India

Back to Assignment 4: Landscape Concepts by country

by: Suranjana Datta

Landscape Concepts

India’s varied natural landscapes form a backdrop to the collage of her culture. The country is bordered by the snow capped Himalayas in the north, north east India is a land of rain, waterfalls, gorges and caves, in north western India lies the Thar desert, in eastern India are the Sunderbans (the largest tidal mangrove forest in the world) and southern India has a tropical climate with thick forests, lush plains and sandy beaches. (1)

The Indian subcontinent consists of a secular cultural landscape ; temples and shrines dedicated to multiple Hindu and Buddhist deities, structures of Jains, neo Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and Indians of chinese origin who follow their own religious traditions. In this “Landscape concepts from India”, I have concentrated only on a few aspects of cultural landscapes of Hinduism.

Landscape Concept 1

Original

Please add your concept of landscape in original language and the source here...

English translation

The cultural landscape of Hinduism contributes mostly to the cultural landscape of India. Hinduism is the oldest of the world’s major religions and one of the oldest extant religions in the world. It is a cultural religion, it origin is about 4000 years old. Temples and shrines, holy animals by the tens of millions, and the sights and sounds of endless processions and rituals all contribute to the overall atmosphere. The faith is a visual as well as an emotional experience.(2)

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  Religious procession led by elephants in Kerala, south India.

In the absence of any formal national policy on cultural landscapes in India, UNESCO designation is essentially the chief means by which potential sites can access organized preservation. Yet it would be faulty to assume that this centuries-old civilization has been entirely oblivious to sustaining landscapes through its own practices, traditions, and ways of life. In the pre-colonial era (as indeed in rural society even today), local populations were actively associated with their heritage, worshipping the sacred and using the secular in such a way that all that was considered of value was well looked after. If something fell into disuse, this meant that it was no longer valued by society. An awareness of the myriad ways in which people have appreciated their heritage thus can allow us to reevaluate current prevalent approaches.

Hindus, like most other prehistoric societies, view nature as a symbol of divinity. Throughout Hinduism, we find the assumption that the natural world is pervaded by powers towards which reverence is obligatory. Accordingly, the most valued cultural landscapes derive their significance from being sacred, not from being exemplary examples of scenic beauty. Recent academic scholarship has proposed that the concept of archetypes can be used as a valuable tool in analyzing cultural landscapes in India. An archetype is a generic, idealized model from which similar instances are derived and patterned. How this concept translates into the shaping of cultural landscapes in India can be seen in the presence of some highly revered natural archetypes such as the River Ganga, Bodhi Tree, and Mount Kailash, each of which have found their way into countless manifestations in everyday landscapes over the past centuries. They are valorized in mythology, art, architecture, and literature and sustain themselves by allowing associations to be made with them in contemporary tradition. Thus, a newly constructed, modest roadside temple with a shikhara(Sanskrit word meaning summit or crest, is used in architectural vocabulary to denote towering superstructure above innermost sanctum of Indian hindu temples) that symbolically refers to the form of Mount Kailash succeeds in making this connection owing to the iconic power that popular symbols enjoy in Indian culture.

Landscapes and other cultural creations (human made entities) in the Indian context rarely are deemed significant purely for their physical elements. Rather, it is the associations that the landscape has with values defined by the culture that are perceived to be significant. Through the passage of time, these intangible associations establish themselves so strongly that the need for extant physical remains may be greatly diminished or even altogether discharged. For example, the city of Banaras in northern India, one of the world’s oldest living cities, is a cultural landscape that is significant for its deep religious and cultural associations, although its physical fabric has been ever-changing during the 3000 years of its existence, so much so that it probably has no authenticity or integrity from purely Western historic preservation standards. Intangible forms of heritage are manifested in oral traditions and folklore, indigenous building processes, rituals and symbolic references. (3)

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  Akshardham temple in New Delhi

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  Ghats in Banaras(Ghats are long flights of wide stones which lead down to rivers).

Landscape Concept 2

Original

Please add your concept of landscape in original language and the source here...

English translation

Cultural traditions encompass specific modes of visuality. Islamic and Hindu ways of seeing are described in terms of their inscription upon the cultural landscape of India. To explain this difference, one of the many examples that are present is taken : The historic Yamuna riverfront at Agra, one-time capital of the Mughal Empire, is compared with the riverfront at Braj, sacred to the Hindus for its association with the god Krishna. The land-water interface at Braj is marked by steps that allow access to the river for bathing, shrines and temples for worship, and a porous architecture that facilitates vision and movement in the public realm. In contrast, at historic Agra, the interface was marked by walls enclosing royal gardens, palaces, and tombs, creating private enclaves and permitting the common residents only interstitial access to the river, if any at all. Pavilions on riverfront terraces with gardens below framed views of the landscape, implying a separation between the viewer and the designated object. Although the river was the prime object of vision in both traditions, the Islamic mode of visuality was phenomenal presentation while the Hindu mode is iconic representation.(4)

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  Temples in banks of Yamuna in Braj.

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  Mughal gardens with water channels inside garden complex.

Notes and References –

(1)Nisha Giri, Exotic India – Landscapes, celebrations, temples and art form.

(2)http://www.course- notes.org/Human_Geography/Outlines/Human_Geography_Culture_Society_and_Space_8th_Edition_Textbook/Chapter_12_R

(3)Priya Jain, Preserving Cultural Landscapes: A cross cultural analysis.

(4)Amita Sinha and D. Fairchild Ruggles, The Yamuna Riverfront, India: A Comparative Study of Islamic And Hindu Traditions In Cultural Landscapes