows the possibility of maintaining ties with the locales from which people have migrated as well as the new spaces migrants find themselves in, creating thereby multi-sited identities (saints are thus both local and in movement). A ‘new geography of the sacred’ has emerged where ritual, ethics and collective identity are redefined (Odgers, 2007: 33). Although new religious practices are very important in this circulatory space and shrines are regarded as lighthouses or anchors in the circulatory territory (Aburzzese, in Odgers, 2007), the traditional fiesta, the patron saints devotions and pilgrimages are among the older local practices that reconstruct space in a globalized and fragmented world. Again, the territorial element is at stake in the enquiry here, but this literature discusses the new ways territory is shaped, mainly by creating an ample and dynamic circulatory space where the new nomads maintain their links to their communities of origin (Odgers, 2007: 34). Mexican research has also pointed out the link between migration and tourism at shrines, which takes me finally to another important globalized flux and to the complex relationship between pilgrimages and shrines. While migration studies has gained in complexity and breathed new life

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 153 into the analysis of pilgrimage practices and the new roles played by shrines, research into tourism has not yet reached this level of complexity. Most publications are descriptive, although very rich in their empirical description of tourism facilities and possibilities (Martinez Cárdenas, 2011 and 2013; Gallo, 2011, among others), while a few are interested in market analysis (Millán et al., 2012) Other research has dealt with offerings left in shrines or ex votos and how they have changed with globalization and migration (Durand and Massey, 2000), while Fernández Poncela (2007, 2012a, 2013) has investigated religious devotions and conflicts over cultural heritage (Fernández Poncela, 2010, 2012b). Cultural heritage and patrimony have inspired new methodologies, such as archaeology and the use of maps, in this new landscape of pilgrimage studies (cf. Espinosa, 2012). Most of these studies draw on the concepts of symbolization, popular religion and identity without taking analysis much further. Furthermore, popular religion is used as a prop to speak about every manifestation that departs from institutional religion. It is used, therefore, to refer to religious manifestations among peripheral groups, such as peasants, indigenous or migrant ritual practices, without making any distinction between localities, historical regions, or differences among social groups. Religious studies in Mexico has also pursued an analysis of symbolism which views most rituals and religious practices as ‘hiding’ a cryptic meaning, always alluding to a concealed significance which in turn, is related to a pre-Hispanic cosmovision. In my view, migration and tourism, as two globalized forces, have driven pilgrimage studies towards other routes and lines of questioning, especially concerning cultural heritage. In the anthropological study of religion in Mexico, tourism is seen as a separate cultural domain that has either alienated local population or has subordinated the locals. In contrast with mainstream anthropology where many studies have replicated the idea of authenticity versus inauthenticity when analyzing tourism, in Mexico this dichotomy has not been that relevant. Here the opposition has more to do with the idea of religion versus society, where religious practices may be isolated from other human activities. This binary opposition has led some scholars to try to understand who the tourists are and who the pilgrims, and to question whether pilgrimage is or is not a touristic activity (Miranda et al., 2009). Other kinds of research has concentrated on analyzing tourism’s possibilities as a viable economic force, and hence in developing inventories of what services the biggest shrines have to offer (Martínez Cárdenas, 2011 and 2013). In Mexico, most research accepts the distinction between pilgrims and tourists and constructs typologies in order to understand whether the visiting person is a pilgrim or a tourist (Millán et al., 2012; Propin and Sanchez, 2013) Although this is also a theme in other literatures, the distinction has moral connotations in Mexico, since pilgrims have to state their personal standing towards a religious place and whether they are sufficiently religious

154  Alejandra Aguilar Ros or not to be classified as pilgrims. Research, therefore, has been a discussion concerning the pilgrims’ morality in terms of either consuming merchandise or practising spirituality. Yet, since tourism has been rooted in pilgrimage (Collins-Kreiner, 2009: 444) and religious and touristic motivations are not clear-cut (CollinsKreiner, 2009: 441–442; Badone and Roseman, 2004: 2), careful attention to people’s experience is key to understanding the multiple meanings that a shrine can convey to the different visitors, enabling them to switch from one experience to the other (Collins-Kreiner, 2009: 448). However, there is an assumption that subjectivity means the same everywhere in post-modern times in this new approach towards subjectivities in pilgrimage research. In Mexico, as many studies reveal, most pilgrims travel either with their relatives in religious-based groups or with members of their communities (as in ethnic-based pilgrimages) and so one has to consider what subjectivity means in these kinds of groups. Also, during the last decade the state has pursued tourist policies, which are centred on religion (Aguilar Ros, forthcoming). Thus, new kinds of pilgrimage have emerged, and have yet to be investigated, such as pilgrimages which mainly involve young middle-class pilgrims travelling with their own tents, and what travel agencies call ‘spiritual based’ pilgrimages, which reflect the new interest in spiritual quests. I consider religious tourism as the pursuit of a trip inspired by spiritual research or experience, which in Mexico is a continuation rather than a rupture with ancient forms of travelling in rural Mexico. Since the colonial period Mexican pilgrimages have been a form of travel and current approaches, which try to elucidate whether pilgrimages are either tourism or religious, do not consider the historical processes involved in the emergence and development of these journeys and shrines. The fact that pilgrimages and sanctuaries have been there for centuries makes it difficult to assess what kind of tourists are pilgrims or which pilgrims can fit in the tourist category (see Cohen, 1984: 381–382, about tourist types). This means that if it is an old sanctuary, the hosts most probably have taken advantage of the fact that pilgrims flow to the sanctuary. The key issue, then, is not about whether people in the Mexican context see themselves as pilgrims or tourists, but rather how they historically have practised their pilgrim routes and what they do at shrines. Consider Santo Toribio, for instance, a shrine in western Mexico, in the Los Altos region, known for the Cristero rebellion (1926–29) against the nation-state project of secularizing the country by separating the civil from the religion. The Cristeros rose up not only to defend their cult but also to propose another national model that was closer to their religious beliefs. One of the Cristero martyrs was Santo Toribio Romo, who was against all forms of migration. Yet, today he is one of the most popular saints and the migrants’ patron saint, since it is claimed that he has appeared to desperate migrants, who were in the middle of the desert or crossing the border to the United States. Migrants go and visit his shrine in Santa Ana, in the Los Altos region,

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 155 especially during their holidays or when visiting their kin. This cult has also travelled to the American side of the frontier, where migrants have built a shrine to him in Tulsa, Arizona, as a symbol of their fight for civil rights. So, to understand this cult one has to take into account the specific historical region of Los Altos where the shrine is located and how it embodies a national project (Aguilar Ros, 2016), as much as the global flows of tourism and migration (Hirai, 2009; Martinez Cárdenas, 2011, 2013). The influence of a new age sensibility as well as subjectivity versus corporate pilgrimages has also blurred the boundary between tourists and religious seekers. Although Mexican pilgrimages have been corporate in nature—where kinship groups, cargo cults, ethnic identities and local attachments play a central role (see Aguilar Ros, 2009)—we can see now that the pilgrimages influenced by New Age beliefs and practices attract a different, middle-class audience. The involvement of these middle-class participants in the act of walking as a ‘spiritual’ pilgrimage leads them towards the ancestral and indigenous traditions associated with pilgrimage routes and shrines. Hence, archaeological sites now attract hundreds of ‘spiritual tourists’, who are seeking energy, health and wholeness, and visit such sites as Guachimontones and Ixtepete in Jalisco, La Quemada in Zacatecas, and Teotihuacán, near Mexico City, or the energy point in El Foco Tonal in Jalisco, especially during the solstice. Consider also the movement organized around the defence of Wirikuta, the mythical Wixaritari ethnic shrine. The site has been menaced by the development of transnational mining and the Wixaritari have mobilized resistance together with civil society groups to stop the mines destroying and polluting the route to the shrine and the site itself (Álvarez, 2014). This development offers a new angle for the political study of shrines.

Conclusion Giménez promoted the study of pilgrimage at a time when it was almost ignored. Those who did write about pilgrimage saw it as something that indigenous people in Mexico would leave behind as they engaged in social progress. Giménez’s approach is situated between the Marxist approach that sought for a new way to understand culture and cultural semiotic analysis. His focus on the peculiarities of the peasants near Chalma and his emphasis on the ways corporate religion works made clear how the identities of indigenous groups were symbolically constructed. Finally, his detailed analysis of class within a Marxist and semiotic framework was a novelty for his time. Giménez’s definition of pilgrimage, which equated structure with practice, was taken up by those who focussed on the relationship between religious practice and economic structures during the 1980s, drawing on Gramsci’s and Cirese’s approach that considered popular religion as a subaltern expression. The semiotic legacy particularly left a perspective which is still used by pilgrimage scholars who are particularly interested in the intricacies of ritual in order to uncover the richness of a ritual system. However, by

156  Alejandra Aguilar Ros equating pilgrimage with a Christian salvation history, Giménez assumed that pilgrims were ‘authentic’ and could be distinguished from tourists, who ‘only visit out of curiosity (1978: 127). He also failed to explore the internal differences within peasant groups, ignoring thereby internal heterogeneity. The next stage in Mexican pilgrimage research consisted mostly of regional studies, which tried to understand the function and symbolic territories of indigenous shrines. In the larger projects undertaken by Velasco Toro, Barabas, Shadows and Giménez, for example, the use of historical archives was emphasized. Research focussed more on shrines than pilgrimage journeys and was largely ethnographic in character. Territory at different levels was the main issue here. The Shadows, in particular, developed Giménez’s analysis of how subordinated groups seek to transform their reality against the Catholic Church’s hegemonic project. However, the term ‘popular religion’ as used by Giménez view is very much tied to Marxist analysis but in my opinion the impact of this analysis was diluted by cultural studies and symbolic analysis. Pilgrimage studies became stagnant after the Shadows’ contribution, until the 21st century brought a shift in interests and the main focus of research. Attention turned towards ecology, reflected in the northern studies and the study of the relationship between indigenous groups and the desert ecological niche. Migration also helped to move the centre of studies towards other areas and populations. Consequently, migrants, the north and the border are now important themes. Movement has also thrown new light on the body and the study of subjective experiences has also become a significant focus of research. The body is seen here as either a central ritual representation or a religiously embodied practice. Finally, we have seen that Mexican pilgrimage and shrine studies have always engaged in dialogue with other analytical traditions (Anglophone models of process, French structuralism and Italian Marxist analyses of popular culture) in a critical manner, particularly in relation to discussions of local processes, territorial and regional dynamics and the national project.

Notes 1 She recently (2013) organized the first colloquium on northern devotions. See also the work of her students León García Lam and Olivia Fierro and their thesis on pilgrimage in the town of Torrecitas, in the San Luis Potosí State in Mexico. 2 Work on these groups is not as popular as the ones on the Huichol or Cora. There are other publications concerning pilgrimage among Huichol people, but they have stayed within the Huichol literature and have not engaged with other research on pilgrimage and shrines.

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160  Alejandra Aguilar Ros ———. (2013) ‘Turísmo religioso en los altos de Jalisco’ in Cárdenas, R. M. (ed.) Santuarios, fiestas patronales, peregrinaciones y turismo religioso, Guadalajara, México: Fundación Universitaria Andaluza Inca Garcilaso para eumed.net. Accessed on May 8, 2016. http://www.eumed.net/libros-gratis/2013/1281/1281.pdf. Medina, A. (1995) ‘Los paradigmas de la antropología mexicana’, Nueva Antropología, vol. 14, no. 48, pp. 19–37. ———. (1996) Recuentos y figuraciones: ensayos de antropología mexicana, México: UNAM. Meelhus, M. (1996) ‘Power, value and the ambiguous meanings of gender’ in Meelhus, M. and Stølen, K. (eds) Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas: Contesting the power of Latin American gender imagery, London: Verso. Millan Vázques de la Torre, Pérez Naranjo G. and Cárdenas, R. M. (2012), ‘Etapas del ciclo de la vida en el desarrollo del turismo religioso: Una comparación de estudios de caso’, Cuadernos de Turismo, vol. 30, pp. 241–266. Miranda, G, Rodríguez, R. and Ramírez, I. (2009) ‘Turismo religioso versus peregrinaje religioso’, Estudios Jaliscienses, vol. 77, pp. 26–35. Montoya, R.A. (2006) La migración potosina hacia Estados Unidos de Norteamérica, antes y después del programa bracero: el caso de Cerritos, San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí: Editorial Ponciano Arriaga. Nájera, M. (2006) Los Santuarios. Aspectos de la religiosidad popular en Jalisco, México: Conaculta y Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco. Nebel, R. (1995) Santa María Tonantzin /Virgen de Guadalupe: Continuidad y transformación religiosa en México, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Odgers, O. (2007) ‘Santos, nómadas cosmopolitas: los nuevos espacios circulatorios de los santos patronos locales’, Iztapalapa, vol. 28, nos. 62–63, pp. 29–38. Otero, G. (2004) Adiós al campesinado? Democracia y formación política de las clases en el México rural, México: Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas/Simon Fraser University/Miguel Ángel Porrúa. Pastor, M. (2010) ‘El marianismo en México: Una mirada a su larga duración’, Cuicuilco, vol. 17, no. 48, pp. 257–277. Retrieved from http://www.scielo.org. mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185–16592010000100013&lng=es&tl ng=es Accessed May 11, 2016. Portal Airosa, M. (1994) ‘Las peregrinaciones y la construcción de fronteras simbólicas’ in Garma, C. and Shadow, R. (eds) Las peregrinaciones religiosas: Una aproximación, México: UAM. Prat, I. and Carós, J. (1989) ‘Los santuarios marianos en Cataluña: una aproximación desde la etnografía’ in Santaló, C., Buxó, M. and Becerra, S. (eds) La religiosidad popular, tomo II, Vida y muerte: la imaginación religiosa, Barcelona: Anthropos. Pratt, M. (2006) ‘Por qué la Virgen de Zapopan se fue a Los Ángeles? Algunas reflexiones sobre la movilidad y la globalidad’, A Contracorriente, A Journal of Social History and Literature in Latin America, vol. 3, pp. 1–33. Propin Frejomil, E. and Sánchez Crispín, A. (2013) ‘Tipología de visitantes en el santuario del Niño de Atocha, Plateros, Zacatecas’ in Cárdenas, R.M. (ed.) Turismo Espiritual. n/pag. Retrieved from http://www.eumed.net/libros-gratis/2013/1238/ tipologia-visitantes-santuario-nino-atocha-plateros-zacatecas.html Accessed May 12, 2016. Reyes, T. (1972) ‘El santuario de la Virgen de Guadalupe: Expresión de un santuario nacional’ in Litvak King, J. and Castillo, N. (eds) Religión en Mesoamérica, México: Mesa Redonda, Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, pp. 575–86.

Pilgrimage Studies in Mexico 161 Rodríguez-Shadow, M.J. and Shadow, R. (2002) El pueblo del Señor: Las fiestas y peregrinaciones de Chalma, México: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. Sallnow, M. (1987) Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional cults in Cusco, Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. Shadow, R. and M. Rodríguez-Shadow (1994a) ‘La peregrinación religiosa en América Latina: enfoques y perspectivas’ in Garma Navarro, C. and Shadow, R. (eds) Las peregrinaciones religiosas: una aproximación, México: UAM-Iztapalapa. ———. (1994b) ‘Símbolos que amarran, símbolos que dividen: hegemonía e impugnación e una peregrinación campesina a Chalma’ in Garma Navarro, C. and Shadow, R. (eds) Las peregrinaciones religiosas: una aproximación, México: UAM-Iztapalapa. Taylor, W. (2005) ‘Two shrines of the Cristo Renovado: Religion and peasant politics in late Colonial Mexico’, American Historical Review, vol. 110, no. 4, pp. 945– 974. Retrieved from https://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/110/4/945.full ———. (2010) Shrines and miraculous images: Religious life in Mexico before the Reforma, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press. Tome, P. (2008) ‘De cacería simbólica a través del desierto chichimeca: La peregrinación a Wirikuta’ in Melloni Ribas, J. (ed.) El no-lugar del encuentro religioso, Madrid: Trotta. Turner, V. (1974) Dramas, fields and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. ——— and Turner, E. (1978) Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Velasco Toro, J. (ed.) (1997a) Santuario y región: Imágenes del Cristo Negro de Otatitlán, Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales. ———. (1997b) Vamos al santuario del Señor de Otatitlán. Expresión numinosa de un ámbito regional. Santuario y región. Imágenes del Cristo negro de Otatitlán, Xalapa: Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales, Universidad Veracruzana. ———. (2000) De la historia al mito: Mentalidad y culto en el Santuario de Otatitlán, Xalapa: Instituto Veracruzano de la Cultura. ———. (2004) ‘Interculturalidad, identidad simbólica y conflicto en un espacio interétnico: fronteras de mediación en el santuario de Otatitlán (Veracruz, México)’ in Dembicz, A. (ed.) Interculturalidad en América Latina en ámbitos locales y regionales, Polonia: Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos-Universidad de Varsovia. ———. (2005) ‘Simbolización del espacio e identidad devocional en el santuario de Otatitlán, Veracruz’ in Vargas Montero, G. (ed.) Devoción y creencia religiosa en el amanecer del tercer milenio, Xalapa: Editora de Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz. Viqueira, C. (2001) El enfoque regional en antropología, México: Universidad Iberoamericana. Wolf, E. (1958) ‘The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican national symbol’, Journal of America Folklore, vol. 71, no. 279, pp. 34–39. Zapponi, E. (2015) ‘Italian studies on pilgrimage: Beyond folklore, towards a national anthropological tradition and the international circulation of ideas’ in Albera, D. and Eade, J. (eds) International perspectives on pilgrimage studies: Itineraries, gaps and obstacles, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

10 Studies of Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil Continuities and Ruptures over the Long-term Carlos Alberto Steil My objective in this chapter is to present a brief survey of the literature on pilgrimage in Brazil, highlighting the main authors and works that contribute to its interpretation. This survey will be preceded, though, by a historical and sociological contextualization of Catholicism. This choice is impelled by the fact that Catholicism is the dominant religion in the country, although this hegemony has declined significantly over recent years. Especially in the first centuries of its history, Catholicism had a grassroots and structuring presence in Brazilian culture and society. This Catholicism, for its part, took the sanctuaries as its main organizational structure and the practice of pilgrimage as the ideal for Christian life. Examining this history becomes essential to locating the studies of pilgrimages and Catholicism in the social sciences in Brazil. I argue that the historical transformations of Catholicism provide important clues to understanding the analytic and interpretative trajectories shaping the study of Catholic pilgrimage by Brazilian social scientists. The discussion of the development of social sciences begins with a preamble on the native literature and fiction that narrate the Catholic experience, centred on pilgrimages during the first centuries of the Brazilian nation. This digression is needed because Brazilian social sciences emerged only recently, i.e. during the second half of the twentieth century when the first scientific studies of religion also appeared. Hence, I turn initially to the first centuries of the Catholic presence in the country, when traditional popular Catholicism was dominant. At the end of the nineteenth century this mode of Catholicism experienced a crisis, which was marked by dramatic and violent events. Given the lack of sociological studies of religion until the 1960s, the references needed to understand this moment of rupture will be drawn from literature. As I shall show, these literary sources emphasized the transition from traditional Catholicism to a Romanized version Catholicism drawing on a dualist refrain of tradition and modernity. In analyzing this literature, I wish to show that this rupture not only marked the country’s history, but also had a decisive effect on the kind of analysis and interpretation later assumed by sociological studies of Catholicism and the pilgrimages. This

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 163 type of analysis, however, would come under persistent attack from the 1980s when anthropological studies of Catholicism and pilgrimage broke away from the dualist vision. Finally, heading towards the chapter’s conclusion, I seek to identify a number of avenues which are being explored by contemporary social scientists concerning Catholicism and pilgrimage.

Traditional Popular Catholicism Since the beginning of colonization, Roman Catholicism has formed an integral part of the Brazilian landscape, both through the demarcation of social time and through public space. In relation to time, the calendar regulating social life and collective events is punctuated by festivals from the Catholic liturgy, which overlap with the civic dates. As for space, Catholic churches stand out in the landscape of most of Brazil’s towns and cities, while sanctuaries and chapels by the roadside witness to Catholicism’s presence in the rural world. In terms of its organization and structure, this Catholicism was governed by the Regime do Padroado, in force until the proclamation of the Republic and the separation of Church and State. Catholic practice and the sacraments conferred individual and social recognition and national belonging. As Caio Prado Júnior argues, the individual during this period: participated in the acts and ceremonies of religious worship with the same naturalness and conviction as any other mundane and everyday events of their terrestrial existence . . . ]. There were non-believers and sceptics, but their incredulity was limited to their small, closed and insulated circles of freemasons and free thinkers who carefully concealed their disbelief. (Prado Júnior, 1977: 335) Through this legal instrument, the Roman Catholic Church delegated to the Portuguese colonial state and the emperors of Brazil after independence (1822) ‘decisions concerning the creation of dioceses and parishes, the installation of religious orders and the founding of convents, ecclesiastical appointments, and the approval of ecclesiastic documents, including papal documents’ (Oliveiro, 1985). Conversely, it was the State’s responsibility to finance the clergy and the religious orders, guaranteeing the funds needed for the institutional reproduction of the religion. However, while the State curbed the ecclesiastical and clerical control of Rome over the organization and structure of the religion, it also simultaneously enabled the emergence of a lay and devotional Catholicism, disseminated by religious figures who operated on the margins of the ecclesiastical institution and beyond the direct control of the State. In this context, defined by the Roman Catholic Church’s weak institutional presence and the large distance between the Portuguese State and the colony, two grassroots movements flourished that would shape Catholic

164  Carlos Alberto Steil spirituality from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: pilgrimages to the sertões or backlands of the New World and the apparitions and discoveries of images of the Passion of Christ. During this period, many pilgrims and penitent laymen left the social conviviality of the villages and towns along the coast to live as hermits in deserted and wild places. Some of these locations gave rise to sanctuaries and settlements that worked to sustain the beliefs and rituals of Catholicism. This was especially the case with those located at the crossroads of the routes taken by the adventurers and desbravadores (‘wilderness tamers,’ frontiersmen), who left the coast in search of gold or cattle pastures and occupied the Brazilian territory in a westward direction. These two grassroots movements were assisted by the diffusion of two books that became reference works for devotional practice during the period. The first, Santuário Marian, written by Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria and published in 1722, was primarily concerned with describing miraculous apparitions of images of the Our Lady (the Virgin Mary) in Portuguese-held lands across the New World. The second, the Compêndio narrativo do peregrino da América by Nuno Marques Pereira, was the first prose book to be written by a Brazilian, published in Lisbon in 1728. It became the most widely read book in Brazil until the end of the nineteenth century. Pereira compiles a vast number of accounts of the life and trajectory of pilgrims and the founders of sanctuaries, presented as exemplars of a moral, Christian life. As Afrânio Coutinho wrote in the presentation to the 1988 edition of the work, published by the Academia Brasileira de Letras, pilgrimage is presented here as ‘a Catholic and baroque idea par excellence, denoting the dilemma of the men of this period who, while feeling attracted to God, were unable to deny their attachment to the world’ (Coutinho, 1988: 11). The Crisis in Catholicism: The Advent of Romanization This religious context started to change from the second half of the nineteenth century, though, with the emergence of the reform movement that interpreted the Baroque Catholicism of the majority of the country’s population as a negative historical legacy. This divide, in turn, produced a structural fissure between the popular Catholicism practiced by the mass of believers and Romanized Catholicism, a split experienced primarily in the parishes and dioceses under the control of the clergy.1 Initiated during the papacy of Pious IX (1846), this Romanizing movement spread globally to include the New World. Its main objective was to place local and national Catholicism under the institutional control of the Roman Curia. As a strategy for affirming and legitimizing itself, the reform movement invested in the moral and theological training of the clergy and in setting up male and female religious orders and congregations which were flourishing in Europe at this time and stimulated an intense influx of missionaries into

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 165 the Americas. The missionaries brought with them new forms of worship that overlapped with traditional local forms, establishing a clerical and pietistic spirituality. Another institutional development also worked to sustain the Romanizing project with the Catholic Church, viz. the creation of dioceses, parishes and apostolic movements controlled by the clergy. Seminaries were instituted, directed by European religious leaders, to train a new clergy in the Romanizing spirit, while future bishops began to be trained in Rome’s theological faculties. This process involved a series of negative initiatives, however, such as combating the forms of devotion and the rituals of pilgrims and followers of traditional popular Catholicism. The creation of the dioceses and parishes also triggered heated disputes with the Brotherhoods in the urban centres. In the sertões, this conflict took place primarily in the sanctuaries—most of which were directed by lay monks and beatos (fanatical believers)—and in the local chapels maintained by rezadores (literally, people who pray). On the other hand, although there had been no radical rupture between the Catholic Church and the Catholic masses, a degree of ambiguity was introduced between the Catholicism practices by the bulk of the population and the Catholic Church centred on the parishes run by the clergy. This ambiguity was used for political ends by the Catholic Church hierarchy, which presented itself to the State as a representative of the Brazilian and Catholic people, demanding privileges in a social context of weak institutionalization and incipient political organization.

Traditional and Modern: The Obstacles of Dualism Concomitantly with the Romanizing movement in Catholicism, the country was going through a process of institutional modernization, which was republican in spirit. The process was led by urban secular elites and positivist military leaders, who championed a project that would inevitably involve changes to the political system—a shift from monarchical rule to a republic—and a cultural reform in favour of liberal and civilizational values. They sought to create the conditions needed to overcome the country’s perceived economic, cultural and social backwardness and project Brazil into the future through an upward curve of ‘order and progress.’ (‘Order and progress’ is the motto written on the Brazilian flag, designed at the time of the Proclamation of the Republic, 1889). This project gave rise to a dualist vision, which was embodied and spread by the first interpreters of the country to explain Brazil’s social problems and the poverty in which most of the population lived. According to them, the divide between tradition and modernity was a structural fault that could only be resolved through a moralizing and educational intervention. In this sense, we can identify a point of convergence between the secular elites and the Romanizing clergy— they coincided in passing a negative judgement on the nation’s past and its tradition.

166  Carlos Alberto Steil This convergence enabled a tactical alliance to form between the liberal and anticlerical elites and the Romanizing Catholics against the religious movements of resistance that surfaced during this period in the country’s sertões (semi-arid inland regions) and gave rose to armed conflicts led by the monks and beatos of popular Catholicism. These violent clashes were studied and interpreted by some of the first writings in the human sciences in Brazil on Catholicism and pilgrimages. The first conflict, called the Guerra de Canudos (War of Canudos), led by the pilgrim Antônio Conselheiro, had begun brewing in the mid-nineteenth century and exploded during the first half of the twentieth century in the north-eastern state of Bahia. The second, the Guerra do Contestado (Contestado War), was led by a monk, José Maria, who united caboclos (people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry) in the southern states of Paraná and Santa Catarina at the start of the twentieth century. These two movements fought against the Brazilian army, a confrontation that in both cases ended with the violent massacre of the insurgents. The third episode, located in Juazeiro do Norte, also in the Brazilian Northeast, in the state of Ceará, was fronted by a Catholic priest, Father Cícero Romão Batista. Though sharing various points in common with the first two conflicts, this clash did not have the same outcome. Notably, therefore, the same ideological apparatus, mobilized to divest the beatos, worshippers and pilgrims of any power in the symbolic production of popular Catholicism, was also used to legitimize the military actions against the poor inhabitants of the sertões, who opposed the modernizing project of the elites and the Romanizing clergy.

The War of Canudos: Between Literature and the Social Sciences The most important interpreter of the War of Canudos was Euclides da Cunha (1866–1908), who wrote, in his capacity as a war reporter and a living witness, one of the classics of Brazilian literature, Os Sertões (1963/1902). Published in English as Rebellion in the Backlands, the work, as Regina Abreu asserts, became established as a ‘national treasure,’ acquiring the ‘aura of a sacred book, indispensable to knowing Brazil, a Bible of nationality’ (1998: 24). Anticipating the use of fieldwork techniques in Brazil, Euclides da Cunha, unlike most of the contemporary authors who wrote about the Canudos movement, did not simply publish his notes made during the heat of the moment. Instead, he preferred to let them mature in the light of new readings and scientific works, distancing himself and adopting a theoretical approach. The book, therefore, is located somewhere between literature and science, written at a time when the social sciences in Brazil had yet to emerge as an institutionalized field of academic production. Oscillating between the Enlightenment and romanticism, Euclides da Cunha’s interpretation is marked, on one hand, by the universal belief that individualism would be the driving force of a society aiming towards the

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 167 ideals of civilization and progress, and, on the other hand, by the belief in the existence of a natural substance present in the sertanejo people and culture, who safeguarded the national soul. These two approaches drew on the dualisms of tradition and modernity, the primitive and the civilized, as interpretative frameworks for comprehending the Brazilian nation. This schema reiterated the myth of the ‘good savage and bad savage,’ therefore, but changed the figure occupying this double place: no longer the indigenous peoples of the New World, but the poor sertanejos (the people of the sertão) immersed in traditional Catholicism. This dualist approach is emphasized in the review, written by LéviStrauss for American Anthropologist in 1944, of the English translation of Os Sertões, which was published that same year. Lévi-Strauss stresses the ‘authentically Brazilian’ quality of the work and locates the source of this authenticity in nature and primitivism. In this sense, Euclides da Cunha’s great merit, according to Lévi-Strauss, lay in ‘turning the Brazilian elite back to the Brazilian reality’ rather than ‘attempting to escape from their national destiny [ . . . ] and to simulate the sophistication’ of European authors (1944: 395). In his view, therefore, Euclides da Cunha had ‘refused to be a schoolboy of the European masters’ and demonstrated that: ‘For Brazil to exist, its most primitive aspects, its ugliest spots were to be accepted; not to be ashamed of, but loved and cared for with utmost understanding and patience.’ (1963: 396) In Lévi-Strauss’s view, Euclides did what was needed, since he reminded: the Brazilian people that the achievements of the industrial civilization are not so great and indisputable that they should try to forget, instead of being proud of, those virgin sources of nature and humanity upon which, among all nations, they may rely for the building of a greater and better future. (Lévi-Strauss, 1944: 396) As Regina Abreu writes, ‘curiously, the French anthropologist, through his reading of Euclides da Cunha, places Brazil in the realm of nature, pushing into the background the ideals of civilization in the tropics’ (1998: 21). Written from within the conceptual framework of the natural sciences, the impact of Os Sertões on interpretations of the Brazilian nation waned as the social sciences began to achieve a degree of autonomy and move away from using the biological category of race as a concept to explain social life. Reflecting this movement, Gilberto Freyre argued that Euclides da Cunha had attached far too much importance to the ethnic issue and failed to register the extent and depth to which the feudal agrarian economy had helped shape Brazilian life. Nonetheless, he did recognize that Euclides da Cunha had been sufficiently aware to see that Antônio Conselheiro’s movement primarily represented a culture shock between the modernized, urbanized, Europeanized coast and the archaic, pastoral and stagnant sertões (Freyre,

168  Carlos Alberto Steil 1987 [1941]). By 1940, therefore, Freyre was already signalling the primacy of cultural and social factors in the interpretation of Brazilian society. These would come to the fore during the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of the first sociological analyses of religious movements of resistance to the Romanization and modernization of Brazilian society.

The Contestado War: Sociological Analyses Among these early sociological studies we can highlight two that interpret the events of Canudos, Contestado and Juazeiro do Norte as responses by the rural population to the political and economic transformations experienced at the turn of the twentieth century. The first, written by Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz (1918-present), explores all three events, interpreting them as translations of millenarianism into political movements. The second, written by Duglas Teixeira Monteiro, associates the events with a re-enchantment of the world in a context of secularization and modernization. The first book, O messianismo no Brasil e no mundo (Queiroz, 1965), marks a watershed between the one-off, peripheral studies of Catholicism and its emergence as a research object for the social sciences. A student of Roger Bastide, Queiroz drew on wide-ranging research, begun in 1948, which focused on the Canudos movements (1893–97), the pilgrimages of Juazeiro do Norte (1889–1934) and the Contestado War (1912–16). She interprets all these phenomena as local responses to changes happening more widely in Brazilian society. According to her, these political-religious insurrections had their origins in millenarianism as a latent force that breaks with social conformity and uproots the rural populations in search of alternatives to the order and domination imposed by agrarian elites. The millenarian eschatological belief in the tragic end to humanity and the regenerative and paradisiacal vision of a new world are essential traits of popular Catholicism. In Portuguese Catholicism, this form of millenarianism was reinforced by expectations for the return of Dom Sebastian I, a Portuguese king whose tragic disappearance during the Battle of Alcazar (Ksar-el-Kebir) in North Africa (1578) had given rise to Sebastianism, a movement that reached the New World in the seventeenth century. In Brazil, this millenarian belief was tirelessly disseminated by the Jesuit preacher Antônio Vieira (1608–97), who foretold the imminent arrival of a blessed empire that would soon be reconstituted during the reign of Dom João IV (1602–56) ‘in order to increase faith, for the glory of the Church, for the honour of the Portuguese nation, for the growth of the wealth of fortune and for the greater abundance of the wealth of grace’ (Cantel, 1960: 101). The second author is Duglas Teixeira Monteiro (1926–78). His main work, Os errantes do novo século: Um estudo sobre o surto milenarista do Contestado (1974), also focused on millenarianism but proposes a different

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 169 interpretation to the one presented by Queiroz. While the latter took religion to be an epiphenomenon that concealed the political factor—essential, in her view—behind the movement’s eruption, Monteiro calls attention to its sacred character and seeks to understand the meaning of religious actions and rituals for the insurgents in their everyday lives. Living in communities that varied in size from three hundred to five thousand inhabitants, the movement was organized through a decentralized network by the Twelve Peers of France, an order that looked back to the beginnings of medieval Catholicism through a literal interpretation of the history of Charlemagne’s fight against the Muslim armies invading Europe. The social context of southern Brazil where the Contestado War broke out, however, is very different to the northeast, the location of the other two movements. Those who rebelled in the South were caboclos,2 associated with cattle ranching and logging, who remained on the margins of the colonization process led by capitalist companies in partnership with the government. In the 1820s, colonization began to attract European migrants, especially Germans and Italians, who arrived to work primarily in agriculture.3 Since the 1840s, the region inhabited by the caboclos had been travelled by two monks, one after the other, both called João Maria. Their pilgrimages had taken them through the three southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, preaching, curing, counselling, organizing prayers and holding baptisms. It was after the disappearance of the second monk that José Maria appeared on the scene, the leader who unleashed the movement. Amid a crisis generated by the construction of a railroad, which had misappropriated land and decimated forests (the basis of the local population’s livelihood), José Maria announced the imminent return of João Maria at the head of Saint Sebastian’s army. The holy war in defence of the land that broke out in the Contestado region in 1912 was seen as merely an anticipation of the final war from which the enchanted army of insurgents would emerge victorious. Like the Canudos, José Maria’s followers also confronted the military forces of the Republic, achieving a number of victories before being annihilated in 1916. In his interpretation of the event, Monteiro structures his analysis into a sequence of three periods. First, the past order, founded on Catholic ideology, which he calls rustic Catholicism, i.e. the lifeworld of a population that shared traditional values and beliefs. The second period involved the disenchantment of the world, a process caused by modernization that had negative consequences for the life of these poor rural populations. The third was the period of re-enchantment, which established a ‘new century’ and leads to the emergence of an open conflict with the republican state and military intervention. His interpretation emphasizes the cultural difference between the Catholic environment, denominated ‘rustic’ or ‘traditional popular,’ and his own, identified as modern and secularized. The aim, in fact, is to demarcate the boundary between the social scientist and his object of study in an ‘ethnography produced at home.’

170  Carlos Alberto Steil

Juazeiro do Norte: A Historical Approach The final work during this early period of sociological research is a study of pilgrimage to Juazeiro do Norte and the role of the latter’s founder in the political coordination and formation of the sanctuary. The study is by American historian and Brazilianist Ralph Della Cava and describes the life of Father Cícero Romão Batista (1844–1934) along with the events that made Juazeiro do Norte one of the country’s leading pilgrimage centres. Della Cava’s thesis Miracle at Joaseiro (1976), published in the early 1970s, advances an important critique of the earlier studies cited above. In an effort to move beyond the dualist analysis that located social and political changes within the contrast between tradition and modernization, Della Cava explores the connections between the Juazeiro do Norte movement and wider issues relating to national policy and the global ecclesiastical context of international Roman Catholicism. The social context, in which the Juazeiro movement took place, is basically the same as Canudos: the sertão of the Brazilian Northeast. However, the leaders heading the movements were quite different. Father Cícero was a Catholic priest, a native of the region, who had been trained in the first seminary, founded during 1864 in the diocese of Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará state. The seminary was run by priests from the European Lazarist congregation. On arriving in Juazeiro, a hamlet with a low population, in 1872, the recently ordained Father Cícero, though trained in the disciplinary rigour of the Romanizing seminary, closely identified with the spirituality and practices of traditional popular Catholicism in his pastoral work with the region’s population. The trigger for the movement was a miracle that occurred in 1889 involving the beata Maria de Araújo at the moment when Father Cícero was giving her communion, when the sacramental wafer bled. This miracle, which was repeated many other times, spread through the region, provoking mass pilgrimages to Juazeiro. At the same time as initiating the pilgrimage, the miracle also provoked a conflict between the bishop, who refuted the veracity of the miracle, and Father Cícero, who resolutely defended what he had witnessed. The conflict transformed into a lengthy ecclesiastical question that reached the Roman Curia and lasted until Father Cícero’s death. Suspended from his orders as a priest, Father Cícero acquired fame and recognition as a holy man, attracting floods of pilgrims who continued to travel to Juazeiro, no longer just because of the miracle but to hear the priest’s sermons and advice. Some of these pilgrims stayed to live in the town or nearby, under the protection of Father Cícero, who provided them with work, a place to live and security. Juazeiro grew rapidly and became a regional centre where Father Cícero not only pursued a religious role but also wielded political power alongside other local bosses (coronéis). He was the town’s first mayor and became a central figure in the coordination of an armed conflict that recruited a war-hardened army of jagunços to fight the

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 171 central power of the province. He was later appointed a federal deputy and a vice-president of the province. According to Della Cava, Father Cícero’s political power stemmed from his request to be reordained by the diocese and the Roman Curia. Supported by the pilgrims, who flocked to him in large numbers, he built up a solid economic base and allied himself with a number of political factions from the region with the aim of creating the Diocese of Cariri, with its centre in Juazeiro, which he saw as a viable solution to the ecclesiastical issue and a means for him to receive his priestly orders once again. Monteiro also claims that all the necessary elements were already present in Juazeiro to set off a millenarian movement similar to those that had unfolded in Canudos and Contestado. The explosiveness of the conflict was, however, contained by the control that Father Cícero exerted over his religious followers, which prevented their religious practices from exceeding the limits of the Church’s tolerance for popular Catholicism (Monteiro, 1977: 57–58). Along the same lines, Oliveira recalls that once Father Cícero died, these religious practices were no longer controlled and stimulated the Caldeirão movement led by Beato Lourenço from the Juazeiro circle. Like Canudos and Contestado, this too was crushed by the army (Oliveira, 1985: 251).

Studies and Analysis of Catholicism in Times of Repression The studies of Catholicism during the period of military dictatorship in Brazil were concentrated particularly in the area of sociology. Political censorship and repression encouraged a common interest between academics and progressive sectors of Catholicism linked especially to the Basic Ecclesial Communities, Social Pastoral Care and Liberation Theology—all central actors in the resistance to the regime and the campaign for human rights, especially on behalf of political prisoners and the poor rural and urban populations, who had suffered the most severely from the capitalist economic model imposed by the military government. In this sense, albeit for a very short time, this mutual interest led to a rethinking of the relationship between modernity and Catholicism. One of the key figures in this ideological process, which began in the 1970s, was the sociologist Cândido Procópio Ferreira de Camargo (1922–87), who was responsible for training a new generation of social scientists of religion.4 The point of convergence was the cooperation between the Religion Sector of the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), coordinated by himself, and the Archdiocese of São Paulo, headed by Cardinal Evaristo Arns, a leading opponent of the military regime. This connection resulted in two works of huge importance in terms of the study of Catholicism and the Catholic Church during the period. Both were published as books: São Paulo 1975: Crescimento e pobreza (Camargo, 1976) and São Paulo: O povo em movimento (Singer and Brandt, 1981).

172  Carlos Alberto Steil In the area of sociology, we can also highlight the development of an ‘engaged sociology’ by Catholic activists, who were associated with Liberation Theology and pastoral social care. This movement, called Liberation Christianity and Marxist in inspiration, assumed as the core of its message a social ethics to be incorporated at the levels of individual conscience and of political and economic structures (Steil, 1999; Löwy, 2000). In this approach, traditional popular Catholicism ceased to be viewed as a sign of backwardness and came to represent a form of cultural resistance to modernity. The work of raising awareness and organizing groups to oppose the military regime was incorporated into sociological production as a simultaneously political and academic praxis. The texts on Catholicism from this period reflect the engagement of their authors in the rural and urban workers’ unions, residential associations in outlying urban areas, human rights organizations, campaigns for gender equality, the defence of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants and environmental preservation. In this movement, there was an effort to signal the sense of liberation contained in the beliefs and practices of popular Catholicism. Some of their rituals were reinvented as pilgrimages that, refracted through Liberation Christianity, were transformed into Romarias da Terra (Land Pilgrimages)—a broad movement of public demonstration and political performance that spread throughout the country, associated with social movements in the rural world (Steil, 1996). In the regions to which we referred above, localities where traditional popular Catholicism gave rise to millenarian movements, the Land Pilgrimages positively and politically interpreted the War of Canudos, the Contestado War and the Juazeiro movement as precursors to contemporary struggles for social and political rights. Through ritual, therefore, a bridge was established between popular Catholicism and the rural workers’ movements for agrarian reform and social policies.

Catholicism and Pilgrimages from an Anthropological Perspective: Overcoming the Dualism After the period of military dictatorship, studies of Catholicism and pilgrimages turned away from systemic analysis towards an analysis of the practices of social actors. The sanctuaries were no longer viewed as homogenous spaces where traditional Catholicism is manifested but, rather, places of convergence, negotiation and dispute over the meanings of the multiple ways of being Catholic (Eade and Sallnow, 1991; Steil, 1996). Popular Catholicism was no longer conceived as a prior stage of social evolution and the pilgrimages ceased to be perceived as rituals enacted in resistance to modernity. The traditional/modern dichotomy was analyzed from a new perspective that foregrounds the interconnections between these poles and their coexistence as tensions lived in practice. In this sense, pilgrimages were now understood as privileged places for experiencing the diversity of beliefs

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 173 that span from the devotional worship of saints and traditional Catholicism to New Age spiritual experiences, passing through the rituals of Catholic liberation theology and the Charismatic Catholic Renewal (Camurça, 1998; Steil, 2004). Hence, instead of interpreting these phenomena as survivals or resistances, contemporary religious studies now approach pilgrimages as forms of making pre-modern practices and rituals compatible with modern experiences of grassroots communities and post-modern experiences centred on the religiosity of the self. This new cycle of studies on Catholicism and pilgrimages emerged during the 1980s and was led this time by anthropology. Influenced by hermeneutics and performance studies, this approach foregrounded ethnographic research into devotional practices, traditional festivals and pilgrimages and focused on rituals as key loci for accessing and interpreting popular culture. In this anthropological turn, four authors played a fundamental role in proposing new paradigms for the analysis of Catholicism and pilgrimages. The first author is Pierre Sanchis, who looked for the roots of popular Brazilian Catholicism, located mostly on the Iberian peninsula, through the development of a long-term ethnographic project on pilgrimages and religious festivals in Portugal in the 1970s. This research resulted in the book Arraial. Festa e religião popular: As romarias portuguesas (1983). Strongly influenced by structuralism, the book forms the starting point for the author’s incessant endeavour to understand the role of Catholicism in Brazilian culture. The question of the identification of a Catholic culture, central to this study, extends to all the author’s later work where he seeks to identify the structural and determinant forces in the diverse historical and ideological configurations assumed by Catholicism in Brazil. The second author is Otávio Velho and his text ‘O cativeiro da bestafera’, in particular, which was published along with other essays in the book Besta-Fera. Recriação do mundo (1995).5 In this text, the author proposes a hermeneutics of popular Catholicism that goes beyond semiotic analysis. In a fertile dialogue with Paul Ricoeur (1969 and 1978), Velho sets out from his fieldwork experience with rural populations in northern Brazil in order to understand popular culture from a Biblical angle, based on the centrality of captivity and the Besta Fera (Ferocious Beast) in the narratives and practices of his interlocutors. Positioning his analysis beyond a political or even religious concern, therefore, Velho explores how the association of the Biblical notion of captivity with Ricoeur’s symbolism of evil enables us to reflect on the human condition itself. Breaking with any dualist approach, he coins the concept of a Biblical culture that ‘refers to a liberty oriented towards openness, to a willingness and a relation with the transcendent’ (1995: 27). In calling attention to the risk of foreclosing the symbolic meaning of captivity within the dimension of the event and political struggle, evident in the work of sociologists and liberation theologians, he invites us to go beyond socio-political consciousness and seek in popular Catholicism the possibility for extending our own understanding of the world with the

174  Carlos Alberto Steil aim of finding a solution to the cultural crisis that affects us as a society and as humankind. Carlos Rodrigues Brandão is the third author we can highlight from this generation of anthropologists. Over a career spanning more than forty years, he has conducted extensive research into the diverse expressions of popular culture and religion in the everyday life of rural communities, in public and domestic rituals, in popular festivals and in pilgrimages. His central theme is popular culture, which he looks to understand through the study of religion. His early research was influenced by the ‘community studies’ approach, which marked the beginning of social sciences in Brazil and was developed during the 1950s and 1960s, especially by foreign researchers. This approach involved descriptions of everyday practices and local rituals in order to differentiate it from folklore studies. It was assumed that the study of the interweaving of religious practices, beliefs and rituals with other dimensions of social life would provide the key to understanding Brazilian culture and social life. Brandão focused on popular actors in their local interactions: the rezador (prayer-curer), the capelão (chaplain), the leader of the ritual group of peasants or Afro-descendants, the pai-de-santo of the Afro-Brazilian religions, the sorcerer on the street corner, the Evangelical pastor from the small local church, the curer, the benzedeira (blesser-curer) and so on. Despite the Marxist influence, which became the trademark of Brazilian sociology during the 1970s and 1980s, his intellectual production remained highly ethnographic. Indeed, it is this ethnographic dimension that reveals his proximity to Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the circularity between the popular and the erudite, the traditional and the institutional. Brandão’s books Os deuses do povo: Um estudo sobre religião popular (1980), Sacerdotes de viola: Rituais, religiosos do catolicismo popular em São Paulo e Minas Gerais (1981) and Memória do sagrado: Estudos de religião e ritual (1985) are all landmarks in the study of Catholicism. It is in the practice and the religious experience of his interlocutors that popular culture, according to the author: seems alive and multiform, and, more than in other sectors responsible for producing social modes of life and symbols, it exists in a clear state of bitter struggle, whether for survival or autonomy, amid the profane and sacred confrontations between the erudite domain of the dominant and the popular domain of the subaltern. (1980: 15) The last author to mention here is Rubem César Fernandes. His studies of pilgrimage comprise a watershed in the Brazilian literature on the theme. His ethnography takes as its unit of analysis popular practices and beliefs, with an emphasis on the routes, rituals and events involved in pilgrimages. In this sense, his work shows similarities to the performance approach of Victor Turner. His book Os cavaleiros do Bom Jesus. Uma introdução às religiões

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 175 populares (1982) has become a key reference for all researchers studying pilgrimages in Brazil. It contains an ethnography of the journey and arrival of a group of urban pilgrims at a sanctuary close to the city of São Paulo, highlighting the interactions between the pilgrims themselves, between them and the sanctuary’s priests, the city residents and the followers of other religious denominations. His ethnography reveals the tenuous boundaries, very often reified, between the popular and the institutional, the rustic and the erudite, the peasant and the urban citizen, or even between Catholics and Pentecostals. Elsewhere, in Romarias da Paixão (1994), a collection of his essays and other writings from the 1980s and early 1990s, we can pick out three texts that had a significant impact on anthropological studies of pilgrimages in Brazil. The first, ‘Imagens da Paixão’, provides a comparative analysis of the Catholic Church in Brazil and Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. The point of convergence is the political context formed by Brazil’s return to democracy with the end of the military dictatorship and by the end of socialism in Poland. Though in a sense polar opposites, through Liberation Theology in Brazil, with its strong Marxist content, and the new syndicalism of Solidarity in Poland combined with the conservatism of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church played a central role in social and political change towards democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. Here Fernandes sets himself the challenge of understanding these processes through the possibilities and potentials inherent to Catholicism itself. In the second text, ‘Aparecida: nossa rainha, senhora e mãe’, he reflects on the relations between the State and the Catholic Church in Brazil, taking as his backdrop the country’s largest pilgrimage sanctuary. Founded in 1717 by fishermen, who had scooped the image of Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) from the waters of the Paraíba River, located between the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the sanctuary was run by lay followers of popular Catholicism until the 1890s when it came under the administration of priests from the Redemptorist congregation. In this essay, the conflicts within Catholicism and between the Catholic Church and the Republican State are interpreted by Fernandes through the titles attributed to the Virgin Mary: Rainha (Queen), Senhora (Lady), Mãe (Mother), Oxum and Iemanjá (the names of Afro-Brazilian goddesses). In an interplay of symbols and positions within the political field and the nation’s imagination, which encompasses the syncretism of African-origin and indigenous religions, Our Lady thus becomes an important means of access to Brazilian culture and the country’s political history. ‘O peso da Cruz’, the last text by Fernandes to discuss here, is a superbly innovative ethnography in terms of the methodology used. As he himself asserts, it is an attempt to ‘describe an episode from the Brazilian Passion in a passionate manner. Placing myself in the text and dialoguing with the main partner in the research, a renowned pilgrim from the São Paulo region’ (1994: 127). Covering a route of 50 kilometres, sharing the weight of a 140-kilo cross carried along the edge of the highways, the researcher

176  Carlos Alberto Steil walked side-by-side with the pilgrim pagador de promessa (keeper of promises) from his city of origin to the sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Pirapora in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. The journey, initially planned to last three days, took a further week with the pilgrim’s return trips back to his city of origin to meet his family. On his journey, Fernandes engages in a profound anthropological and psychoanalytic reflection on human existence. As an apprentice pilgrim, he not only rediscovers himself as an anthropologist, he also realizes his deep identification with the pilgrim, observing that ‘not only he, the pilgrim, but also myself [Fernandes], the researcher, are shaped by the Christian symbolism of the Passion’ (pp. 127–128). From the following generation, whose teachers included some of the authors discussed above, we can pick out two anthropologists who have continued their work and incorporated other perspectives in the process. The first is Raymundo Maués, an anthropologist from the Amazonian region, whose doctorate was supervised by Rubem César Fernandes. He published his thesis as a book, Padres, pajés, santos e festas: Catolicismo popular e controle eclesiástico. Um estudo antropológico numa área do interior da Amazônia (1995).6 The work explores the question of syncretism in the formation of Brazilian Catholicism and calls attention to the indigenous influence on the religiosity and popular culture of Amazonia. Looking beyond the south and southeast axis of Brazil, Maués’s research also sheds light on the contribution made by the anthropological work conducted in the north. Led by the figure of Eduardo Galvão (1921–1976) and the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Pará state, the region formed an important centre of production on indigenous religions and their syncretic translations through the encounter with Catholicism and African-origin religions (Maués, 1999). The second work to mention here is my own book on the sanctuary of Bom Jesus da Lapa, in the sertão of the Brazilian Northeast, in Bahia state, published under the title O sertão das romarias. Um estudo antropológico sobre o santuário de Bom Jesus da Lapa—Bahia (1996). Presented as a doctoral thesis supervised by Otávio Velho, this work provides a deeper inquiry into two aspects mentioned earlier. The first is the concept of a Biblical culture, first proposed in Velho’s article on the Besta Fera, to which I add the adjective Catholic, i.e. Biblical-Catholic culture, in order to emphasize the contextualization of Biblical narratives within a structure of meanings and worldviews particular to the pilgrims of Bom Jesus da Lapa. The second aspect is the view of the sanctuary as ‘an arena of disputes of meanings’ inspired by the book Contesting the sacred (1991), by John Eade and Michael Sallnow. The texts published in this collection were fundamental in allowing me to advance beyond earlier studies influenced by the Turnerian communitas paradigm. In sum, it amounts to a historical and ethnographic work on a specific pilgrimage, but one that points to transformations in global and Brazilian Catholicism that impacted on the local in an antagonistic form.

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 177

Blurred Boundaries: Recent Tendencies in Pilgrimage Studies In concluding this chapter, I wish to point to a number of lines of inquiry that orient today’s academic production on Catholicism and pilgrimage by Brazilian social scientists. The first is related to the pilgrimages that have been taking place around recent apparitions of Our Lady. Studies of these events have highlighted a convergence between a long-term tradition in Catholicism, namely the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement, which has supported and publicized these apparitions. The ethnographic studies collected in the book Maria entre os vivos (Steil et al., 2003), for example, indicate the recurrence of a shift from visions of the Virgin Mary, associated with a specific geographical place, to messages. Certain people are entrusted with the messengers and transmit them to the faithful through pilgrimages to parishes and groups belonging to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. A second trend concerns the links between pilgrimages and the New Age. This proximity has been emphasized both in ethnographies on the Camino de Santiago in Spain (Carneiro, 2007) and in research conducted by myself and others on the ‘Caminhos de Santiago’ in Brazil (Steil and Carneiro, 2011). On the Brazilian routes, which appeared in the first decade of this millennium, we can observe a certain specialization concerning the goals that each route emphasizes. Some routes specialize more on the inventive reproduction of the official Catholic tradition, such as the ‘Caminho da Fé’ and ‘Os passos de Anchieta,’ while others are more closely linked to contemporary values, like ecology, as in the case of the ‘Caminho da Luz,’ or associated with a process of inner quest such as the ‘Caminho do Sol,’ or seen as a way of connecting with the indigenous origins of Brazilian society, e.g. the ‘Caminho das Missões.’ The bodily form through which the pilgrim completes the path—by foot, wheelchair, bicycle, car, coach and so on— becomes what really matters in terms of defining its authenticity. ‘Nature walks’ are a third trend that we can observe among today’s ‘pilgrimage’ practices. Associated with environmental values and care for the body, these walks have spread across the entire country and are frequently incorporated into public policies in the areas of health and tourism (Tonil and Steil, 2015). Hence, far from presenting themselves as a rupture with the past, they appear as one modality of pilgrimage among others. Along these lines, our effort has been to reflect on a kind of movement that connects with other practices of everyday life and public space. One last tendency concerns the tenuous borders between pilgrimage and tourism where we observe two complementary movements. The first is the transformation of traditional pilgrimages into religious tourism with huge investments in elements like hotels, charters, events and shows, and in streamlining the administration of the sanctuaries (Steil, 2003). The second

178  Carlos Alberto Steil movement proceeds in the opposite direction: namely, the sacralization of tourist events where the overlapping of the sacred and secular becomes clearly evident (Steil, 2001). Although the term ‘pilgrim’ seldom appears in the discourse of the visitors and the tourist agents at these events, many of the people participating describe them in terms of an experience of the sacred.

Notes 1 The notion of a Romanization of Brazilian Catholicism was first suggested by Roger Bastide and later developed by Ralph Della Cava in the book Miracle at Joaseiro (1970) and by Ribeiro de Oliveira in Religião e Dominação de Classe (1985). 2 It is important to note the distinction still made today in southern Brazil between caboclos, of Portuguese and Spanish origin, who had appropriated the region’s lands through recurrent wars with the indigenous population, and the colonists who arrived in the nineteenth century. 3 There was a crucial division between the new influx of Catholic immigrants and those who had inhabited the region since the sixteenth century, something not evident in other regions of the country. 4 From the generation trained by Camargo two sociologists, who were associated with CEBRAP and continued his work, stand out: José Reginaldo Prandi (1946-present) and Antônio Flávio Pierucci (1945–2012). 5 The first version of the text was published in the journal Religião & Sociedade in 1987. 6 Maués accompanied Rubem César Fernandes on the pilgrimage described above, carrying the cross in conjunction with the keeper of promises, Rubem himself and other figures described in Fernandes’ ethnography.

Bibliography Abreu, R. (1998) O enigma dos Sertões, Rio de Janeiro: Funarte/Rocco. Alves, M. (1968) O Cristo do povo, Rio de Janeiro: Sabiá. Beozzo, O. (1977) ‘Irmandades, santuários e capelinhas de beira de estrada’, Revista Eclesiástica Brasileira—REB, vol. 37, no. 148, pp. 741–758. Boff, L. (1985) Church, charisma and power: Liberation theology and the institutional church, New York: Crossroads Publishing. Brandão, C. (1979) ‘De errantes a errados?’ Religião & Sociedade, vol. 4, pp. 17–24. ———. (1980) Os deuses do povo: Um estudo sobre religião popular, São Paulo: Brasiliense. ———. (1981) Sacerdotes de viola: Rituais, religiosos do catolicismo popular em São Paulo e Minas Gerais, Petrópolis: Vozes. ———. (1985) Memória do sagrado: estudos de religião e ritual, São Paulo: Paulinas. Brown, P. (1981) The cult of saints, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bruneau, T. (1974) Catolicismo brasileiro em época de transição, São Paulo: Loyola. Burke, P. (1989) Cultura popular na idade moderna, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Camargo, C.P.F. de (1976) São Paulo 1975: Crescimento e pobreza, São Paulo: Loyola.

Catholicism and Pilgrimage in Brazil 179 Camurça, M. (1998) ‘Sombras na Satedral: A Influência New Age na Igreja Católica e o Holismo da Teologia de Leonardo Boff e Frei Beto’, Numen, vol. 1, no.1, pp. 85–125. Cantel, R. (1960) Prophétisme et messianisme dans l’oeuvre d’A. Vieira, Paris: Ed. Hispano-americaines. Carneiro, S. de Sá. (2007) A pé e com fé. Brasileiros no Caminho de Santiago, São Paulo: Attar. Carvalho, J.M. de (1987) Os bestializados: O Rio de Janeiro e a República que não foi, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Coutinho, A. (1988) ‘Introdução’, in Nuno M. P. (ed.) Compêndio narrativo do peregrino da América, Rio de Janeiro: Academia Brasileira de Letras. Cunha, E. (1963) Os sertões, 26th edition, Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Francisco Alves. Della Cava, R. (1970) Miracle at Joaseiro, New York: Columbia University Press. Eade, J. and Sallnow, M. (eds) (1991) Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage, London and New York: Routledge. Fernandes, R. (1982) Os cavaleiros de Bom Jesus, São Paulo: Brasiliense. ———. (1994) Romarias da Paixão, Rio de Janeiro: Rocco. Freyre, G. (1987/1941) Perfil de Euclides e outros perfis, Rio de Janeiro: Record. Hoornaert, E. (1983) A Igreja no Brasil-Colônia 1550–1800, São Paulo: Brasiliense. Kadt, E. (1970) Catholic radicals in Brazil, London: Oxford University Press. Karsburg, A. (2014) O Eremita das Américas: A odisseia de um peregrino italiano no século XIX, Santa Maria: Editora da UFSM. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1944) ‘South America: Rebellion on the backlands’, American Anthropologist, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 394–396. Lowy, M. (2000) A guerra dos deuses: Religião e política na América Latina, Petrópolis: Vozes. Marques Pereira, N. (1988) Compêndio narrativo do peregrino da América, Rio de Janeiro: Academia Brasileira de Letras. Maués, R. (1995) Padres, pajés, santos e festas: Catolicismo popular e controle eclesiástico. Um estudo antropológico numa área do interior da Amazônia, Belém: Cejup. ———. (1999) Uma outra invenção da Amazonia. Religiões, histórias, identidades, Belém: Cejup. Monteiro, D. T. (1974) Os errantes do novo século: Um estudo sobre o surto milenarista do Contestado, São Paulo: Duas Cidades. ———. (1977) ‘Um confronto entre Juazeiro, Canudos e Constestado’ in Fausto, B. (ed.) História Geral da Civilização Brasileira, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 38–92. Oliveira, T. R. de (1985) Religião e dominação de classe: Gênese, estrutura e função do catolicismo romanizado no Brasil, Petrópolis: Vozes. Paiva, J. (2006) Os Bispos de Portugal e do Império (1495–1777), Coimbra: ­Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra. Prado Júnior, C. (1977) Formação do Brasil contemporâneo: Colônia, São Paulo: Brasiliense. Queiroz, M. de (1965) O messianismo no Brasil e no mundo, São Paulo: Dominus Editora. ———. (1968) ‘O catolicismo rústico no Brasil’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, no. 5, pp. 104–123. Ricoeur, P. (1969) The symbolism of evil, Boston: Beacon Press. ———. (1978) O conflito das interpretações, Rio de Janeiro: Imago.

180  Carlos Alberto Steil Sanchi, P. (1983) Arraial. Festa de um povo: as romarias em Portugal, Lisbon: Dom Quixote. ———. (1994) ‘Catolicismo, entre tradição e modernidades’, Comunicações do ISER, vol. 22, pp. 9–24. ———. (1996) ‘Uma identidade católica?’, Comunicações do ISER, vol. 22, pp. 5–16. Santa Maria, A. de (1722) Santuário Mariano: A história das imagens milagrosas de Nossa Senhora e milagrosamente manifestadas, aparecidas no Arcebispado da Bahia, mais bispados de Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande, Maranhão e Grão Pará, Lisbon: Oficina de Antônio Pedrozo Galram. Steil, C. (1996) O Sertão das Romarias: Um estudo antropológico sobre o santuário de Bom Jesus da Lapa—Bahia, Petrópolis: Vozes. ———. (1999) ‘A igreja dos pobres: da secularização à mística’, Religião e Sociedade, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 61–76. ———. (2001) ‘Peregrinación y turismo. Navidad en Gramado y Canela, Brasil’, Estudios y Perspectivas en Turismo, vol. 11, nos. 1–2, pp. 27–39. ———. (2003) ‘Romeiros e turistas no santuário de Bom Jesus da Lapa’, Horizontes Antropológicos, vol. 9, no. 20, pp. 249–261. ––––––. (2004) ‘Renovação Carismática Católica: porta de entrada ou de saída do catolicismo? Uma etnografia do Grupo São José, Porto Alegre (RS)’, Religião & Sociedade, vol. 24, no.1, pp. 11–36. ———, Mariz, C. and Reesink, M. (2003) Maria entre os vivos: Reflexões teóricas e etnografias sobre aparições marianas no Brasil, Porto Alegre: Editora da UFRGS. ——— and Carneiro, S. de Sá (2011) Caminhos de Santiago no Brasil: Interfaces entre turismo e religião, Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa. ——— and Tonil, R. (2014) ‘O catolicismo e a Igreja Católica no Brasil à luz dos dados sobre religião no Censo de 2010’ in Bingemer, M. and Andrade, P. de (eds), O Cen so e as religiões no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Ed. PUC-Rio. Singer, P. and Brandt, V. (1981) São Paulo: O povo em movimento, Petrópolis: Vozes. Tonil, R. and Steil, C. (2015) On the Nature Trail. Converting the rural into the ecological through a state tourism policy, New York: Nova Science Publishers. Valensi, L. (1992) Fables de la memoire: La glorieuse bataille des trois-rois, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Velho, O. (1995) Besta-Fera: Recriação do mundo, Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará.

11 Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony Reflections on the Importance of Multilingual Studies of Pilgrimage beyond the Anglophone World Ian Reader In this and their previous edited volume International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies (2015) Dionigi Albera and John Eade have shown that pilgrimage has multiple forms and manifestations in terms of how it has been studied and analyzed in different academic and linguistic traditions. While the universality of pilgrimage has been a standard assumption among scholars in the field, it has been a common tendency for that universality to be framed within a particular linguistic context based around a Western (predominantly Eurocentric) Christian model. The terminology of religious travel utilized has also been deeply embedded in that tradition and in a Western European (initially Latin and then French and English) lexicon. It has been—certainly in the eyes of Anglophone scholars—dominated and shaped by the English language. This linguistic orientation has also been evident in the ways in which ‘grand theories’ of pilgrimage (starting as always with Victor Turner and theories of liminality and communitas and then with John Eade and Michael Sallnow’s edited volume on contestation, 1991) have been formulated within the context of Christianity (notably Catholicism). The result has been that Christian pilgrimage has largely become the core model around which concepts of pilgrimage have been framed, while the overarching theories proposed as modes of analyzing and interpreting it have been overwhelmingly Anglophone in nature. Likewise, the linguistic framing device for examining practices of travel associated with religious sites has been the singular English (derived from Latin and French) words ‘pilgrim(s)’ and ‘pilgrimage’. However, this situation has been questioned by scholars working in nonAnglophone and/or non-Christian contexts, who have pointed to other linguistic traditions that also offer rich areas of research and analysis in the field, and whose existence alone (to say nothing of the insights provided) challenges the hegemonic position held by the Anglophone and Christiancentric field. The existence of such non-Anglophone traditions also implicitly questions the ways in which, because of the academic dominance of the English language, the field has operated within the context of one term (pilgrimage) when, in many different linguistic contexts, a far richer vocabulary of religiously-oriented travel exists. Such reductive dynamics have certainly

182  Ian Reader been a source of frustration to scholars working in contexts other than English or Christianity. While they are aware that the Anglophone tradition has produced copious and often stimulating studies of pilgrimage, they also recognize that it neither constitutes the totality of the field, nor commands a monopoly on theoretical insights. That frustration is intensified by the sense that those working in other language areas often find their work ignored or paid less attention than it merits. Even important studies on pilgrimage that have been written in English have faced this problem when they have focused on pilgrimage in contexts beyond the Christian world—a concern, for example, felt among scholars researching pilgrim travel and practice in China.1 The same pertains for Japan, a country with a rich and complex culture of pilgrimage, which has been shown by Japanese scholars to be in no way a marginalized practice—something that for long characterized perceptions of its position in Christian culture2—but, rather, a practice very much central to the functioning of established traditions and institutions, and at the core of the Japanese religious world. A good example in this context has been the work of Shinno Toshikazu, one of Japan’s most significant scholars in the field, who has produced extensive studies about pilgrimage via explorations of popular practices, pilgrim legends and wandering ascetics and their roles in shaping religious structures in Japan. Shinno (e.g. 1991: 19) has, for instance, argued that pilgrimage is, in essence, one of the foundational pillars of Japanese religion and, in so doing, has located it at the core of studies of religion in Japan rather than as a topic located at its margins. It was the Japanese scholastic tradition (a field that has immeasurably aided and enhanced my own work in the field) that showed me, for example, that pilgrimage could be appropriately discussed and analyzed as a central element in religious culture rather than, as appeared the case from studies of religion grounded in the Western, Christian milieu, something on the margins. The Anglophone literature on Japanese pilgrimage studies has also sought to make these points. In 1997, for example, Paul Swanson and I edited a special issue about pilgrimage in Japan for a well-known journal in our field, and in our introduction we highlighted some key themes in the study of pilgrimage in Japan (including the complex vocabulary of pilgrimage itself). In so doing we drew attention to some problems of interpretation posited as universal in the Anglophone Christian field that we felt might not have been made had some awareness of pilgrimage in Japan been present or if there had been wider awareness of Japanese-language scholarship on the topic (Reader and Swanson, 1997). Almost two decades later, Paolo Barbaro (2013: 46), writing in French and introducing his own research on Japanese pilgrimage promotional literature, made very similar criticisms, while noting that despite the time that had elapsed since Swanson and I had made our remarks, very little had changed. As Barbaro noted, Japanese studies of pilgrimage (and studies of pilgrimage in Japan in general, whether in

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 183 Japanese or Western languages) continued to be marginalized in the wider, largely Christian-centric, field. One should note that such criticism is not something specifically directed at or against studies of pilgrimage so much as a comment on the academic world in general, and especially its Anglophone sphere. Certainly, it is fair to say that English has become the primary lingua franca of academia in modern times, and that this has been in many ways a boon to scholars around the world, who have a medium that is widely known and through which they can express their ideas and have the possibility of a wider audience. In pilgrimage contexts English has been the medium through which many insights and theoretical discussions have taken place.3 However, the downside of this has been the marginalization of other languages and academic traditions, while many scholars have been led into the trap of believing that what is available in one admittedly dominant academic language represents the extent of research and insights in their field. This has been a general tendency in the academic world, notably in Anglophone countries, rather than something confined to studies of pilgrimage. One might simply refer to the growing field of studies on Islam and terrorism, in which many recent participants in the field appear to rely wholly or largely on Anglophone knowledge and sources and to lack linguistic knowledge of areas such as Arabic that might, to some, appear to be rather important in such an area. In terms of pilgrimage, paying attention to non-Anglophone traditions that focus predominantly on religious contexts beyond the Western Christian domain, has produced insights of value that can serve as an antidote to this broader pattern. They also act as a corrective and reminder to those of us who, while working with other languages and cultures, tend still to find ourselves focusing on the Anglophone field for our core points of theoretical reference, or who fall into the same problematic trap of viewing the Anglophone field as our foil. My studies of Japanese pilgrimage are a good case in point; while criticizing those who pay little or no attention to studies beyond the Christian and Anglophone realms, I have tended nonetheless, in examining Japanese scholastic insights and Japanese pilgrimage practices, to focus almost wholly on Anglophone studies as a point of reference for my studies, and as a foil to the Japanese examples. The tendency to operate in a somewhat binary framework where Western Christian-centric, Anglophone studies are the foil for or the contrasting field against which other studies are framed is recurrent, too, among Japanese scholars who, if they make use of non-Japanese studies and examples at all, invariably use Anglophone and Christian-centric examples and studies, and pay little attention to other linguistic traditions.4

Beyond the Anglophone: New Insights, New Perspectives Yet, as this and the earlier companion volume International Perspectives indicate, there exists a wealth of materials, studies, insights and theories in a

184  Ian Reader variety of languages and related to a number of religious traditions, that can enrich the field at large, while also helping to challenge existing linguistic and religious hegemonies. Moreover, the existence of comprehensive and often highly developed academic literatures in a number of languages is a salutary warning to Anglophone scholars about assuming that they are necessarily at the forefront of insights in their chosen fields of study or that they got there first. It was a surprise, for example, for those of us versed in the Anglophone tradition to discover, as Anna Niedz´wiedz´ (2015) demonstrated in a paper given at the workshop (in Marseilles in 2013) that gave rise to the earlier volume, that over three decades before Victor Turner was outlining his seminal theory of communitas—a concept that, as many subsequent scholars have recognized, played such a vital role in stimulating studies of pilgrimage in the Western academy—similar perspectives on pilgrimage had been outlined in Polish by Stefan Czarnowski (Niedz´wiedz´, 2015: 79–80; see also Albera and Eade, 2015: 14) and that his ideas had a major role in shaping Polish academic studies in the field. As I discussed in that earlier volume, too, Japanese pilgrimage scholarship has paid great attention to the influences of economics and changing economic flows in historical and contemporary terms on pilgrimage practices and development (Reader, 2015a). These are areas less widely examined in Anglophone scholarship yet, as Japanese scholars have shown comprehensively, highly important topics that cannot be overlooked if one is to gain a broader understanding of the changing vicissitudes of pilgrimages.5 Certainly, there have been studies in the Anglophone literature that have discussed economic processes in pilgrimage contexts,6 but these have been less prominent in the field than is the case in Japanese scholarship. Of course, because such studies have been in languages such as Polish and Japanese that have not transcended borders or gained international scholastic audiences to the extent that English has, they have been limited to those coteries of scholars whose native language was or who were versed in these languages. The same is true, of course, of other linguistic contexts, whether of studies in Hungarian, German, Italian and so on, and also of studies beyond the Western Christian sphere. Another issue emerging from the companion International Perspectives volume was that, whereas Anglophone studies of pilgrimage have broadly been based in anthropology (along, to a certain extent, with history but always with a degree of tension between the two fields7), in many other academic arenas—for example, the German, Hungarian and Japanese—other fields of study such as folk studies (regarded in such contexts as an important academic discipline8) have played important roles in studies of pilgrimage. In other words, by opening up discussion of how different academic cultures have studied a particular topic, pilgrimage, the editors of International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies have not just exposed some of the limitations of an Anglophone-dominated field. They have also provided us with various means of counteracting this, by opening the field up to new

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 185 information and insights across a variety of cultural settings through which we can learn about what is being done by colleagues in other languages. At the same time, in raising awareness of such problems, the International Perspectives editors also recognized that there is a degree of irony involved, since the avenue through which these issues have been brought out is the very language whose dominance underpins the problems.

Beyond Language: On Cultural Perspectives and Academic Traditions While International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies paid particular attention to the ways in which specific academic traditions of studying pilgrimage have developed in a variety of linguistic contexts, it was still predominantly centred on the Christian tradition.9 The current volume, while reiterating the point that pilgrimage studies is much more than an Anglophone, Christian-centric area of engagement, pays greater attention to the ways in which practices of pilgrimage and studies thereof are interwoven in particular cultural and linguistic settings. It also takes us beyond the predominantly Christian-centric modes of focus of International Perspectives to reflect more on areas hitherto marginalized or paid less attention in the field. It shows that while pilgrimage has been widely viewed as a universal category, in terms of studies, it is also a highly contingent topic shaped by local, regional, linguistic, political and suchlike factors, as well as by academic traditions that determine the appropriate topics to study in a particular field. To cite one example, to which I will return below, what Australian scholars focus on in their studies related to pilgrimage is conditioned, as Anna-Karina Hermkens’ chapter illustrates, by broader perceptions about the nature of Australian society as a secularized sphere and related to matters of Australian cultural and historical experience and memory. Each chapter, then, in different ways, draws out similar themes of the relationship between the studies of pilgrimage in a given cultural milieu, and the types of pilgrimage that exist there along with the various social, cultural, historical and political issues that contextualize them. The chapters thus combine narrative accounts or overviews of the forms and types of pilgrimage evident in the particular cultures being discussed, with accounts and analyses of the ways in which such pilgrimages have been studied and the main thematic orientations of such studies. There are a number of significant themes that emerge as a result. One is quite simply a reaffirmation of the point made in International Perspectives, that while the Anglophone literature remains dominant in the field and is the medium through which scholars, versed in a variety of different linguistic contexts, now find it most convenient to converse in so as to reach a wider audience, it is not the only one through which important traditions of study have been articulated. It is clearly not feasible for every academic in the field to learn multiple languages in order to continue their own research

186  Ian Reader and to broaden their studies of the field but it is, at the very least, possible for them to be aware of and learn about the work being done in languages other than English, and to take note of it in their analyses. To not do so would be to implicitly deny any notion of universality to pilgrimage and to affirm a form of localism embedded in a particular language and religious tradition. Certainly, with the publication of these two volumes scholars, mired in a monolingual Anglophone context, have no excuse for continuing to think that it is the be-all-and-end-all of pilgrimage studies. Related to this is the point, Bingenheimer’s chapter on Chinese issues and the chapters by Boivin and Boissevain relating to Islam, show that simply transcribing a term across language boundaries has its problems. The singularity of the term ‘pilgrimage’ in Anglophone usage has been challenged on various occasions, and the chapters herein reaffirm this point by showing such singularity is not always matched by terminologies in other languages, which may present a multiplicity of terminological shades, types and nuances, to say nothing of theological problems and disputes. The discussions of the genealogy of the term ‘pilgrimage’—a term that emerged from Latin and via French into English—that the editors set out in their Introduction show how a singular term gained hegemony. This single term also could be seen to express a sense of uniformity to the idea of pilgrimage. Yet, herein lies a major problem because, as various examinations of other cultural contexts indicate, such a singularity of terminology is not found everywhere. Marcus Bingenheimer indicates that the Chinese have a rich vocabulary for travel to special sites—a point made in other Asian contexts too, such as Japan (Reader and Swanson, 1997). However, this multiplicity of terms frequently ends up being translated as ‘pilgrimage’ as much as anything because pilgrimage became the dominant term in English contexts and because English appears less rich in differential terms related to religious travel. Pilgrimage thus becomes not just a universalized term grounded in a perceived Anglophone hegemony, but a catch-all for a complex of other terms that reflect a more richly nuanced vocabulary of religiously-related travel than is found in English or French. This does not mean we should drop ‘pilgrimage’ as a framing term; for a start, when working in English there are few viable alternatives for the types of practice being considered. The multiplicity of Japanese and Chinese terms available all relate in some ways to travel to, at or around religious sites and institutions, and thus to what is broadly incorporated within the nature of the Anglophone term pilgrimage. What this tells us, however, is that we do need to be aware that other cultures and languages may have developed more sophisticated modes of identifying particular forms of religious travel and pilgrimage, and that being aware of such differentiations can serve as a useful tool towards analyzing pilgrimage in a variety of settings. Such complex terminologies can also incorporate significant theological questions and controversies of definition. This is a point that is brought out by the case studies of Muslim pilgrimages in a variety of geographical

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 187 contexts in this volume, either as the core focus of their attention as in the chapters by Boivin and Boissevain on Muslim pilgrimage issues, or in SengGuan’s discussion of Muslim pilgrimages in the broader context of Malaysia’s multi-religious culture. Each of these chapters shows how the Muslim world has differentiating terminologies related to practices that would be placed under the broad banner of pilgrimage in English and that there are theological debates over the viability of performing certain of these forms. These debates centre on the relationship between hajj (the formal, official notion of pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina that is one of the five pillars of Islam and that is regarded by some Islamic authorities as the only legitimate pilgrimage in the tradition) and ziyarat (visits to other sacred sites, including Sufi tombs, which are widely performed and take on the aura of pilgrimages). The latter are widely performed and popular in the Muslim world but regarded by some theological authorities as inappropriate practices; as such, there is a school of thought that grants authenticity and legitimacy to only one form of action (hajj) that would be incorporated under the broad title of pilgrimage. These theological issues form a backdrop to wider studies of pilgrimage in the Muslim world, with questions about what scholars should define as and incorporate under the label of pilgrimage, and are a further reminder to scholars that when using seemingly universal or singular terms such as pilgrimage, consideration needs to be given to the nuances and multiplicities of meaning inherent within them depending on cultural context.

Cultural Contexts, Academic Orientations and Problematic Binaries It is important, too, to understand the context within which studies of pilgrimage develop academically. Whereas, as I have mentioned, the Japanese academy (aided by its recognition of folk studies as an important academic discipline within the Japanese context) has long paid attention to and viewed studies of pilgrimage as central elements in the study of religion and of Japanese society, the same is not so for China. As Bingenheimer’s chapter demonstrates, studies of China (including Western scholarship) have been influenced by what are basically Chinese elitist views on what are appropriate topics to study. As such, studies related to pilgrimage have centred largely on elite institutions and places—notably, mountains and temples, along with the history, economy and architecture of such places—rather than on the activities and motives of the ordinary people undertaking pilgrimages. This elitist orientation is now, however, being challenged by changes in the Chinese academy. The Chinese academic tradition of studying pilgrimage, like much of Chinese academic studies, has only recently emerged from a period of strict control, but in recent times it has grown greatly and here we are seeing (doubtless aided by a regime that claims to have egalitarian credentials and wishes to portray itself as the representative of the people) an interesting growth in studies in areas such as gender and pilgrimage,

188  Ian Reader and of those (including ordinary people) who travel in such contexts. Such developments suggest that the Chinese field of pilgrimage studies, especially in Chinese (although also, potentially, given the growing numbers of Chinese scholars who have studied at Western universities and have begun to publish in English, also in that medium), will offer up interesting materials and studies in the near future. In Mathieu Claveyrolas’ study of the ways that pilgrimage has been studied and portrayed in Hindu Indian cultural contexts we encounter another area of challenge. Claveyrolas indicates that Western scholars have found that many of the normative suppositions within which the field of the study of religion has commonly operated—notably the idea of a sacred-profane binary—become highly problematic when working in Hindu contexts. Studying Hindu pilgrimages, in other words, obliges scholars to go beyond the suppositions that have conditioned their academic tradition, since they encounter at Hindu sites a recurrent intermingling of the so-called sacred and the everyday commercial. Furthermore, this is an intermingling that is accepted as wholly natural by priests and pilgrims alike. This, in turn, has helped give rise to important studies that are not rigidly framed by conceptualizations of a sacred-profane binary. They are able to view the presence of the commercial at pilgrimage sites with equanimity, seeing it as part of the wider pilgrimage dynamic and paying close attention to the links between pilgrimage, identity and geography. By examining such areas, Claveyrolas’s chapter adds to a growing body of literature, much of it based in Asian case studies, that has questioned the notion that the commercial, ludic and touristic, are somehow out of kilter with the notion of sacred places and pilgrimage sites. It also fuels further the arguments of those who consider that the idea of a sacred-profane binary is a piece of outmoded academic baggage that needs to be jettisoned.10

Politics, State, Secularizing Dynamics and Social Influences Several chapters demonstrate the extent to which contingent political, social and cultural issues can shape the ways in which pilgrimage may be conceptualized and/or examined in different academic contexts. Anna-Karina Hermkens, for example, as I mentioned earlier, discusses how the focus of Australian research correlates significantly with that country’s self-perceived orientation as a secularized state and society. Its involvement in two world wars—and notably the losses it suffered—have been important elements in the development of Australian concepts of nationalism and nation-building as it developed independently from its former colonial power of the United Kingdom, and in constructions of the notion of an Australian secular state. Such social constructions have, in turn, impacted on what has been studied under the rubric of pilgrimage, giving rise to a particular interest in places associated with memory and memorialization that, while not having any specific religious associations, are visited by people paying homage and

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 189 engaging in acts of respect and the like that resemble those of people visiting religious sites. Gallipoli, where many Australians died in World War One, may be outside of Australia, but it is a significant place in Australian memory and terms of identity, i.e. one that has taken on the hue, in Australian consciousness, of a sacred site and is the locus of journeys that are viewed, by the Australian scholars that study them, as a form of secular pilgrimage. Visits to Gallipoli and other battlefields and war memorials commemorating those who lost their lives fighting in a war that Australia was drawn into because of its colonial relationship with the United Kingdom, thus take on a significant resonance in Australian culture, affirmed also through the political realm. This has fostered also a general interest in their analysis by Australian scholars, for whom such journeys are viewed as pilgrimages. Thus, as Hermkens indicates, a cultural orientation related to the conceptualization of Australia as a highly secularized nation, alongside that country’s potent sense of memory that has made visits to war memorials and battlefields a major activity, has influenced the ways in which such visits have been analyzed. This cultural orientation has, in turn, been reflected back by academic studies through which so-called ‘secular’ sites have been incorporated readily into the framework of pilgrimage. Yeoh Seng-Guan also discusses how issues of state and politics frame the field in Malaysia, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country in which political considerations and what he calls ‘state-induced institutional changes’ have reshaped everyday religiosity. Such recalibrations have impacted especially on Muslim pilgrimages, with the state supporting those who view ziyarat pilgrimage practices as improper and un-Islamic. Thus, the state has criminalized ziyarat activities while promoting the hajj, which serves as a means of status-acquisition in Malaysian society. Seng-Guan provides multiple other examples of how shifting state-religion boundaries and regulations play their part in defining and reshaping both the religious world and associated pilgrimage-related practices in a variety of ethnic and religious contexts (of which the Muslim case is but one example). At present, there has been little in the way of specific studies on pilgrimage in Malaysia; as Seng-Guan notes, the main focus of Malaysian scholars has been on issues such as ritual transformations in a modernizing society. However, the region provides plentiful scope for developing new strands of research on pilgrimage, notably in such contexts as the role of state and the formation of moral economies associated with pilgrimage. Given the ways in which the state implements policies regarding religion and religious practices (for instance, the above-mentioned state-supported affirmation of a division of legitimacy between forms of Muslim pilgrimage), this area certainly offers potential scope for development in the field. Political, social and cultural contexts form, as the two chapters by Ros and Steil indicate, an important dimension in the construction of pilgrimages in Latin America and in the ways in which they have been analyzed. Here the dominant tradition remains Christianity, but it is a region that has

190  Ian Reader not featured so prominently in studies of pilgrimage11 unlike Christianity in Europe. In Latin America, as both studies indicate, conflicts and tensions between clerical, political and secular forces form a crucial framework that conditions the religious landscape. Briefly put, these tensions centre around the power of a dominant Roman Catholic Church wedded to particular sectors of society, contrasted with powerful secularizing and anticlerical traditions within Latin American societies, and around the clashes between the overarching ecclesiastical and colonizing tradition of Catholicism, and the beliefs and practices of indigenous peoples who, while they have converted to Catholicism, have done so via their own interpretations that incorporate aspects of localized belief and practice. It is within these conflicting and tense frameworks that pilgrimage operates and through which it is interpreted by Mexican and Brazilian scholars writing, for the most part, in Iberian languages that form yet another rich corpus of interpretive literature on the subject. In both cases Steil and Ros see secularization theories related to the conflict between ecclesiastical hierarchies and localizing forces as playing an important role in such modes of interpretation. Pilgrimage itself may also be portrayed in academic analyses, influenced by Marxist intellectual thought (as with the Mexican scholars such as Gimenez discussed by Ros), as a mode of resistance associated with populist and native practice that stand in contrast to and contest established Catholic hierarchies. In Brazil, too, similar processes are evident at sites such as Juazeiro do Norte in the northeast of the country, where the priest Father Cicero, revered by locals and peasants and associated with popular uprisings against the dominant oppressive forces of state, was viewed with suspicion by the Catholic hierarchy while simultaneously becoming a focus of popular pilgrimage. This is clearly a further example of the contested nature of many pilgrimage sites but it also draws out many of the politicized connotations of pilgrimage and the ways in which it may be interpreted by scholars, whose intellectual backgrounds shape their perceptions of the practices they are studying. If Steil and Ros alert us to the significance of understanding the intellectual context in which scholars may operate and the importance of recognizing how specific socio-political factors contextualize pilgrimage, the other chapter on Christian pilgrimages by Shirley du Plooy brings us to another area of the world, which has long been marginalized in the field, and to the wealth of ethnographic and theoretical materials and insights that has been overlooked as a result. She looks at a continent—Africa—where Christianity has a major presence Yet Africa barely features in studies of pilgrimage, even those that are Christian-centric. Here du Plooy exposes very clearly the predominant tendency in the field of ignoring examples beyond its comfortrange of Western Christianity. She does this by citing examples of scholars who have blithely claimed—wrongly—that Africa is largely bereft of Christian pilgrimage sites. She emphasizes the point by also discussing the

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 191 work of Retief Müller (2011), whose study of pilgrimage by members of the southern African Zion Christian Church shows how central pilgrimage is to the very being of this Church. Müller explains the widespread neglect of Christian pilgrimages in Africa in terms of Euro-Asian cultural stereotypes that have shaped Western scholars’ understandings of what a pilgrimage site would look like—stereotypes that do not fit neatly with what African sites might be like. An entire continent’s contributions to what is a seemingly universal phenomenon are thus largely overlooked, especially in comparison with many other areas, even though, as du Plooy indicates, there is a richness of pilgrimage sites and practices in southern Africa associated with a variety of traditions and central, in various cases, to specific African Christian movements, along with a developing academic tradition of study of such sites. Du Plooy reiterates a point made by various essays in this volume and in essays such as Niedz´wiedz´’s in the previous International Perspectives book, about the existence of rich interpretive concepts, theories and insights permeating these various different patterns and traditions of studying pilgrimage. A striking example is found in the work of Leslie Nthoi, whose study of pilgrimages to Mwali cult shrines in southern Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, offers two particularly striking theoretical perspectives. One involves his development of the notion of contestation, which is one of the most enduring and contested theoretical angles on pilgrimage, best known via Eade and Sallnow’s (1991) volume. He gives the term greater resonance through his examination of the multiple dimensions of interest groups (from priests to pilgrims to people in communities around shrines), which are involved in shaping and constructing a site’s imagery, and through his discussion of how contestations over such matters impact on the nature of shrines. Nthoi also draws attention to how the flow of people, goods and services to and around shrines serves to shape such pilgrimage sites. As du Plooy points out, Nthoi’s study connects well to my own recent work (Reader, 2014) on how commercial and other interest groups play important roles in the formation of pilgrimage sites. Indeed, I realize in retrospect that his work, of which I (displaying the type of ignorance of southern African pilgrimage already noted) had been unaware until I read her chapter, would have been helpful in helping me develop my own thinking about the subject.

Where Now? Of course, yet another edited book on pilgrimage means yet another collection of data, case studies and accounts for scholars to digest. At times the flow of material appears to simply add to an already overwhelming tide. Certainly, one of the basic points that this and its sister volume emphasize— that there is a lot more material out there, a lot more insights, and many more lessons to be learned so as to expand our understandings and perspectives on an already complex and broad topic—appears to simply make

192  Ian Reader matters more confusing. Increasing the amount of material available could cloud as much as it could clarify the issues. By demanding that we become aware of a multiplicity of traditions of study and linguistic traditions, even if refracted through the most common linguistic medium of the field, are we going to make it less viable to find coherence or commonalities in the topic? And why stop at these linguistic and cultural settings? There are, after all, many more languages and contexts that could be incorporated into this field; where, for example, are the examples of academic studies in Arabic, Korean and Indian languages, to name just a few obvious examples? Indeed, by questioning the viability of the Anglophone, Christian orientations of the field, and by pointing to a complexity in which one needs, in essence, to pay attention to the underlying socio-cultural, linguistic, economic and political contexts within which particular pilgrimage cultures and linguistic/academic traditions of their study developed, it could be suggested that the universality of pilgrimage as field of study is being questioned, if not eroded. If different cultures produce pilgrimages and studies thereof in different ways, does this mean there is no universal? Should Anglophone scholarship on Western Christian pilgrimage, therefore, just carry on as before, within its own field of reference and simply treat its form(s) of pilgrimage and modes of study and analysis as the only relevant ones? My response to these questions is to repudiate the idea of narrowing the focus and remaining in a linguistic bubble. Rather, this increasing complexity should be welcomed, not least because it challenges our assumptions, thereby encouraging us to move out of our particular spheres of comfort, and because it makes us think more about such oft-assumed notions such as universality. While the ever-increasing array of materials does add confusion, it also helps us break away from the comfortable presuppositions that have tacitly underpinned much scholarship grounded in a particular linguistic context and its concomitant assumptions that the tradition it studies is a blueprint for all pilgrimage contexts. This is not just a matter for Anglophone scholarship, for these volumes also question any notion of locking studies of pilgrimage into particular language and cultural contexts. As I have suggested elsewhere, while Japanese scholarship may offer correctives to Western scholarship, it has also been embedded in its particular and at times introverted modes (Reader, 2015a). It is not just the Anglophone tradition that needs to be challenged and to be pushed to open up its horizons. What these volumes and the issues they raise do is challenge the tendency to think of pilgrimage as a singular category that is timeless and given, while informing us, as the editors argue, that instead of thinking in this way, we need to be constantly aware of the contextual nature of the topic and of the various elements (historical, linguistic, political and so on) that continually frame it in different religious and cultural settings. Recently, Jason Danely (2015), examining a pilgrimage activity that is being promoted among older Japanese in Kyoto, has drawn on Simon Coleman’s (2002) review of the study of pilgrimage with its provocative title ‘Do

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 193 you believe in pilgrimage? From communitas to contestation and beyond.’ In that article Coleman issued a call for scholars of pilgrimage ‘broaden our theoretical and ethnographic horizons’ (2002: 363, cited in Danely, 2015: 7) and argued that studies of pilgrimage had in a sense got into a ghetto or culde-sac where studies of pilgrimage referred only to other studies of pilgrimage, when, Coleman insisted, they needed to pay attention and refer also to other areas such as identity, sociality and the like. In reiterating these views, however, Danely considers that ‘today, things stand much as they did over a decade ago’ (Danely, 2015: 7) in theoretical terms. Through his case study he argues that what is needed is an ‘unbounding’12 of pilgrimage—by which he means viewing the practice not just in terms of pilgrimage but within the wider political, cultural, social economic contexts within which it exists. Arguing that Japanese pilgrimage ‘is constantly exceeding its immediate context’ (2015: 7), Danely engages in a detailed study of a particular activity developed to encourage older people to remain active and to foster a sense of local identity and meaning. This practice is, to use its Japanese title, the Shūni O-Jizō -san meguri, which Danely translates accurately as the Shūni Jizō Pilgrimage. Shūni is a district of Kyoto; O-Jizō san are local and wayside statues of the popular Buddhist figure Jizō, a guardian of children, wayfarers and local people; the term meguri, literally ‘going round’, is one of the multiple terms used to refer to, and be translated as, pilgrimage in Japanese (see Reader and Swanson, 1997: 233–234). It looks like a pilgrimage in that people walk around a circuit visiting local Jizō statues and getting pilgrim books that they carry stamped at the sites they visit (a standard practice in Japanese pilgrimage). Yet the people doing it wear ordinary clothes that make them virtually indistinguishable from ordinary citizens going about their daily business and they are walking around their home neighbourhoods (and in so doing, also operating as a form of neighbourhood watch scheme) rather than going to some place(s) beyond their own locality. The practice encouraged older people to walk, thereby maintaining or improving health levels and well-being while making them more attuned to their local community and to a sense of local identity; it therefore affirmed a sense of the familiar (Danely, 2015: 23). Danely thus argues that one can get beyond the ‘ghetto’ Coleman worried about, and as such could see pilgrimage in a new context, as tied to and a manifestation of a variety of interlocking themes and socio-cultural phenomena that go beyond the boundaries of pilgrimage per se while having much to say about concepts of community, identity and local meaning, as well as about issues of ageing and the roles of older citizens in what is an ageing society. While I think Danely is overstating things when he claims that there has been a lack of theoretical developments since Coleman’s 2002 article,13 the argument he makes about the need to break out of a self-referential ghetto in which pilgrimage is treated sui generis rather than being interpreted within a wider set of modalities and as a manifestation not just of religious dynamics but of social, cultural, political, local, identity and economic processes and

194  Ian Reader patterns, is an important reiteration of Coleman’s earlier argument. Through his use of a Japanese example, Danely not only utilizes the study of pilgrimage as a means of addressing other significant issues in Japanese society related to issues of locality, identity and ageing, but he also tacitly reaffirms Coleman’s call for a broadening of ethnographic horizons.14 The contributions made by the essays in this volume and in International Perspectives are further steps forward in the directions Coleman and Danely, over a decade apart, have called for. While many of the contributions contained in these volumes talk quite specifically about pilgrimage and might thus seem to fall into the category that Coleman suggested was a ghetto—namely, studies that are predominantly centred around discussions of pilgrimage through reference to other studies of the same topic—they nonetheless do so while shedding light on the surrounding political and social contexts that have framed the ways in which pilgrimage and its study have developed in a variety of different contexts. They, in effect, use studies of pilgrimage as a means to open up discussions on wider topics, from relations between overarching ecclesiastical traditions, peasant cultures and secularizing forces in Latin America, to discussions about the nature of societies such as Australia and the relationships between state policies and religious cultures in Malaysia. This is an area where pilgrimage studies can certainly develop further in the coming years, by using examinations of pilgrimage not just as a means to further understandings of the practice and nature of pilgrimage itself, but as a means of unpicking wider dynamics within given societies. The chapters in this and the previous volume also, of course, answer the call for a broadening of ethnographic horizons. By focusing attention on how the topic has been studied in multiple contexts and how such studies have been influenced by the very modes of development of pilgrimage in those cultural settings, they help us see how the seemingly universal phenomenon of pilgrimage not only takes on different guises but is viewed through different lenses related to language and surrounding cultural patterns. Certainly, in so doing, they also pose challenges to any notion of universality and challenge scholars to rethink whether one can, henceforth, talk of ‘pilgrimage’ in a unitary category. Again, my argument here is that the notion of such a thing remains viable15 and that this serves as a vital means of enabling people from different fields (linguistic, cultural and specializing in different religious traditions, and so on) to talk to each other, share ideas, develop cross-cutting theories and be able to recognize that their particular field of work, religious tradition and so on, need not be ghettoized or studied in a vacuum. The challenges brought out by these discussions demonstrate that the complexity, multiplicity and varied nuances contained in multiple linguistic contexts behind the simple term pilgrimage, are also mechanisms for stimulating further thought and research. Another point that should be reiterated here is that taken together, these essays, based in case studies and examinations across a variety of cultures, languages and religious traditions, show, as the editors note in their

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 195 Introduction, ‘the weaknesses of perspectives which not only radically separate and oppose the sacred and the secular but also associate religion exclusively with the sacred realm’ (Albera and Eade, 2016: 2). Of course, such perspectives have their roots in a particular sphere and context, one that has in the past dominated and contextualized the study of religion16 and through it, of pilgrimage. The problems inherent in this perspective are evident in several chapters in this volume. At Hindu pilgrimage sites, for example, there is the notable lack of distinction between the so-called sacred and profane realms. We have also seen how economic, cultural, social and other forces are intrinsic to pilgrimage sites and practices in multiple locations beyond the Anglophone Eurocentric Christian realm. This does not mean, of course, that we should immediately consign Anglophone studies of Christian pilgrimage to the dustbin as problematic outliers in the field. Nor does it mean that the sacred-profane bifurcation or related ideas should be immediately jettisoned in all contexts. Rather, it means that such concepts need to be more closely interrogated and certainly not taken for granted or assumed as the standard hallmarks and foundations of pilgrimage. Such questions have made it clear that there are the problems in constricting the study of pilgrimage to an exclusive sphere that can only be understood through cross-references to other pilgrimages or in the context of a particular tradition and language. It is important, as this and its companion volume demonstrate, to recognize that while the emphasis thus far on a particular realm and linguistic framework may have produced important insights and provided stimulating theoretical propositions that have, because of their very nature, helped spur interest in the topic of pilgrimage, it also has its limitations. If one is truly interested in conceptualizing pilgrimage as a phenomenon with potentially universal meanings and as a practice that operates within a nexus of social dynamics in relation to a wide network of issues and considerations both within and beyond the borders of the religious world, one also needs to pay attention to academic studies in different linguistic, religious and cultural contexts to those one is most familiar with and that have shaped one’s particular view of the pilgrimage world.

Notes 1 A case in point is the excellent volume by Naquin and Yu (1992) on pilgrimage in China, which made some sophisticated theoretical insights and provided some fascinating discussions of modes of pilgrimage and their definitions, and yet is far too infrequently mentioned in discussions of theoretical discussions in the field (save for those scholars working on East Asian pilgrimages). 2 This was certainly the case with academic studies of Christianity that, until Turner's writings began to change the picture, tended to treat pilgrimage as a marginal topic compared to more ‘core’ issues such as ecclesiastical history, theology and the like. 3 See, for example, Badone (2014) for a discussion of themes in the field, which is written by a scholar who is wholly at home in French but again focuses mainly on Anglophone scholarship.

196  Ian Reader 4 Again my study of Japanese pilgrimage studies indicates that, where any non-Japanese concepts are used, they are drawn from Anglophone examples grounded in studies of Christian pilgrimage (see Reader 2015a). 5 It goes almost without saying that my recent (2014) volume examining commercial dimensions of pilgrimage, owed a great deal to Japanese scholarship. 6 Some consideration of economic issues is found, for instance, in Coleman and Eade (eds) (2004) and in various aspects of the continuing discussions over the relationship between pilgrimage and tourism. 7 This point was evident in the report by Bowman (1988) on a conference on pilgrimage in 1988 that sought to bring historians and anthropologists together, in which Bowman noted frustrated comments by historians on what they saw as anthropologists' obsessive focus on theories. 8 . See also Eade and Sallnow 1991. In 1995 I was taking part in a conference in Canada on pilgrimage; during the first day most papers were anthropological in nature. On the second day the first paper was by a historian who announced that in his paper he ‘would not be making use of the theoretical term Victor Turner’ and indicated an antipathy to any attempts to theorize pilgrimage at all. 9 See, for example, the chapters in International Perspectives by Barna and by Eberhart for discussions of the importance of folk/folklore studies in Hungary and Germany, and for the Japanese case both my chapter in that book and Alan Christy's (2012) seminal volume on the formation and role of folk studies in Japan. 10 See, for example, Lochtefeld's (2010) study of the development of Hardwar, which shows how the surrounding commercial culture, including the role of secular agencies such as railways, is deeply embedded in the dynamic of pilgrimage. The development of the field is evident by contrasting Lochtefeld's approach with Peter van der Veer's (1987) earlier study of Hindu pilgrimage at Ayodhya that appears far more hostile to the idea of a ‘market’ and contains critical comments suggesting it is antithetical to what he sees as the true nature of pilgrimage (see also on this point Reader, 2014: 12). 11 Important exceptions here include the edited volume by Crumrine and Morinis (1991) and Sallnow’s classic study of pilgrimages in the Andes (1987). Victor and Edith Turner (1978), also, included their examination of Mexican Catholic sites in their work. 12 Danely borrows this word from Dubisch (1995: 46) and Reader (2005:34), both of whom have argued for similar perspectives to those set out in Danely's article. 13 Notable studies that he has not looked at, according to his bibliography, include Badone and Roseman's (2004) work on how pilgrimage intersects with a variety of other activities, notably tourism, and the various studies (e.g. Kaufman 2005, Reader 2014) that have sought to breakdown the barriers between pilgrimage and commerce and to ‘unbound’ pilgrimage from what might be called a sacred cul-de-sac. 14 One might note that the call for an expansion of ethnographic horizons in the period since Coleman's article has been met by growing numbers of studies on pilgrimages in a variety of settings. Just to note a very few, we have had monograph-length studies of Indian (Feldhaus 2004, Lochtefeld (2010), Japanese (Reader 2005) and Vietnamese (Taylor 2004) pilgrimages, for example. 15 Cynics might suggest or point out that I could hardly take a different line, given that I written extensively about ‘pilgrimage’ in the form of a singular universal category in several recent works. Nonetheless, in my defence I would argue that the examples I used, from a broad range of cultural and religious settings in recent works (Reader 2014, 2015b), do indicate enough similarities to make the term and category still useful.

Breaking Barriers, Eroding Hegemony 197 16 This is an area that cannot be dealt with here save to mention the copious arguments about the construction (or otherwise) of the term and concept of ‘religion’. These include claims by some that this is itself a product of the academy and of a particular colonial ideology grounded in Protestantism—and counter-arguments by others who reject what they see as a rather ideological reductionism by those who claim that the study of religion is a misnomer that should be jettisoned.

Bibliography Albera, D. and Eade, J. (eds) (2015) International perspectives on pilgrimage studies: Itineraries, gaps and obstacles, New York and London: Routledge. Badone, E. (2014) ‘Conventional and unconventional pilgrimages: Conceptualizing sacred travel in the twenty-first century’ in Pazos, A. (ed.) Redefining pilgrimage: New perspectives on historical and contemporary pilgrimages, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ——— and Roseman, S. (eds) (2004) Intersecting journeys: The anthropology of pilgrimage and tourism, Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Barbaro, P. (2013) La mise en discours des pèlerinages au Japon depuis l’époque d’Edo: Pour une théorie de l’interversion réciproque entre expérience et récit. PhD dissertation, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. Barna, G. (2015) ‘Pilgrimages in Hungary: Ethnological and anthropological approaches’ in Albera and Eade, op. cit. Bowman, G. (1988) ’Pilgrimage conference report’, Anthropology Today, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 20–23. Christy, A. (2012) A discipline on foot: Inventing Japanese native ethnography 1910–1945, Lanham, MD, New York and Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield. Coleman, S. (2002) ‘Do you believe in pilgrimage? From communitas to contestation and beyond’, Anthropological Theory, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 355–368. Coleman, S. and Eade, J (eds) (2004) Reframing pilgrimage: Cultures in motion, London and New York: Routledge. Crumrine, N.R. and Morinis, A. (eds) (1991) Pilgrimage in Latin America, New York: Greenwood Press. Danely, J. (2015) ‘A watchful presence: Aesthetics of well-being in a Japanese pilgrimage’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, pp. 1–28. Published online, May 29. Dubisch, J. (1995) In a different place: Pilgrimage, gender, and practice at a Greek island shrine, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eade, J. and Sallnow, M. (eds) (1991) Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage, London and New York: Routledge. Eberhart, H. (2015) ‘From religious folklore studies to research of popular ­religiosity: Pilgrimage studies in German-speaking Europe’ in Albera and Eade (op. cit.) Feldhaus, A. (2004) Connected places: Region, pilgrimage, and geographical imagination in India, New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kaufman, S. (2004) Consuming visions: Mass culture and the Lourdes shrine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kaufman, S. (2005) Consuming visions: Mass culture and the Lourdes shrine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lochtefeld, J. (2010) God’s gateway: Identity and meaning in a Hindu pilgrimage place, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

198  Ian Reader Müller, R. (2011) African pilgrimage: Ritual travel in South Africa’s Christianity of Zion, Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Naquin, S. and Yü, C.-F. (eds) (1992) Pilgrims and sacred sites in China, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press. Niedz´wiedz´, A. (2015) ‘Old and new paths of Polish pilgrimages’ in Albera and Eade, op. cit. Reader, I. (2005) Making pilgrimages: Meaning and practice in Shikoku, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ———. (2014) Pilgrimage in the marketplace, New York and London: Routledge. ———. (2015a) ‘Japanese studies of pilgrimage’ in Albera and Eade, op. cit. ———. (2015b) Pilgrimage: A very short introduction, New York and London: Oxford University Press. ——— and Swanson, P. (1997) ‘Editors’ introduction: Pilgrimage in the Japanese religious tradition’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 24, nos. 3–4, pp. 225–270. Sallnow, M. (1987) Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional cults in Cusco, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Shinno, T. (1991) Nihon yugyō shūkyōton, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Taylor, P. (2004) Goddess on the rise: Pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Turner, V. and E. (1978) Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture, Oxford: Blackwell. van der Veer, P. (1988) Gods on earth; The management of religious experience and identity in a North Indian pilgrimage centre, London: Athlone Press.

Index

Aboriginal 11, 113, 117, 120; groups 11 Abreu, R. 166, 167, 178 academic: analyses 190; arenas 184; contexts 146, 188; cultures 184; debates 3; disciplines 184; dominance of the English language 181, 183; fields 2, 36; interest in pilgrimage 15; models 3; output 27; perceptions 115; praxis 172; production 166, 177; publishing 4, 27; research 47, 125; scholarship 4; studies 187, 192, 195; texts 40; traditions 25, 36, 181 passim, 191; treatment 29; trends 116; world 183 accommodation 30n9, 75, 147 Ackerman, S. and Lee, R. 72, 85 Africa 190 – 1; north 2, 6, 89, 107; south i, ix, 10, 11, 14, 125 passim; southern 2, 10, 13, 16, 125 passim, 191; west 11 agricultural: calendar 198 agriculture 169 Aguilar Ros, A. 4, 11, 142 – 61 Aguirre, B. 146, 149, 157 Ainsworth, L. 112, 117 Ajmer 60 Albany 108, 112, 122 Albera, D. 1 – 17; and M. Blanchard 103; and M. Couroucli 66, 97, 102; and J. Eade 31, 33, 125, 139, 161, 181, 184, 195, 197, 198 Algeria 62, 95, 96 Aligarh Muslim University 58, 65 Altman, J. 111, 117 Alvarado Solís, N. P. 143, 156, 157 Alvarez, I. 152, 155, 157 Alves, M. 178 ambivalence 18, 67, 92

Ambon 109 America(s) 37, 110, 155, 165; central 12; Latin i, 3, 12, 116, 124, 128, 146, 189, 190, 194; North i, 2 – 4, 14, 138, 147; South 179; see also Mesoamerica American: anthropologists 38, 40, 143; countries 124; frontier 155; historian 170; pilgrimages 138; religious studies 37, 38 Amir-Moezzi (Muhammad Ali) 65, 66, 97, 102, 104 Ammerman, N. 69, 86 Ampang 80 – 1 Amri, N. and Gril, D. 102 ancestors 18, 40, 113, 130, 134, 139 Andaya, B. and L. 70, 86 Andézian, S. 92, 96, 98, 102 Andrews, S. 26, 31 Ang, S., Choon, L. M. and Foong, L. S. 86 Anglophone: anthropologists 95; conception of pilgrimage 137; context 186; countries 183; field 183, 192; hegemony 181, 186; knowledge 183; literature 182, 184, 185; models of process 156; pilgrimage studies 115; research 64; researchers 147; scholars 106, 114, 181, 184, 192; social scientists 131; sphere 183; studies 183; theories 181, tradition 182, 184 animals 69, 113 anthropologists 3, 63, 89, 90, 94, 97, 106, 196; American 38, 40, 143; Anglophone 15, 95; Brazil 174, 176; cultural 114; Melanesia 115; Mexico 142, 146 passim; Muslim 93; South Africa 131

200 Index anthropology 93, 99, 115, 146, 149, 153, 173, 184; American 143 anticlerical 142; elites 166; traditions 190 Anzac Day 107 – 08, 110 Appadurai, A. 137, 139 apparitions 84, 114, 115, 142, 150, 164, 177 architecture 25, 62, 90, 91, 101,  187 Asad, T. 112, 117 ascetics 45, 56, 182 Asia 91, 186, 188; East 195; South 2, 13, 53 passim; South-East 2, 97; see also Euro-Asian Asia-Pacific 109 Asiatic Society: of Bengal 54; Paris 54, 55 Assayag, J. 13, 16, 44, 49, 60, 66; and Tarabout, G. 44, 49 Aubin-Boltanski, E 97, 102 Australia 2, 10, 12, 106 passim, 194; battlefields 107; Christianity 116; colonial and political history 106, 189; memorials 107; National Heritage List 109; nationalist discourses 3; outback 116; pilgrimage 10; sacred sites 116, 189; saint 114; secularism 106, 116, 185, 188 – 9; South 114; Turkey 109; Uluru 113, 116; Western 108; see also Albany; Anzac Day; Gallipoli Australian(s) 106; aboriginal trails 113; attitudes 107; battles 109; Catholics 11, 114; commemoration 10, 110, 112, 116, 185, 189; culture 106, 189; desert 113; government 10, 109; heritage 111; history 109; indigenous people 107, 113 – 15; manhood 110; mobility 112 passim; national character 108; national ideology 110; nationhood 110, 188; pilgrimage 107, 109, 114, 115; pilgrimage studies 107, 110 passim; politics 108; Prime Minister 109; Santiago de Compostela 112; scholars 108, 110, 112, 185, 188, 189; secularism 110; self 112 passim; servicemen 107 – 09; space 10, 112 passim; tourism 110 passim; travel 106, 109; War Memorial 108 authenticity 151, 153, 167, 177,  187

authorities 6, 135; British 70, 71; ecclesiastical 144, 148; French 95; Islamic 72, 73, 83, 187; Jordanian 99; Saudi 11; traditional 135 Ayodhya 44, 196 Babb, L. 38, 49, 77, 86 Badone, E. 195, 197; and Roseman, S. 111, 117, 154, 157, 196, 197 Báez-Jorge, F. 157 Bakhtin, M. 5, 174 Bakker, H. 40, 49 Banaras 36, 38 passim, 47 – 8 Bangladesh 53 baptism 99, 169 Barabas, A.M. 149 – 50, 156, 157 – 8 baraka 90, 91, 102 Barbaro, P. 182, 197 Barkan, E., and Barkey, K. 13, 16 Barna, G. 196, 197 Barth, F. 113, 117 Batten, B. 112, 117 Beaumont, J. 107, 117 Becken, H. J. 125, 127 – 9, 135 – 7, 139 Beijing 21, 26, 29 beliefs and practices: ancestors 130; Buddhist 5; Catholic 142, 172; Christian 11; Daoist 5; Hindu 11; indigenous 11, 14, 190; institutional 2; ‘New Age’ 14, 155; non-religious 1 – 2; pilgrimage 14, 76, 84 – 5; popular 2, 172; religious 1 – 2, 10, 14, 142 believers 7, 100, 128, 163 – 5 Bellah, R. 110, 117 Bellamy, C. 13, 16, 60, 66 Belle, C. 77, 79, 86 belonging 13, 43, 96, 131, 163 Bengal 54, 62, 63; West 36, 38 Bennaffla, K. 101, 102 Bennett, C. and Ramsey, C. 64, 66 Beozzo, O. 178 Berber 95 Berriane, M. 98, 102 Berti, D. and Tarabout, G. 43, 49 bhakti 45, 58 Bhalloo, Z. and Boivin, M. 66, 65 Bhardwaj, S. 4, 16, 37, 38, 40, 40; and Rinschede 124 Bianchi, R. 12, 16, 75 – 6, 86 bida’ 91, 101 Bigelow A. 13, 16, 44, 49, 59, 66 Bijapur 58, 59

Index  201 Bingenheimer, M. vii, 3, 5, 13, 18 – 35, 112, 115, 186, 187 Binney, J. 113, 117 Birmingham 61 Blackburn, K. 109, 117 Blancarte, R. 142, 158 body x, 21, 37, 38, 59, 83, 90, 152, 156, 177 Boerschmann, E. 26, 30, 31 Boff, L. 178 Boissevain, K. vii, xi, 6, 10, 12, 53, 89 – 105, 186,  187 Boivin, M. viii, xi, 6, 13, 38, 39, 44, 47, 48, 53 – 67, 126, 186, 187; and R. Delage viii, 66 bonds 127, 135 Bordeaux 8 borders 1, 37, 130, 177, 184, 195 boundaries 1, 2, 11, 12, 14, 42, 44, 47, 61, 81, 85, 136, 148, 150, 151, 175, 177, 186, 189, 193 Bousquet, G. and Schacht, J. 103 Bowman, G. 13, 16, 196, 197 Brading, D. 151, 158 Brandão, C. 174, 178 Brazil 2, 5, 11, 12, 14, 112, 125, 144, 146, 162 passim, 190 Britain 110 British: authorities 71; colonialism 56 passim; East India Company 54, 70; hajj 75; India 54, 70; Indian census 56; Malaya 71 passim; Malay sultans 70; Melaka 70; non-intervention 71; officials 56 – 7, 72; Pakistan 59; pilgrimage 12, 56; planters 82; railways 40; Sindh 56 passim; social anthropology 149; Sufis 56 passim; war commemoration 110 Brosius, C. 43, 49 Brown, P. 6, 92, 96 Brunei 73 Buchan, A. 138 Buddhism 18 passim, 80 Buddhist: authors 31; beliefs and practices 2, 5; charity 81; China 21; Chinese 19; cosmography 21; doctrine 21; goddess 82; Indian sites 19; Islamization of 62; Japan 193; Japanese pilgrims 18; Malaysia 85; Malaysian travellers 81; monks 22, 24; mountain 13, 20, 21, 30; nuns 22; pilgrimage 31, 82; presence 20; reformist groups 81; scriptures 81;

sites 20 passim, 30, 81; southern Africa 124 passim; stupas 81; symbols 13; temples 13, 20, 23, 71; see also Hindu-Buddhist religious polities; Nalanda Buddhist Society Buitelaar, M. and Mols, L. 94 Burckhardt, J. 93 bureaucrats 75 Burghart, R. 41 Burma 82 Burton-Page, J. 62 business 48, 81, 125, 131, 193 Butler, G. 125 Calcutta 54 Cámara Barbachano, F. 146, 158; and Reyes Couturier, T. 146, 158 Camargo, C. P. F. de 171, 178 camino 119, 177 Canberra 108, 120 Cano, A. 152, 158 Cantel, R. 168, 179 Carl Ernst 11, 13, 59 – 60, 113, 116, 146, 148, 162 passim Carneiro, S. de Sá. 177, 179 – 80 carnival 48, 78 Carr, G. and K. Reeves 109, 117, 121 Cartelli, M. 26, 31 Carvalho, J. M. de 179 caste 13, 38, 44 – 6, 50, 56 passim, 67; high 38; Hindu 38; low 38, 59; Muslim 60; priestly 56 categories 5, 7, 18, 45, 53, 56, 60, 73, 111, 138; local 5; universal 7, 185 Catholicism 5, 16, 70, 115, 118, 128, 142, 147, 149, 162 – 78, 181, 190; Brazilian 5, 173, 176, 178; conversions 115; loss of culture and stasis 115; pilgrimage 115, 162 – 3, 166, 172 – 3, 177; Roman 70, 162 – 5, 170, 178 Cawood, S. 132, 136, 139 cemeteries 17, 107 – 08, 110 – 11 Chabbi, J. 95, 103 Chambert-Loir, H. and C. Guillot 13, 16, 61, 65 – 6, 91, 97, 103 chaoshan 5, 18 – 19, 25, 29 – 30, 33, 35 chapels 163, 165 charisma 61, 127, 178 charismatic 11, 73, 83, 127 Chavannes, E. 4, 19, 26, 31 Chen, B. 28, 31 Chettiyars 77

202 Index Cheu, H. T. 73 – 4, 76, 79 – 80, 86 Chidester, D. 126, 129, 139 Chiffoleau, S. and A. Madoeuf 64, 66, 90, 94, 100 – 3 Chih, R. 91, 103 China 2 – 6, 9, 18 – 23, 25 – 34, 70, 80, 85 – 6, 182, 187, 195, 198; China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database 27; civil war 25; Communist 25; Cultural Revolution 25; religion 19, 22, 25 – 6, 29, 33; research output 27 Chodkiewicz, M. 92 – 3, 103 Chou, W. S. 30 – 1 Christian(s) 2, 7 – 8, 10 – 12, 16 – 17, 36, 47 – 8, 50, 52 – 3, 64, 69 – 71, 83, 88, 96, 99 – 100, 106, 115 passim, 138, 140, 151, 156 passim, 176, 179, 181 – 5, 190 passim; concepts 36, 48; Indian 44, 54; missionaries 116; Protestants 83 Christianity 7 – 9, 11, 15 – 16, 22, 31, 54, 64, 68, 96, 115 – 17, 124 passim, 140, 172, 181 – 2, 189 – 90, 195, 198; alien 11; indigenous 11, 115 Christy, A. 196 – 7 churches 11, 125 passim, 133, 135; indigenous 11, 126 circumambulation 9, 37 – 8, 49, 91 Cirese, A.M. 144 – 5, 155, 158 citizenship 7, 72 city/cities 33, 37 – 8, 40, 45 passim, 73, 77, 81, 89 – 90, 93, 98, 100, 102, 126 – 7, 175 – 6 class(es) 6, 9 – 10, 23, 31, 36 – 8, 40, 47 – 8, 51, 56 – 8, 75 – 9, 84, 96, 105, 108, 111, 116, 137 – 8, 144 passim, 146, 148 – 9, 154 – 5, 166, 179, 196; middle 75 – 6, 78, 154 – 5; peasant 75; popular 96; social 58, 76, 84, 149; upper 78; working 77 Claverie, E. 100, 103 Claveyrolas, M. 6, 9, 12, 36, 39, 42 – 4, 48 – 9, 53, 131, 134 – 6,  188 Clémentin-Ojha, C. 50 clergy 11, 83, 163 – 6 clinics 70, 75 Clothey, F. 37, 50, 77 – 8, 86 Cohen, E. 154, 158 Coleman, S. 43, 50, 63, 66, 112, 114 – 15, 117, 137, 139, 192 – 4, 196 – 7; and J. Eade 63, 112, 137, 196; and J Elsner 114

Collins-Kreiner, N. 154, 158 colonial 2, 4, 10 – 12, 14, 58, 70 – 2, 74, 89 – 90, 94 passim, 134, 142, 146, 150 – 1, 154, 163, 188 – 9, 197; administrators 70, 94; archives 71; historiography 90, 97; influences 2; period 151; post 10 – 11, 14, 70, 72, 134 colonialism 4, 10, 14; British 12; Dutch 70; European 4; French 94; neo 4 Comaroff, J. 127, 140 commemorations 10, 60, 108; Anzac Day 108; Australian 10, 108; British war 110; contested 108; conversion to Christianity 110, 115; Gallipoli 10, 108, 120, 122; missionaries 115 – 16; Shia  60 commerce 31, 87, 100, 104, 149, 196 communalism 43 – 4,  59 communication 1, 19, 45, 69, 85, 113; across national borders’ 1; with the sacred 5 Communist period 25 communitas 3 – 4, 12, 44 – 8, 59, 61, 97, 108, 127, 137, 147 – 8, 176, 181, 184, 193, 197 communities 10, 76, 78 – 9, 106 passim, 124, 134, 152, 154, 169, 173 – 4, 191; Chinese 33, 80, 86; Hindu 10, 79, 124; indigenous 106, 114, 116; local 76, 115, 152; migrant 70 – 1, 77, 152 – 5; ni-Vanuatu 109; of pilgrims 46, 154, 191; religious 154 community 3, 32 – 3, 43, 60, 71, 73, 78, 80 – 1, 86 – 7, 108 – 9, 130, 132, 145, 149, 152, 174, 193; bounded 3 competition 8, 10 conflict 10, 16, 44, 101, 129, 132, 147 – 8, 165, 169 – 71,  190 Confucian 22 – 5, 68, 85 conquest 10, 57, 84; religious 10 consciousness 134, 173, 189 consumption 76, 86; Islamic 76, 86 contestation 3, 14 – 15, 50, 129 – 31, 193, 197 context 5, 11, 37, 42 – 3, 45, 47, 54, 56, 58, 61 – 3, 77, 95 – 7, 102, 109 – 11, 113, 115 – 16, 129, 131, 143 – 5, 149, 151, 164 – 5, 168 – 70, 175, 181, 187, 190, 192; competitive 43; cultural 5, 116, 186 – 9, 192, 195; global ideological 44; non-Christian 7, 181; non-Hindu 43; pluri-confessional

Index  203 43; political 12, 69, 77, 79, 99, 175, 192; religious 6, 164, 183, 189; socio-economic 12; urban 76; Western 5, 9, 11 control 23, 27, 54, 62, 70, 74, 135, 150, 163 – 4, 171; ecclesiastical 163 conversion 10, 58, 63, 115 – 16; to Islam 58, 63 converts 11; indigenous 11 Coogee 114, 117 Coplan, D. 131, 136, 140 cosmologies 69, 77, 84; religious 69 Courtney, M. 112, 117 Coutinho, A. 164, 179 Crapanzano, V. 95, 103 critique 16, 46, 81, 83, 135, 148, 170; of communitas 148; of ‘popular culture’ 156 Crumrine, N. R. and A. Morinis 147, 158, 196 – 7 cult(s) 4, 11, 16, 19 – 20, 30, 32 – 3, 50, 56, 61, 73 – 4, 80, 82, 86, 92 passim, 112, 115, 125, 129 – 30, 141, 149, 154 – 5, 161, 178, 191, 198; of the dead 80; Hindu spirit 80; imperial 18 – 20, 30; saints 16, 34, 66, 73, 92, 94 – 5, 103, 105, 178; Zimbabwean 14 culture 13, 17, 23, 29, 50, 54, 57, 64, 69, 80, 85, 98, 106, 115, 140, 144 – 5, 151, 155, 162, 167, 173 – 6, 182, 197; Chinese 18; popular 4 – 5, 17, 99, 141, 144, 156, 173 – 4, 176; S. Asian 13, 60 Cunha, E. 166 – 7, 179 Cusack, C. 106, 111 – 12, 114, 117 – 18, 121 – 2; and Digance, J. 111; and Norman, A. 111; and Prior, J. 111 Dakar 100 Damascus 64, 66, 101, 103 – 4 Damousi, J. 107, 118 dance(s) 54, 114, 126 – 7, 133 Danely, J. 192 – 4, 196 – 7 dargahs 13, 59 – 60 Dean, K. 27, 32 DeBernardi, J. 71, 80 – 1, 85 – 6 De Bruyn, P. H. 26, 32 Deccan 59 deity/deities 18, 20 passim, 30, 33, 58, 69, 74, 77 – 81, 130, 136 Delage, R. 41, 43, 50, 66 Del Ángel, A. G. 151, 158 – 9

Deleury, G. 54, 66 Delhi 49 – 52, 54, 62, 65 – 7 Della Cava, R. 170 – 1, 178 – 9 de Martino, E. 26, 32 demons 80 – 1 Depont, O. and X. Coppolani 95, 103 Dermenghem, É. 95, 103 Derrida 7 dervishes 56, 66 destination 6, 8, 18, 25, 41, 70, 79, 91, 100, 114, 118, 126, 134 – 6 devotees 6, 8, 22, 38 – 9, 41 – 2, 44, 46, 62 – 3, 68, 71, 74, 77, 80 – 1, 126, 130, 145; Chinese 71, 74; elite 38; ethnicity 74; popular 38 devotion(s) 38, 41, 44 passim, 77, 97 – 8, 114, 151 – 3, 165; Hindu 45 – 7; individual 45; visits 97 dharma 48 diaspora 3, 12 – 14, 16, 36, 43, 50 – 1, 86 – 7, 115; Indian 12 dichotomy 36, 48, 69, 153, 172; pilgrimage/tourism 2, 3, 11 – 14, 25, 36, 48, 85, 97 – 102, 110 – 16, 152 – 6, 177 – 8; sacred/profane 36, 48 Digance, J. 108, 110 – 11, 118; and C. Cusack 111 Dirks, N. 65 – 6 discourses 3, 11, 48, 97, 100, 110, 138; nationalist 3; Wahhabi 11 disease 42, 94 divine 21 – 2, 36 – 7, 39, 41, 44 passim, 83, 92, 96 – 7, 132, 136; mysteries 92 divisions 11, 13, 44, 46, 131; caste 46; social 13, 44, 46 Dixon, J. 115, 118 doctrine 21, 60 dominant religious traditions or groups 162, 174, 183, 189 – 90 Donoghue, J. and B. Tranter 107, 118 Dott, B. 26, 32 Doutté, E. 95, 103 Dubisch, J. 137, 140 – 1, 196 – 7; and M. Winkelman 137 Du Cros, H. and C. Johnston 113, 118 Dugas, M. 99, 103 Dumont, L. 41, 50 Dunkley, R., N. Morgan and S. Westwood 110, 118 du Plooy, S. 10 – 11, 14, 124, 126 passim, 190 – 1 Durand, J. 152 – 3, 158; and D. Massey 158

204 Index Durkheim, E. 5, 97, 110, 145 – 6, 148 Dutch 46, 70; Indies 70 Dwyer, D. 95, 103 Eade, J. 1 – 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 – 17, 31, 33, 46, 50, 63, 66, 97, 108, 111 passim, 125, 137, 139 – 40, 148, 158, 161, 172, 176, 179, 181, 184, 191, 195 – 8; and M. Katić 137; and M. Sallnow 46, 97, 114, 148, 172, 196 East India Company 54, 57, 70 Eberhart, H. 196 – 7 ecclesiastical 142, 144, 148, 163, 170 – 1, 190, 194 – 5; authorities 144, 148 Eck, D. 38 – 40, 43, 49 – 50 economic 10, 12, 14, 34, 48, 76, 79, 87, 90, 99 – 103, 120, 131 passim, 153, 155, 165, 168, 171 – 2, 184, 192 passim; changes 100 economy 25, 50, 76, 100, 131 – 2, 167, 187 Eggert, M. 30, 32 Egypt 62, 64, 90 – 1, 96 – 7, 104, 108 Eickelman, D. 87, 94, 96, 103; and R. Piscatori 94, 96 Elayadi, M., H. Rachik and M. Tozy 103 Eliade, M. 127, 136, 140, 150 elites 3 – 4, 11, 56, 71, 144, 165 – 6, 168; Christian 71; devotees 38; intellectual 4; Muslim politicians 76; political 3, 11; religious 11, 166; secular 165; traditional 75 emic/etic 110, 112, 115 – 16, 138 Émile Demerghem 90 emotions 3, 47, 51, 62, 150 emperors 26, 163; Chinese 77, 79 – 81, 86; Moghul 54 empire/imperial 4 – 5, 7, 18 – 21, 23, 25, 30, 32, 54, 56, 84, 168 empirical 14 – 15, 138, 153; investigation 15; research 14 – 15 English as a medium of scientific communication 1 – 4, 6 – 7, 181 – 6 environment 50, 133, 169 Eschmann, A., H. Kulke and G. Tripathi 41, 49 – 50 Espinosa, H. 153, 158 ethnicity 13, 15, 74, 86, 148 ethnographers/ethnography 10, 26, 36, 41, 45 – 6, 89, 115, 152, 169, 174 – 5, 178, 197

ethnographic 3, 5, 11, 37 – 8, 40, 47, 65, 67 – 8, 77, 79, 81 – 2, 117, 146, 149 – 51, 156, 173 passim, 190, 193 – 4, 196; studies 11, 40, 65, 177 Euro-Asian 124, 191; cultural stereotypes 191 everyday/everyday life 16, 48, 66, 68 – 9, 72, 84 – 6, 108, 125, 127, 136, 163, 169, 174, 177, 188 – 9 evolution(ism) 98, 146, 172 Ewing, K. 66 exchange 22, 84, 131 exile 7, 118 – 19 Fairer-Wessels, F. 135, 138, 140 family 24, 46, 60, 65, 73, 77, 82, 84, 92, 94, 98, 101, 108, 134, 176; histories 108 Farrelly, M. and V. Keely 140 Fatima 60 Faure, B. 26, 31 – 2 feasts 73, 91, 98 feelings 71, 149 Feldhaus, A. 43, 50, 196 – 7 Feldman, J. 99 – 100, 104 female 4, 23 – 4, 28 – 9, 42, 46, 65, 75, 92, 95, 101, 164; pilgrimage 23 – 4, 28 – 9 Fernandes, R. 174 – 6, 178 – 9 Fernández Poncela, A.M. 151, 153,  158 Fès 95, 99 – 101 festivals 5, 17, 26, 55, 69, 77, 80 – 1, 84, 99, 126, 131, 138, 163, 173 – 4; Nine Emperor Gods 77, 79, 81; Thaipusam 77, 80 feudal 3, 29, 167 fieldwork 26 – 7, 29, 79 – 80, 84, 95, 166, 173 First World War/Great War 1, 10, 107 – 9, 117, 120 – 3 Fischer, J. 76, 86 Flinn, J. 115, 118 flows 11 – 12, 69, 130, 137, 155, 184 folk 23, 27 – 8, 72, 85, 97, 184, 187, 196; beliefs and practices 174; culture 25; customs 19; Malay worldview religion 72; religiosity 197; studies 106, 174, 184, 187, 196 – 7; tradition  144 folklore 19, 70, 73, 87, 90, 95, 98 – 9, 161, 174, 196 – 7; Malay 73 food 56, 76, 78

Index  205 forces 68, 74, 107, 169, 173; economic 14, 132, 153, 194 – 5; political 98, 190, 194; religious 14, 168, 190 ‘ford’ 6, 39, 41, 53 Fortuny Loret de Mola, P. 152, 158 France 1 – 2, 8, 34, 84, 101 – 2, 118, 169 Freitag, S. 40, 44, 50 – 1 Frembgen, J. 66 Freyre, G. 167 – 8, 179 Frisk, S. 76, 86 frontiers 17, 149 – 50, 152, 164 Fujian 27, 33 Fuller, C. 50 Gaenszle, M. and J. Gengnagel 49 – 50 Gallipoli 1, 10, 17, 107 – 10, 119 – 23,  189 Gallo, C. 153, 159 Ganesha 37, 39, 126 Ganges 47, 54 gaps 2, 16, 31, 81, 134, 139, 161, 197 García Chang, A. 159 García Lam, L. 152, 156 – 7, 159 Garcin de Tassy, J. 55 – 6, 59, 66 Garma, C. and R. Shadow 146, 148, 159 – 61 gay 12, 111, 118, 121; bathhouses 12, 111, 118, 121 Gaya 40 – 1, 52, 81 Geertz, C. 5, 15, 95, 104, 117, 145 – 6,  148 Gellner, E. 95, 104 gender 3 – 4, 15, 23, 45, 61, 64, 67, 76, 88, 95 – 6, 105, 126, 148, 151 – 2, 160, 172, 187, 197 generation 73, 125, 171, 174, 178 Gengnagel, J. 40, 42, 49 – 50 Geoffroy, E. 94, 104 geography 9, 16, 19 – 21, 32, 37, 40, 43, 49 – 50, 82, 117, 131, 147, 152, 188; cultural 16, 37, 49; religious 19 – 20, 40; symbolic 9 German-speaking 2, 197 Germany 4, 196 ghosts 80 – 1 Gilroy, P. 13, 16 Giménez, G. 16, 143 – 50, 155 – 6, 159 Giuriati, P. and E. Masferrer 151, 159 global 1 – 4, 7, 16, 43 – 4, 67, 76, 87, 99, 103, 105, 112, 119 – 20, 135, 149, 155, 170, 176; dominance of English 7; flow of knowledge 3; lingua franca 1, 183; medium of communication 7;

migration 153; networks 4; scale 2, 43; travel 76; trends 112 globalisation 112, 119; academic 3; counter 45; Sufi pilgrimage 61 god(s) 6, 33, 37, 65, 73, 87, 92, 101, 121, 123, 129; pagan 94 goddess(es) 26, 29 – 30, 43 – 4, 50, 65, 77, 83, 175; Amman 83; village 77 Goh, B. L. 74, 86 Goh, R. 113, 118 Gold, A. 39, 41, 47 – 8, 50 Goldziher, I. 92, 94, 104 – 5 Goossaert, V. 21, 24, 32 government 10, 46, 75, 78, 98, 101, 109, 130, 135, 169, 171; Saudi 75, 101 Gramsci, A. 144 – 5, 155 graves 8, 73, 107, 123, 125, 134 Greece 10, 107, 109 Greek 7 – 8, 118, 197; language 7 – 8 Green, A. 93, 104 Green, N. 62, 66 Grimshaw, M. 111 – 12, 118 Groot, J. de 27, 32 Grugeon, E. 100, 104 guidebooks 25 gurdwaras 68, 71 Gutiérrez del Ángel, A. 159 Hafiz 54, 57 Hahn, T. 32 hajj 5 – 6, 11 – 12, 18 – 19, 38, 48, 53, 55, 61, 63 – 5, 72, 74 – 6, 84, 87 passim, 119, 187, 189; Hall, M. 107, 110, 119, 122; the state 75 Hall, S. 13, 16 Hamayotsu, K. 72, 86 Hammoudi, A. 93, 104 Han 19, 30 Hangzhou 21 – 2 Hanley, M. and Bushnell, O. 115, 119 Hannaford, J. 107, 112, 114, 119; and J. Newton 119 Haq, F. and J. Jackson 115, 119 Hargett, J. 26, 31 – 2 Haridwar 43 Harrigan, N. 112, 119 Hart, Virgil 24, 30, 32 Hasan, P. 62, 65 – 6 Hatfield, D. 27, 32 healers/healing 16, 66, 83, 112, 120 – 1, 126, 131, 137, 140 – 1 Healy, C. 113, 119

206 Index Hede, A.M. and R. Rentschler 107, 119 hegemony 5, 14, 97, 162, 186 henro 19 heritage 2, 10, 12, 16, 85, 90, 98 – 9, 102, 109, 111, 115, 117, 121, 134 – 5, 153; cultural 85, 90, 153; politics 10; tours 111 Herklots, G. A. 53, 55 Hermkens, A. K. 11 – 12, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114 – 16, 118 – 20, 122, 133, 185, 188 – 9; and W. Jansen and C. Notermans 4, 16, 119 Herrenschmidt, O. 45, 50 Hervieu-Léger, D. 102, 104 Heuser, A. 126, 140 Hewitt de Alcántara, C. 144, 159 hierarchical 38 – 9, 45 – 6, 86; groups 46; socio-political 48; supremacy 46 hierarchy 38, 49, 56, 150, 165, 190; local 56 Hindu(s) 2, 4, 6, 10 – 13, 16, 36 – 53, 55 – 7, 59 – 60, 63, 65, 71, 77 passim, 188, 195 – 7; high caste 38; low caste 38, 59; highly urbanized 38; renouncer 45; rural 38 Hindu-Buddhist religious polities 70 Hinduism 22, 39 – 40, 43, 48 – 51, 53, 57 – 8, 67 – 8, 78, 135; cyclical conceptions of time 39; journey of life 39; learned 39; textual and metaphysical dimensions 39 Hirai, S. 152, 155, 159 historians 89 – 90, 97, 107, 196 history/histories 7, 12, 19, 25, 28, 31 – 4, 42, 50 – 1, 57 – 9, 62, 66, 74, 86 – 9, 92, 97, 101, 106, 108 – 9, 115 passim, 134, 137, 140 – 1, 147, 149, 156, 160, 162, 169, 175, 184, 187, 195 Hlatshwayo, M. 126, 140 Hoffstaedter, G. 76, 86 holidays 68, 98, 155 holy 8, 67, 74, 88, 96, 99, 127, 141 ‘Holy Land’ 8, 74 – 5, 99 – 100 Hong Kong 25 Hoornaert, E. 179 Hughes, A. 66 Hungary 2, 196 – 7 Hutnyk, J. 13, 16 hybridity 3, 13 – 14, 16, 61, 88, 129 – 30, 134; ethnic 13; location of 14; spiritual 3, 14, 134 Hyde, K. and S. Harman 107 – 8, 110 – 11,  119 Hyndman-Rizk, N. 112, 115, 119

Ibbetson, D. 56, 67 Ibn Taymiyya 92 identity 3, 10 – 11, 13, 20, 43 – 4, 51 – 2, 60 – 2, 69, 76, 78, 80 – 1, 85 – 7, 99, 106, 108 – 13, 116 passim, 125, 132, 144 – 6, 148, 150, 152 – 3, 188 – 9, 193 – 4, 198; building 42; ethnic 85; formation 51, 111, 118, 132; gender 61; Hindu 43, 78; local 193; multi-sited 12, 152; national 108, 110, 121, 125, 146; politics 76; regional 43; religious 11, 52, 85, 99, 106; sexual 61 – 2 ideology/ideological 5, 11, 28, 38, 44, 47, 58, 77, 93, 104, 110, 145, 147, 166, 169, 171, 173, 197 images 18, 22, 142, 145, 161, 164 imambara 62 incense 5, 18, 24, 27 – 9, 34, 91, 139 India 3 – 4, 6, 9 – 12, 18 – 19, 22 – 3, 36 – 7, 41 – 4, 46, 53 – 5, 57 – 9, 62, 65, 67, 70 – 1, 81, 124; Buddhist sites 19; government 46; Islam 54 – 5, 67; mediaeval history 19, 58, 66; Mother 43 – 4; Muslim shrines 44; ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ 70; Subaltern studies 36 indigenous 4 – 5, 11, 14, 17, 21, 84, 106 – 7, 109, 113 – 16, 121, 142 – 4, 147, 149 – 53, 155 – 6, 166 – 7, 172, 175 – 8, 190; Australians 113 – 15, 121; Christian pilgrimages 115; Pacific Islanders 115; Papua New Guinea 11, 113, 121; people 14, 84, 107, 113, 150, 155, 166 – 7, 172, 190; religion 175 – 6; ritual centres 113 – 14; scholars 4, 114; terminology 5; travel 113 – 14, 116 individual(s) 1, 24, 33, 40, 45, 58, 78, 83, 94, 98, 108, 129, 132, 135, 137, 150, 163, 172; memories 108; perceptions 108; pilgrimage 1, 24, 45, 94, 129, 137; religious lives 94 Indonesia 13, 61, 73 – 4, 87 Inglis, K. 107 – 8, 110, 119 intelligentsia 75 interests 10, 12, 48, 156; economic 10; political 10; religious 10 intermediaries 6, 92, 101 intersections 2, 111; between institutional and popular beliefs and practices 2 Iran 89, 98, 100 – 1 Islam 10 – 11, 49, 54, 62 – 3, 65 – 7, 71 – 3, 86, 90, 93, 100 – 5, 187; global 76; hybridity 61; locality

Index  207 61; modernist 70; mystical 73, 96; political 11, 61, 100; popular 89; reformist 11, 58; regional 90; South Asia 13, 61, 66, 73; universality 61 Islamic 13, 16, 54, 56 – 7, 60, 63 – 6, 68, 70 – 4, 76, 83, 86 – 7, 94 – 5, 99, 104, 115, 187, 189; reformers 73; revivalism 71, 73 Islamisation 87 – 8; of Buddhists 62; Hindus (Vishnu) 62 Israel 2, 5, 7, 10, 99 – 100, 104,  115 Italy 2 itineraries 2, 140; intellectual 2 Jacobsen, K. 41, 43, 50 – 1 Jafar Sharif 53, 55 – 7 Jaffrelot, C. 43, 50 Jagannath 43, 50 James, K. and K. Monden 109, 119 Jamous, R. 95, 104 Jansen, W. 4, 16, 119 Japan 6, 25, 30, 182, 186 Java 66, 70, 102, 104 Jean Law de Lauriston 54 Jerusalem 40, 62, 84, 100 Jesus 83, 99, 114, 142, 174, 176, 179 – 80 Jews 12, 15 jinxiang 5, 18 – 19, 33 – 5 Jong, F. de 94, 104 Jordan 10, 99 Jorgensen, D. 113, 120 journeys 1, 10, 16 – 17, 36 – 7, 50, 63 passim, 93, 97, 108, 110 passim, 143, 154, 156, 189, 197; intellectual 15 junrei 18, 30 Kadt, E. 179 Kahl, J. 111, 114, 120 Kairouan 91 Kalu, O. 140 Kane, P. 40, 51 Karbala 100 Karsburg, A. 179 Kartikkeya 37, 39 Karve, I. 4, 43, 46, 51 Kasmani, O. 61 – 2, 67 Kaufman, S. 196 – 7 Kelly Pemberton 63 Kerala 79 keramat 73 – 4,  86 Kerrou, M. 90, 96 – 7, 104 Kerwin, D. 113, 120

Keul, I. 47, 50 – 1 Khoo, S. 73, 86 Kleeman, T. 30, 33 Klostermeier, K. 53, 67 knowledge 1, 3, 27, 57, 62, 64, 76, 82, 100 – 1, 113, 116, 124 – 5, 131, 183 Kokoda Track (Trail) 109, 121 Kouamé, N. and V. Goossaert 32 Krishna 46 – 7, 51, 79 Krotz, E. 159 Kuala Lumpur 77, 79 – 80, 85 – 8 Kumar, N. 40, 44, 51 Kumbh Mela 6, 41, 46, 51 Kurien, P. 51 Lafaye, J. 151, 159 Lagerway, J. 26, 31 – 2 Lakhdar, L. 93, 104 landscape 3 – 4, 9, 12, 14 – 16, 21, 30, 33 passim, 73, 84, 106, 108, 112 – 13, 119 passim, 132 – 5, 147, 152 – 3, 163, 190; Aboriginal 113; engaging with 112; global 4; immanent features 15; mountainous 21 Landt, F. 30, 32 Lane, E. 91, 104 language 7, 31, 54 – 5, 65, 138, 182 – 6, 192, 194; Arabic 55, 192; English 7, 9, 181; global 7; Hindustani 55; Malay 70; native 184; N. Indian 53; Oriental 55; Persian 54 – 5; Sanskrit 38; Sindhi 57; Turkish 55; Urdu 55 Lanza, N. 100, 104 Latifa Lakhdar 93 Latin 3, 12, 16, 116, 128, 146 – 7, 158, 160, 181, 186, 189 – 90, 194, 197 law 21, 23, 46, 71 – 2, 93, 96; Ming 23; oral customary 71; Qing 23; Shariah 72; Syariah 71 leaders 34, 115, 126 – 7, 135, 146, 165, 170 Lee, R. 72, 77, 85, 87; and S. Ackerman 72 legends 34, 42, 97, 182 leisure 23, 44, 48, 51 Levey, D. 125, 140 Lévi-Strauss, C. 5, 167, 179 Lewis Henry Morgan 57 liminality 39, 59, 111, 121, 181 Lin, W. P. 26, 32 linguistic 5 – 6, 8 – 9, 116, 181, 183 – 5, 192, 194 – 5; aspects 5 Liow, J. 68, 72, 87 literati 20, 23, 25 – 6, 30

208 Index literature/literacy 28, 36, 53 passim, 70, 81, 84, 98, 102, 117, 120 – 1, 152 passim, 160, 162, 166, 174, 182 passim Lloyd, D. 107, 110, 120 local 4 – 5, 9, 13 – 14, 20, 25, 30, 37 passim, 56 passim, 73 passim, 82 passim, 106, 110, 115 – 16, 124, 128 passim, 142, 149, 152 passim, 164 passim, 174, 176, 193; level 9, 149; scholars 4 Lochtefeld, J. 40, 42 – 3, 46, 48, 51, 196 – 7 London 16 – 17, 31 – 2, 50 – 2, 54, 66 – 7, 75, 86 – 8, 103 – 4, 117 – 18, 120 – 3, 139 – 41, 158, 160 – 1, 179, 197 – 8 Louis de Féderbe de Modave 54 Lourdes 84, 118, 197 Lowy, M. 179 Luizard, P. J. 97, 104 Lynch, O. 46 – 7, 51 McDonnell, M. 75 – 6, 87 Machreq 90, 101 McKay, A. 30, 33 McKenna, M. and S. Ward 108, 120, 122 McLachlan, N. 107, 120 Macpherson, J. W. 104 McPhillips, K. 114, 120 McQuilton, F. 108, 120 Maddox, M. 106 – 7, 116, 120 Maddrell, A. 15 – 16 Madhya Pradesh 60 Madoeuf, A. 64, 66, 90 – 1, 102 – 4 Maghreb 4, 66, 89 – 91, 94 – 5, 97 – 9, 101 – 5 magic(al) 33, 58, 73, 87, 95, 101 Magnin, P. 31, 33 Maharashtra 36, 51, 60 Malay 12, 70 – 7, 80, 86 – 8; archipelago 70, 73, 75; chiefs 70; sultans 70 Malaysia 11 – 12, 68 passim, 187, 189, 194; western 11 – 12 Malaysian Indian Congress 78 – 9 Maldives 53 Mandarin 5, 18 Mandela, N. 125, 135, 140 manhood 10, 110; Australian 110 maps 25, 38, 50, 153; cartographic 38; cognitive 38 Marc Gaborieau 60, 66 marchmounts 19 – 20,  30

margins 33, 95, 147, 163, 169, 182 Margry, P. J. 125, 137, 140 Mariyamman 44, 78 market 46, 76, 82, 153, 196; economic 35; pilgrimage 196; religious 69 marketplace 17, 69, 87, 101, 121, 141, 198; religious 69 Markovitz, C., J. Pouchepadass and S. Subrahmaniam 41, 51 Marques Pereira, N. 164, 179 Martínez Cárdenas, M. 153, 159 Marxism 146; Italian 4, 15, 156; post 3, 29 Masoga, M. 134 – 7, 140 material 3, 15, 45, 59, 64, 69 – 70, 85, 88, 90, 112, 120, 133 passim, 145, 147 – 8, 183, 188, 190 – 2 Maués, R. 176, 178 – 9 Mauritius 12, 43; Hindus 12 Mayer, A. 30, 33 Mayeur-Jaouen, C. 64, 67, 90 – 1, 94, 97, 104 meaning(s) 6 – 9, 16 – 17, 36 passim, 59, 73, 93, 106, 108, 111 passim, 130, 132, 137 – 8, 145, 148 passim, 160, 169 passim, 187, 193, 195, 197 – 8; metaphysical 38; secular 106, 111, 118 Mecca 5, 11 – 12, 55, 61, 63, 65 – 6, 70, 72, 74 – 6, 87, 89 – 91, 93 – 4, 100 – 3, 115, 121 – 2, 131, 140, 187 media 27, 68, 159 Medina 55, 70, 75 – 6, 76, 100 – 1, 146, 160, 187 Medina, A. 103, 160 Medjugorje 84, 100, 115, 122 Meelhus, M. 151, 160 Mei, L. 28 – 9, 31, 33 Melaka 70 Melanesia 106, 115 – 16, 120 Melbourne 12, 31, 75, 111, 117 – 20,  122 memory/memories 54, 86, 108 – 9, 117 passim, 134 – 5, 137, 140, 149, 185, 188 – 9 merchants 45, 54, 70 Mernissi, F. 95, 105 Mesoamerica 143, 150, 151 Methodism 57 Mexico 2, 4, 11 – 15, 116, 142 – 58, 161 Micronesia 106, 118 Middle East 2, 6, 12, 64, 89 – 90, 97, 99 – 101

Index  209 migration 3, 11 – 12, 14, 70, 87, 102 – 3, 115, 151 – 5; forced 11; global labour 12; indentured labour 12; transnational 16 Millan Vázques de la Torre, G.Pérez Naranjo and R. Cárdenas 160 miracle(s) 31, 73, 84, 91 – 3, 170 Miranda, G, R. Rodríguez Rodríguez and I. Ramírez 153, 160 Mitchell, K. 13, 16 mobility 3, 6 – 9, 14, 41, 43, 63, 72, 75, 96, 99, 112, 115, 135; religious 6 – 9, 41, 99 modernity 68 – 9, 86, 112, 115, 119 – 20, 144, 146, 162, 165, 167, 171 – 2; globalizing 68 modernization 68, 93, 97, 165, 168 – 70 Moghuls 54 Mohamed ‘Abduh 96, 100 Mohd, N. bin Ngah 72, 87 monasteries 5, 18, 21 – 2, 30, 33 Mondragón, C. 113, 116, 120 monks 5, 18 – 19, 22, 24, 80, 165 – 6, 169; Buddhist 22, 24; Chinese 5, 18 – 19 Monteiro, D. T. 168 – 9, 171, 179 Montoya, R. A. 160 moral 1, 76, 81, 86, 117, 129, 148, 153 – 4, 158, 164 – 5, 189; economy 76; excellence 81 Morinis, A. 38 – 40, 45, 49, 51, 147, 158, 196 – 7 Morocco 13, 61, 89, 95, 98, 101 mouled 64, 67, 90, 94, 98, 104 Mouliéras, A. 95, 105 mountains 3, 9, 13, 18 – 21, 26, 29 – 30, 34, 38, 109, 135 – 6, 187; Chinese 13, 21; sacred 13, 19, 21, 26, 30, 34, 135 movement(s) 6, 8, 11 – 12, 14, 36, 41, 44, 53, 58, 75, 86, 89, 93, 112 passim, 137 passim, 150 passim, 163 – 72, 177 – 8, 191; commercial 41; millennial 11; pan-Islamic 74; religious 12, 58, 93, 115 – 16, 125, 129, 141, 147, 164, 168 Müller, R. 124, 127, 136, 140, 191, 198 multiculturalism 68, 106 Mulvaney, J. 113 – 14, 120 Murphy, F. 112, 120 Murray, S. 103, 109, 114, 121 Murugan 37, 43, 77, 86 music 26, 62, 78

Muslim(s) 2, 5 – 6, 10 – 13, 15 – 16, 18 – 19, 38 – 9, 44, 47 – 9, 51, 53 – 67, 70 – 7, 83 passim, 96 passim, 124 – 6, 169, 186 – 7, 189; Arab 73; Chinese 5, 18 – 19; Malay 12, 72, 75 – 7, 86; orthodox 101; reformism 94; Shia 55, 60, 62; South Asian 61 – 2, 64; Sunni 63, 70, 72; Tamil 73; urbane 73; voters 76 mythologies/mythological 39, 40, 46, 77, 79, 80, 81, 113 myths 10, 77, 110, 117, 147 Najaf 100 Nájera, M. 142, 157, 160 Nalanda Buddhist Society 81 Naquin, S. 26, 32 – 3, 195, 198; and C. F. Yü 26, 32 – 3, 198 Narayanan, Y. and J. Macbeth 111, 113, 121 narratives 43, 59, 81 – 4, 99, 111, 120, 132 – 4, 138, 173, 176 nation 11, 16, 36, 38, 44, 80, 96, 109, 116, 126, 139, 151, 167 – 8, 189; building 10, 106 – 7, 109, 116; ethnicity 13; post-colonial 10 – 11; religious values 110; state 10 – 11, 72, 99, 101, 142, 154 national 1 – 2, 10 – 11, 17, 37 passim, 61, 68, 85, 87, 96, 98 – 9, 102, 107 – 10, 116, 121 – 2, 125, 133 – 5, 146, 152, 154 – 6, 161, 163, 167, 170; independence 96; sentiment 72, 120, 122; symbols 109, 134 nationalism 2, 43, 76, 87, 97, 102, 108, 120, 122, 146, 188; ethno-religious 76; Hindu 11, 43, 44; Hindutva 43; rhetoric 43; secular 2 nationhood 10, 106 – 7, 110 nation-state(s) 10 – 11, 72, 99, 101, 142, 154 nature 17, 45, 47, 55, 69, 72, 87, 95, 124, 128, 132, 155, 167, 181, 185 – 6, 190 passim Near East 24, 54, 89 Nebel, R. 151, 160 Nebhan, K. 115, 121 Nel, P. 131, 134, 136 – 7, 139 – 41 Nelson, H. 109, 121 Nepal 49, 60, 118 Neveu, N. 98 – 9, 103 – 5 New Caledonia 106 newspapers 71, 82

210 Index New York 16 – 17, 31 – 2, 34, 49 – 52, 66 – 7, 75, 86 – 8, 103 – 4, 117 – 18, 120 – 3, 139 – 41, 158, 161, 178 – 80, 197 – 8 New Zealand(ers) 107 – 8, 112 – 13, 117 – 18; pilgrimage  113 Niedźwiedź, A. 184, 191, 198 Ningbo 22 Nizami, K. 53, 58, 65, 67 Norman, A. 111 – 12, 114, 118, 121 – 2; and C. Cusack 111 – 12, 114, 121; and M. Johnson 112, 121 Norway 47 novels 28 – 9,  113 Nthoi, L. 14, 16, 129 – 31, 136 – 8, 141, 191 obligations 45, 68, 98, 133 obstacles 1, 16, 31, 125, 139, 161, 197 Oceania 106, 113 – 17, 120 – 1 Odgers, O. 152, 160 offerings 56, 74, 77, 153 Oliveira, T. R. de 171, 178 – 9 Olles, V. 20, 26, 33 Olsen, D. and D. Timothy 1, 17, 110 – 11, 118, 121 – 2 Ono, K. and O. Hibino 26, 33 ontologies 106, 115 – 17, 125; local 115 – 16; spiritual  106 oral 71, 98, 103 – 4, 132, 139, 149 Orientalism 54 orthodox 14, 24, 49 – 50, 53, 101; beliefs and practices 14 Osbaldiston, N. and T. Petray 112,  121 Otero, G. 144, 160 Pacific pagan 48, 94 paganism 48, 94 pain 80, 117 Paiva, J. 179 Pakistan 6, 10, 53, 58 passim, 119 Pangkor Treaty 71 Papua New Guinea 10 – 11, 107, 109, 113, 115, 117 – 21 Paris 16, 31 – 2, 34, 49 – 51, 54 – 5, 66 – 7, 82, 102 – 5, 179 – 80,  197 parish 16, 83, 163 – 5, 177 Parry, J. 44, 51 Parvati 37 Pastor, M. 151, 160 pathways 3 – 4,  15 Pattana, K. 69, 87

peasants 75, 144, 146, 148, 153, 155, 174, 190 Peletz, M. 68, 70, 72, 87 Penang 70, 73 – 4, 79 – 81, 85 – 6 Pentecostalism 14, 115 peregrinus 7 – 8 performances 102, 104, 136 Persia 54 – 5, 57 – 8, 65,  73 Perth 114 Peru 112, 147 Philippines 73 piety 38, 68, 73; state-sponsored Islamic 68 pilgrim(s) 8, 10, 27, 30 – 1, 37 passim, 69, 75, 78, 81 – 4, 94, 109, 111, 122 passim, 140, 153 – 4, 166, 175 – 6, 182; agency 26; Chinese 3, 5, 13, 18 – 19, 22 – 5, 27, 29, 31, 35, 82, 187 – 8; circulation 38 – 9; clothes 193; emotions 47; experience 16, 38 passim, 75, 111, 119, 121, 126, 132; individual preferences 40; lay 18; monastic 19, 25, 29; motivations 39, 133; Muslim 56 – 7, 59, 61, 64, 75, 87, 89, 100, 186 – 7, 189; network 25, 37, 39, 43, 60, 150; organization 26, 130; perceptions 46 – 7, 145; Tijâni 100; women 3, 28, 32, 35 pilgrimage: Arab 89; Catholic 44, 79, 82, 88, 114, 126, 138, 162; ceremonies 55; commoners 23; complexity of 1, 15, 138; conflict 10, 46; diasporic diversity 12, 81; displacement 43, 55; European 7, 14, 106, 138; function 37, 42 – 3; heritage 16, 85; Hindu 4, 6, 11 – 12, 16, 36 – 43, 45 – 9, 51 – 3, 55, 81, 188, 195 – 7; historical and etymological background of 7; hybridised 12; individual 1, 24, 45, 137; Japanese 13, 182 – 4, 193, 196 – 7; localised 12; meanings 9, 37, 43, 46 – 7, 51, 132, 195; modern conception of 8; Muslim 56 – 7, 59, 61, 64, 87, 100, 186 – 7, 189; national 40, 100; non-religious 2, 10; patriotic 43; place 6, 38, 40 – 1, 51, 136; processions 9, 18, 26 – 7, 29, 41; promotion 69, 182; religious 2, 10, 36, 89, 113 – 14, 122, 125, 135, 140; research 2 – 3, 14, 125 – 6, 134, 139, 146, 152, 154, 156; secondary 64, 89; secular 1, 3, 10, 17, 107,

Index  211 110, 118 – 19, 140, 189; shopping 110 – 11; spiritual 11; studies 1 – 3, 5, 11, 14 – 17, 25, 27 – 9, 31, 33, 36, 38, 40, 63, 68 – 9, 85, 106 – 7, 110, 112, 115 – 16, 124, 129, 137, 139, 142, 146 – 7, 150, 153, 156, 161 – 2, 175, 181 – 7, 190, 192 passim; of substitution 6, 89; T’ai chan 4; war memorial 107; West Bengal 38; Western genealogy of 2 – 9 pir 54, 56 – 7, 59 Pirani, F. 64, 67 places 8, 10, 15 – 16, 19, 21, 25, 38 – 41, 44, 49 – 50, 53, 57, 59, 62 – 5, 68 – 9, 71, 73, 75, 78, 83 – 4, 88, 91, 96, 100 – 1, 108 – 10, 112 passim, 125, 128, 133 passim, 144, 150, 164, 167, 172, 187 – 8, 197; cosmopolitan 13, 60; pre-Islamic 57; social regulation 63 planes 42, 75 Pnina Werbner 61 poetry 54, 57, 61, 65; Abdul Latif 57 political 2 – 4, 7, 9 – 12, 14, 25, 28, 42 – 5, 48, 50, 56 passim, 76 – 9, 90, 93 – 101, 106 – 7, 110, 116, 120, 125, 130 passim, 145, 148, 155, 165, 168 passim, 185 passim; action 95; agendas 43; authority 4, 94; control 10; forces 98, 190; local dimensions 95; patronage 76 politics 10, 16, 36, 66 – 7, 69, 72, 75 – 6, 86 – 8, 90, 94, 98, 101, 109 – 10, 120, 140, 161, 189; family 94; regional culture 98; religious change 72 Polynesia 106 Popovic, A. and G. Veinstein 92, 105 Porcher, M. C. 41, 51 Portal Airosa, M. 160 Portugal 5, 173, 179 – 80 Portuguese 70, 87, 163 – 4, 168, 178 Post, P., P. Nel and W. van Beek 139 – 41 post-modern 112, 120, 154, 173 Pouwer, J. 113, 121 poverty 6, 95, 145, 165 power 9, 13 – 14, 16, 33, 39, 43, 49 – 50, 54, 58 – 9, 66, 68, 70, 78, 80 – 2, 86, 92 passim, 112, 119, 125, 128 passim, 144 – 5, 148, 160, 166, 170 – 1, 178, 188, 190; Buddhist 5, 13; devotional 65, 142, 173; hegemonic 144

practices 1 – 2, 5, 8 – 14, 30, 36, 39 – 40, 45, 55, 57, 62, 65, 68 passim, 84 passim, 100 – 2, 114, 116, 124 – 5, 130, 142, 144 – 6, 148, 151 – 3, 155, 165, 170 passim, 181 passim; Hindu 11, 36, 45, 80; hybrid 12, 84; religious 55, 71, 97 – 8, 125, 142 passim, 171, 174; shared 84; Shinto 13 Prado Júnior, C. 163, 179 Prat, I. Carlós, J. 150, 152, 160, 197 Pratt, M. 152, 160 prayer(s) 63, 76, 78, 82 – 4, 90, 92, 102, 126, 128, 132, 169, 174 Pretoria 10, 134, 140 priest(s) 11, 24, 45 – 6, 50, 82, 130, 166, 170 – 1, 175, 188, 190 – 1 Prior, J. and Cusack, C. 111, 118, 121 Prip-Møller, J. 30, 33 processes 2, 15, 69, 76, 90, 101, 106 passim, 129, 143 – 4, 149 – 50, 154, 156, 175, 184, 190, 193; political 2, 101, 193; sacralising 14, 134 processions 9, 13, 18, 26 passim, 41, 43, 49 passim, 62 – 3, 65, 71, 126, 135; chariot 77; Chinese 71; funeral 71; Hindu 43, 49, 55, 71, 126; Mazu 26; Muharram 56, 62 – 3; Muslim 56, 71, 126 production 3, 40, 116, 125, 144, 166, 172, 174, 176 – 7; academic 166, 172, 177; cultural 3 profane 12, 36, 48, 69, 110 – 11, 116, 136, 174, 188, 195 Prophet Muhammad 60, 62 – 3, 65 – 6, 91 – 2, 94, 99, 101 – 2, 105, 125 Propin Frejomil, E. and A. Sánchez Crispín 153, 160 Protestantism 125, 197 Provensal, D. 95, 105 psychological/psychology 60, 76, 112 Pushkar 40 – 1 Queiroz, M. de 168 – 9, 179 quest 1, 10, 47, 84, 108, 132 – 3, 154, 171, 177 race 13, 72, 88, 167; governmentality of 72 railways 40, 196 Raj, R. and Morpeth, N. 1, 17 Rajasthan 36, 47, 50 Ramadan 93

212 Index Ranger, T. 14, 125, 133 – 5, 141 rational 3, 14, 22, 29, 95; actors 3, 29 Reader, I. 1, 6, 13, 17, 25, 33, 69, 87, 110, 112, 121, 137, 141, 181 passim, 190 passim; and P. Swanson 182, 186, 193, 198 reductionism 5, 197 Reed, L. 109 – 10, 121 Reeves, K. and J. Cheer 109, 117, 121 – 2 regime 163, 171 – 2, 187 Reid, A. 70, 87 Reiniche, M. L. 39, 51 Reiter, F. 26, 33 relationships 9, 73, 109, 133 – 4, 139, 146, 194; between institutional and popular beliefs and practices 2; between pilgrimage and tourism 3, 12, 196; between religions 2 relics 8, 22, 31, 63 religion 1 – 3, 6 – 9, 11 – 13, 16 – 19, 22 passim, 32 – 4, 36, 47, 50 – 1, 56, 60 – 1, 64 passim, 77, 80, 83 passim, 99 – 107, 110, 115 passim, 131, 141 passim, 152 passim, 169, 171, 174 – 6, 182, 187 – 9, 195, 197 – 8; civil 110, 117; everyday 85 – 6, 174; folk 23, 27, 85, 87; governmentality of 72; institutional 1, 12, 153, 163; managerial approach to 71; material 3, 88; official 72; syncretic 80, 176 religiosities 72, 76 – 7; everyday Muslim 72; Muslim 72, 77; non-western 111; plural 72; privatized 72; urban 76; voluntarist 72; women 95 religious: calendars 68; cosmogonies 101; culture 18, 54, 56, 58, 98 – 9, 182, 187, 194; education 91, 96; institutions 14, 23, 137; inter 60, 84 – 5; masters 96; mission 10; obligations 98; organizations 23; package tours 101; pluralism 12, 68 – 9, 84, 88; polities 70; reformism 2, 97; rituals 13, 60, 77, 89, 94 – 6, 98, 102, 110, 128, 153, 174; sites 1, 8, 18, 25, 36, 101 – 2, 110, 113, 137, 186, 189; sociability 99; specialist 38, 40, 46, 93; studies 3, 34, 37 – 8, 90, 106, 111, 142, 147, 153, 173, 198; survivals 89; traditions 6 – 7, 13, 58, 138, 184, 194 religious beliefs and practices 2, 10, 14, 142; Buddhist 2, 125; Christian

106, 126, 181, 190 passim; Daoist 2, 20; diversity of 14; Hindu 36, 47 – 8, 78; hybrid 14; institutional 1 – 2, 12, 153; Muslim 10; popular 23, 31, 33, 53, 64, 77, 79 – 80, 81, 86 – 7, 95, 101, 140, 142, 144 – 5, 148, 150, 153, 155 – 6, 197 – 8; syncretic 80 representational: approach 15 representations 37 – 8, 40, 44 – 5, 48, 54, 83; Christian beliefs 96; cosmos 37; European 54; Hindu universe 37; local 40, 48; Orientalist 55 research 1 – 5, 9 – 15, 25 – 8, 34, 36, 41, 44, 46 – 7, 49, 60, 62 – 4, 69, 73, 79 – 80, 82, 85, 94 – 5, 97, 99, 101, 110, 125 – 6, 129, 131, 134, 137 – 9, 142 passim, 168, 170, 173 – 7, 181 passim, 194, 197; Anglophone 2 – 4, 64, 147; ethnographic 3, 11, 47, 79, 146, 151; Francophone 60, 64; historical 2, 13 resistance 5, 14, 88, 95, 98, 140, 144, 148, 151 – 2, 155, 166, 168, 171 – 3, 190; local 14 Reyes, T. 146, 151, 158, 160 Reysoo, F. 90, 96, 98, 105 Richard Burton 65, 93 Richard Eaton 58 Richard Wolf 62 Ricoeur, P. 5, 173, 179 Rinn, L. 95, 105 Rinschede, G. 1, 17, 124 Ríos Peñafiel, E. 26, 33 rites 40, 58, 73, 90, 96, 131; of passage 45, 78, 107; propitiation 73 ritual(s) 4 – 6, 13, 21, 32, 34, 37, 40 – 1, 45, 48 – 9, 53, 56, 59 passim, 73 passim, 89 – 98, 100 – 2, 108, 110, 113 passim, 121, 126, 128 – 9, 132, 136, 139 passim, 150 passim, 164 – 5, 169, 172 – 4, 178, 189; burdens 78; communion with the divine 48; mourning 62; mystical 96; objects 62 – 3, 69, 91; obligations 68; possession cult 95 – 6; purity 81; renewal 80; survivals 89, 95 river 6, 30, 38, 55, 78, 114, 131; sacred 6 Riviere, C. 125, 141 roads 24, 37, 163 Robson, J. 26, 30, 33 Rocha, C. 112, 121

Index  213 Rodríguez-Shadow, M. J. and R. Shadow 146 – 8,  161 Roff, W. 70, 87 Roman Catholic(s) 2, 14, 70, 79, 82 – 4, 126, 128, 132, 142, 146, 163, 170, 190; Australian 106, 114 – 15; classes 84; ethnicities 84; feasts 82; Indian 83; indigenous 14, 126; localities 84; pilgrimage 2, 14, 79, 82, 84, 126, 128; teachings 83 Rome 7 – 8, 14, 114, 163, 165 Roos, B. 125, 127 – 8, 131, 136 – 7, 141 Ross-Bryant, L. 15, 17 routes 1, 23, 25, 40, 42, 45, 70, 96, 112 – 13, 120, 125, 153 – 5, 164, 174, 177 Rubinstein, M. 27, 33 Russia 2, 5 Saayman, A., M. Saayman and A. Gyekye 127, 131, 141 sacralisation 105; landscape 108; nation 10, 43, 99; public space 10, 43; territory 10, 43, 99; tourism 12 sacred 5 – 6, 10 – 13, 15 – 19, 21, 23, 25 – 6, 30, 32 passim, 47 passim, 59 passim, 73 – 4, 78, 82 passim, 90 – 1, 93, 108 passim, 121 – 2, 125, 127 – 38, 140 – 1, 150, 152, 158, 166, 169, 174, 176, 178 – 9, 187 – 9, 195 – 8; Anzac 108, 122; centre 37, 39, 130, 136, 150; commodification 69; footprints 62; objects 69; persons 69, 73; places 10, 15, 73, 88, 118 – 19, 133, 137, 140, 188; power 82, 136; sight-seeing 41; texts 40, 48 Saghi, O. 93, 101, 105 saint 4, 6, 13, 59 – 61, 63, 73, 83, 91, 95 – 7, 101 – 2, 104, 118, 169; birthday celebrations 94; shrines 6, 59, 63, 67, 73, 97, 99; territory 60, 93; veneration 73, 101, 104; worship 6, 13, 53 – 4, 61, 63, 91, 93, 97, 173 St. Anne 82 – 4, 88 Salaf/salafiyya 93 Sallnow, M. 5, 46, 50, 97, 108, 114, 118, 147 – 8, 158, 161, 172, 176, 179, 181, 191, 196 – 8 Sanchis, P. 5, 173 sanctuaries 8, 15, 57, 62, 74, 89, 101, 105, 143, 154, 162 – 5, 172, 177; dancing 57 Sangren, S. 26, 30 – 1, 33

Santa Maria, A. de 179 – 80 Santiago de Compostela 1, 112, 119 Saraswati, B. 41, 51 – 2 Sarkissian, M. 84, 87 Saudi Arabia 75 – 6, 100, 131 Scates, B. 107 – 11, 121 – 2; and A. McCosker, K. Reeves, R. Wheatley and D. Williams 122 scholars 1 – 2, 4 – 7, 10, 12 – 15, 25, 36 – 7, 39 – 44, 47 – 9, 55, 63, 69, 73, 78, 85, 89 – 90, 93 – 7, 106 passim, 118 – 19, 137, 145, 151, 153, 155, 181 passim; Anglophone 1 – 2, 4, 14, 106, 114, 181 – 4, 192, 195; Francophone 13, 106; local 4; male 4; non-Muslim 94; western 4, 7, 14 – 15, 28, 47, 49, 187 – 8, 191 – 2 science 7, 14, 27, 34, 58, 62, 64 – 6, 102, 105, 162, 166 – 8, 174 Seal, G. 106 – 8, 110, 122 Seaton, A. 1, 17 secular 2 – 3, 10 – 11, 15, 17, 48, 69, 72, 75 – 6, 85, 88, 106 passim, 118 – 20, 122, 142, 144, 146, 154, 156, 165, 168 – 9, 178, 180, 185, 188 – 90, 194 – 6; discourses 48, 110; nationalism 2; spirituality 111 secularisation 15, 106, 142, 146, 168, 190 secularism 106, 110, 116 Sekar, R. 46, 51 self 47, 80, 87, 106, 111 – 12, 118, 173, 188, 193 semangat 72 – 3 Shadow, R. and M. Rodríguez-Shadow 146 – 8, 160 – 1 shamanism 72 Sharif, J. 53, 55 – 7, 62, 66 – 7 Shemeem Abbas 63 Shikoku 19, 198 Shinno, T. 182, 198 Shiva 37, 40, 42, 48 shopping 41, 48, 111 shrines 3, 6, 10, 12 – 15, 19 – 20, 25, 38, 40, 44, 58 – 60, 62 – 4, 67 – 9, 73 – 4, 79, 81, 84, 89 – 91, 93, 96 – 101, 115, 128 – 30, 139, 142 passim, 161, 191; ambiguous 13; cosmopolitan 13; Daoist 13, 20; Datuk Kong 74; linked 100; Muslim 44, 91; peripheral 100; Roman Catholic 14; rural 90, 99; Sufism 57, 63; urban 74, 90; Yankalilla 114

214 Index Shuo, Y. (Sam) S., C. Ryan and G. Liu 34 Sikhs/Sikhism 68, 84 Sindh 56 – 7, 63, 66 Singapore 25, 70, 79, 85 – 7, 109 Singer, P. and Brandt, V 171, 180 Singh, R. 37, 42, 47, 51 Sinha, V. 69, 71, 79, 87 sites 1 – 2, 8, 10 – 11, 13, 16 – 21, 23, 25 – 6, 29 passim, 43 – 4, 63, 74, 81, 85, 90, 97, 99, 101 – 2, 108 passim, 118, 121, 125, 127, 131 – 9, 141 – 2, 150, 155, 181, 186 – 91, 193, 195 – 6, 198; Aboriginal sacred 11 Skeat, W. 72, 87 Skrbiš, Z. 115, 122 Slade, P. 1, 17, 107, 122 slaves 11 Smith, L. 111, 122 Smith, L. Tuhiwai 4, 17 Smith, J. Z. 136, 141 social sciences 14, 27, 32, 58, 62, 64, 67, 162, 166 – 8, 174 society 10, 16, 34, 45, 49, 51 – 2, 56 – 7, 73, 86 – 8, 92, 95 – 6, 106, 110, 118, 121, 147 – 8, 153, 155, 161 – 2, 166, 168, 174, 177, 185, 187 – 90, 193 – 4; patriarchal 95; secular 10, 106; Turkish 96 Solomon Islands 109, 115, 122 songs 28, 31, 35, 114 Soymié, M. 26, 34 space 2 – 3, 10 – 13, 15 – 16, 21, 39, 41 – 3, 48 – 50, 60 passim, 71, 78, 81, 84 – 5, 91, 96, 108, 110, 112 – 13, 120, 124, 134, 136, 139 – 41, 145, 147, 149 – 50, 152, 163, 172, 177; Australian 112; circulatory 12, 152; cosmic 10; impure 42; national sacred 10, 140; pure 42; sacralisation 43; social 41, 112, 124 spirit 56, 74, 79 – 81, 86, 88, 113, 129, 140; ancestors 18, 113; mediums 79 – 81, 86,  129 spiritual 1, 3, 11 – 12, 14, 17, 38, 42, 48 – 9, 58 – 9, 62, 71, 73 – 4, 81, 83, 92, 106, 112, 114, 118 – 22, 125 – 6, 128, 130, 134 – 7, 141, 154 – 5, 173; battle 81; conceptualisation of mobility 112; entities 73 – 4; exercises 81; healers 112; mediation 62; ontologies 106; pilgrimage 11, 112, 155; protection 71; warfare 83

spirituality 47 – 8, 111 – 13, 116, 119, 121, 154, 164 – 5, 170 Srinivas, M. 41 – 2, 51 Stamford Raffles 70 state 8, 10 – 12, 20, 38, 45, 47, 53, 55, 58, 60 passim, 75, 77, 79, 83, 85 – 8, 94, 97, 99, 101, 108, 110 – 11, 124, 127, 135, 137, 142 – 3, 149 passim, 163, 166, 169 – 70, 174, 176, 180, 188 – 90, 194; colonial 94, 163; discourse 53, 69; institutional changes 189; Islamic authorities 73; patronage 77 status 13, 42, 47, 49, 60, 70, 76, 108, 189; social 13, 60 Steil, C. 5, 11 – 12, 124 – 5, 144, 146, 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172 – 4, 176 – 8, 180, 189 – 90; and C. Mariz and M. Reesink 180; and R. Tonil 180; and S. de Sá Carneiro 177, 180 Stephens, J. 108, 110 – 11, 113, 122 Stephenson, P. 115, 122 Strickmann, M. 26, 34 structuralism 5, 152, 156, 173 structure(s) 39, 46, 52, 56, 61, 63, 65, 79 – 80, 93, 98, 104, 116, 125, 127, 129, 145 – 8, 155, 162 – 3, 169, 172, 176, 182; anti 52; architectural 63; counter 61; time 39 Subhan, J. 57 – 8, 67 Suez Canal 70 Sufi(sm) 2 – 3, 25, 29, 58, 70, 79, 85 – 7, 109; feudal 3, 29 Sumatra 70 Sundkler, B. G. 127, 141 Swearer, D., S. Premchit and P. Dokbuakaew 30, 34 Sydney 12, 111, 117 – 18, 121, 123; Olympics 12, 111 symbolic 7, 9 – 11, 36 – 8, 47, 76, 89, 91, 127, 129, 134, 138, 141, 144 passim, 150, 155 – 6, 166, 173 symbolism 37, 129, 149, 152 – 3, 173, 176, 179; cosmological 37 symbols 8, 13, 43, 100, 109, 134, 145, 147 – 8, 151, 174 – 5; Buddhist 13; Shinto 13 Syria 62 Tagliacozzo, E. 74, 87 Taishan 29, 34 Taiwan 25 – 7, 29 – 30, 32 – 4 Tamil Nadu 36, 77, 79

Index  215 Tanner, R. 124 – 5, 130, 141 Tapper, R. and N. 95, 105 Taylor, P. 198 Taylor, W. 142, 161 temples 3, 9, 13, 18 – 21, 23 – 4, 26 – 7, 32, 34, 37 – 8, 43 – 5, 49, 68, 71, 77, 81, 187; Buddhist 13, 23, 71; demolitions 79; Hindu 71 tension 6, 11, 24, 87, 91 – 2, 97, 101, 147, 172, 184, 190 Ter Haar, B. 18, 34 terminology 5 – 6, 54, 89, 181, 186; Anglophone 6, 181, 186 territory/territorial 10 – 11, 34 passim, 49, 54, 60, 93, 96, 99 – 100, 109, 125, 131, 144 – 6, 149 – 50, 152, 156, 158 – 9,  164 text(s) 8, 18 – 20, 23, 30, 3 passim, 46, 48, 55, 124, 145, 148, 150, 172 passim; academic 40; analysis 37, 148; Confucian 23; historicity of 40; norms 40 Thailand 30, 34, 73, 82 theology/theological 65, 73, 83, 112, 140, 146, 164 – 5, 171 – 3, 175, 178, 186 – 7,  195 theoretical 3, 9, 14 – 15, 77, 79, 97, 125, 129, 144, 146, 150, 166, 182 – 3, 190 – 1, 193, 195 – 6; debates 3, 15, 125, 146; investigation 15 Thomas W. Arnold 62, 117 Thomson Reuters 27, 34 ties 3 – 4, 12, 152; cultural 4; diasporic 12; international 3 time(s) 1, 4 – 5, 7, 15, 17, 21, 23, 27, 29 – 31, 39, 41 – 2, 48, 55, 57, 59, 63 – 4, 73, 77, 80, 89 passim, 109, 117, 124, 132, 139, 142 passim, 154 – 5, 163 – 6, 170 – 1, 173, 182 – 3, 185, 187, 191 – 2 Timmer, J. 115, 122 Timothy, D. and D. Olsen 1, 17, 110 – 11, 118, 121 – 2 Tinker, H. 51 tirtha 6, 39, 41, 50, 53, 78 Tirupati 41 tombs 6, 13, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 63, 65, 73, 90 – 2, 95, 102, 187; hybrid 13, 61; saints 6, 53 Tome, P. 161 Tonil, R. and C. Steil 177, 180 topography 38, 117, 136; sacred 38, 136

tourism/tourists 1 – 3, 11 – 12, 14, 17, 25, 30, 34, 36, 48, 76 – 7, 85, 89 – 90, 93, 97 passim, 116 – 23, 131, 141, 151 – 8, 177, 180, 196 – 7 towns 9, 21, 40, 44, 78, 163 – 4 trade 10, 42, 45, 70, 73, 79, 81, 84, 117, 174; routes 42, 45; spice 70 tradition(s) 1 – 2, 4 – 7, 9, 13, 15, 18, 25, 27, 33, 36, 38 – 9, 41, 44 passim, 58 – 9, 70, 73, 75, 81, 84 passim, 95 – 6, 98, 104, 107, 110, 112 – 14, 116, 125 passim, 132, 134, 137 passim, 144, 146 passim, 161 – 2, 165, 167, 169 passim, 177, 181 – 92, 194 – 5, 198; disciplinary 2, 116, 125; Great/Little 95 – 6; linguistic 181, 183, 192; pan-Indian 38; religious 6 – 7, 13, 58, 96, 138, 184, 194, 198; scriptural 96 traditional 1, 5, 18, 27, 36, 39, 45 – 6, 59, 73, 75, 85, 98, 110, 112 – 14, 129 – 30, 134, 137 – 9, 144, 152, 162, 165, 167, 169 passim, 177 trance 60, 62, 72, 78 – 9, 87 transgender 61 – 2,  79 translation 7, 28, 53, 56, 64, 98, 145, 147, 150, 167 – 8, 176 transnational 11, 16, 94, 118, 121,  155 travel 3, 5 – 11, 18 – 19, 21 – 5, 28, 30, 39, 41 – 2, 45 – 6, 49, 54 – 5, 57, 69, 75 – 6, 81, 84 – 5, 87, 93 – 4, 100 – 1, 103, 106, 108 passim, 120, 122, 125 – 7, 130 – 2, 134, 138, 140, 152, 154 – 5, 169 – 70, 181 – 2, 186, 188, 197 – 8; agencies 75 – 6, 154; Christian 69; democratization 100; gentry 23; indigenous 113 – 14, 116; non-western 111; ritualistic 19; Senegalese agencies 100 travelogues 19, 25 tribes 56, 120 tropes 3, 81, 129 Trouillet, P. Y. 37, 43, 51 Tunisia 91, 93, 99, 103 – 4 Turkey 10, 107 – 9 Turner, V. 17, 51 – 2, 122, 141, 161, 198; and E. Turner 114, 161 Turnerian 12, 15, 39, 45, 97, 127, 131, 136 – 7, 148 – 9, 176; framework 45, 149; model 12, 39, 137, 148 ‘turns’ 3, 14; cultural 14; mobility 14; spatial 14

216 Index Tuttle, G. and J. Elverskog 26, 34 Tweed, T. 12, 17, 114, 122 ‘ulema 93, 96 Uluru 113, 116, 118 umma 11 umra 6, 53 universal 7, 18, 39, 42, 46, 50, 61, 112, 166, 181 – 2, 185 – 7, 191 – 2, 194 – 6 universe 9, 37, 39, 68 – 9, 84 – 5, 150 universities 3, 188 urban 38, 43, 45, 68, 71, 73 – 4, 76, 79, 85 passim, 95 passim, 146, 159, 165, 167, 171 – 2,  175 urbanisation 68, 146 USA 12 Valensi, L. 96, 180 Van der Veer, P. 45 – 6, 48, 52, 196, 198 Vanuatu 109, 113, 116, 120 Vasquez, M. and M. Marquardt 12, 17 Velankanni 44 Velasco Toro, J. 149, 156, 161 Velho, O. 5, 173, 176, 180 veneration 65, 73, 80, 92, 101, 104, 131 Venter, F. 125, 141 Verellen, F. 20, 34 veterans 109; Australian 109; Japanese 109 Vidyarthi, L. 40 – 1, 48, 52; and M. Jha and B. Saraswati 52 viewing 63, 183, 193 village(s) 3, 36, 41, 46, 50 – 1, 77, 98, 107, 113, 119, 130, 142, 164; monographs 41 villager(s) 46, 142 Viqueira, C. 149, 161 Virgin Mary 44, 114, 117, 164, 175, 177 visions 20, 22, 128, 177, 197 votive 83, 92 vows 22, 45, 78, 82 walking 15, 39, 45, 77, 112, 118, 155, 193 Wallace, V. 30, 34 Walsh, M. 26, 34 Wan, Q. and L. Cao 28, 31 Wang, J. 30, 34 war 1, 10, 25, 43, 75, 106 – 11, 116, 118 – 23, 133, 166, 168 – 9,

172, 178, 188 – 9; civil 25, 110; commemoration 109 – 10, 116; heritage 109, 117, 121; memorials 111, 189; Second World 1, 10, 58, 74; Sino-Japanese 25; sites 109 Ward, C. 77, 87 Warfield, H., S. Baker and S. Parikh Foxx 112, 122 water 23, 29, 83 – 4, 88, 90 – 1, 128, 137, 139 Weaver, D. 109, 122 wedding(s) 65, 95, 98 Welch, A. 62, 67 Wepener, C. and G. te Haar 128 – 9, 136, 141 Werbner, R. 125, 141 West, B. 110, 122 West Bengal 36, 38, 51 White, R. 107, 122 Willford, A. 77, 79, 87 William Jones 54, 56 – 7 Wilson, B. 106, 123 Winkelman, M. and J. Dubisch 137, 140 – 1 Winstedt, R. 72 – 3, 88 Winter, C. 107, 110, 122 Wolf, E. 151, 161 women 3, 23 – 4, 28 – 9, 35, 56, 60 – 1, 63, 75 – 6, 81, 89 – 90, 92, 94 – 6, 98, 102, 107, 118, 126; pilgrimage 23 – 4, 28, 61, 94, 96 Woodhead, L. 110, 123 worship 6, 8, 13, 18 – 21, 26, 29, 34, 53 – 4, 58, 61, 63, 68, 71, 74, 80, 82 – 3, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 101, 139, 163, 165 – 6, 173; deity 20; mountain 19, 21 Yang, M., Y. Pan and Q. Zhao 30, 34 Yeoh, S. G. 11, 68, 72, 79, 82 – 3, 88, 189 Yü, C. F. 24, 26, 28, 31 – 5, 198 Yunnan 21 Zapponi, E. 161 Zhang, Z. 35 Zhang Daoling 20, 34 Ziino, B. 107 – 9, 123 Zimbabwe 14, 124, 129, 133 – 5, 141, 191 ziyarat 6, 13, 53 – 4, 56, 58, 61 – 5, 91, 187, 189