Changing Religious Landscapes in Gupta Times: Archaeological Evidence from the Area of Baḍoh-Paṭhāri in Central India

Casile, Anne

doi:10.1080/02666030.2014.962303

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Within the SSP area, the archaeological visibility of non-Buddhist strands of the religious landscape is confined to material connected with the proto-Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra tradition or of otherwise ambiguous sectarian affiliation (Shaw 2004;2007, 53-5;176-193;2013c) until the mid' first millennium AD, when we find a massive rise in Hindu (and Jain) temple construction, and a corresponding decrease in Buddhist building projects (Shaw & Sutcliffe 2003, 78-9;Shaw 2007, 183-93;; also Skilling 2014). Buddhist forms of land and water-management become appropriated and transformed by competing Brahmanical institutions, specifically the Hindu temple, which acquired legal powers to own and manage land and water resources (Willis 2009;Lacey 2014;Casile 2014), and developed rituals aimed at improving agriculture, including the prediction of the start and finish of the monsoon (Willis 2009). This was enabled not only through royal land-grants to Brahmins but by the new idea that images installed within temples are full embodiments (mūrti) of gods who can interact directly with devotees through worship (pūjā) and who have full-blown legal jurisdiction to own property (Willis 2009, 122-7), in ways that parallel the dynamics of the earlier Buddhist monastic tradition, and associated stūpa and relic cult (Shaw 2015).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Shaw

2016

World Archaeology

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This paper assesses archaeology's contribution to debates regarding the ecological focus of early Buddhism and Hinduism and its relevance to global environmentalism. Evidence for long-term human:non-human entanglement, and the socioeconomically constructed element of 'nature' on which Indic culture supposedly rests, challenges post-colonial tropes of India's utopian, 'eco-friendly' past, whilst also highlighting the potency of individual human:non-human epistemologies for building historically grounded models of Indian environmentalism. For early Buddhism,I mediate between two polarized views: one promoting the idea of 'eco-dharma', as a reflection of Buddhism's alignment with non-violence (ahiṃsā), and the alleviation of suffering (dukkha); a second arguing that early Buddhist traditions have been misappropriated by western environmentalism. I argue that the latter view subscribes to canonical models of passive monks removed from worldly concerns, despite archaeological evidence for socially-engaged monastic landlordism from the late centuries BC. Others cite this evidence only to negate Buddhism's eco-credentials, thereby overlooking the human:non-human entanglement theme within modern environmental discourse, while the predominant focus on non-human suffering overlooks convergences between modern and ancient ecological ethics and environmental health. Case studies include examples of Buddhist land and water management in central India, set within discussions of human v. non-human-centric frameworks of well-being and suffering, purity and pollution, and broader Indic medico-ecological epistemologies, as possible models for collective responses to environmental stress.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Shaw

2016

World Archaeology

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“…The reasons for this are difficult to pin down. The centrality of the environment to human experience is known in scholarship on South Asia (Casile 2014;Jones 2007;Kingwell-Banham and Fuller 2012;Madella and Fuller 2006;Petrie and Bates 2017), but there are also various financial and bureaucratic constraints that affect scholars' capacity to retrieve and analyze relevant samples that would enable us to speak to this topic. Yet deeper than this, we suspect, lie the continued effects of a traditional and enduring conceptual divide between nature and society; as well as a more recent fear of environmental determinism in the study of humanities.…”

Section: Other Missing Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Back to basics: returning to the evidence and mapping knowledge in south Asian archaeology

Hawkes

Casile

2020

asian archaeol

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In this article we advocate a return to the consideration and examination of the basic building blocks of archaeological enquiry: the evidence. Reacting to a widely held perception that archaeology now understands various commonalities of human experience, we suggest that such concepts and the inevitable oscillation towards "big picture" approaches that stems from them are problematic. They engender a type of scholarship that does not always engage fully with the evidentiary bases of interpretation and that risks assuming a great deal about large parts of the world that have not been studied in as much detail as others. We explore this by looking at the South Asian context, where archaeologists are forced to contend with a number of constraints, chief among which is a relative absence of archaeological evidence. Focusing on one particular sub-region, we piece together exactly what evidence exists and consider what can (and cannot) be said from it. On one level this serves as a useful comparator for those working in other parts of the world who may not appreciate the evidentiary constraints that exist elsewhere. Yet beyond this and simple questions of analogy, we suggest that detailed consideration of an area such as the one presented here forces us to return to even more fundamental questions relating to when archaeological research becomes "interesting", "ground-breaking", and "new"; and who decides this.

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“…Although the wider manifestation of these patterns beyond the spatially restricted study area thus remains unknown, the resulting dataset is important for assessing text-driven theories regarding modes of interaction between monastic and lay populations, and offers useful parallels to similar, although more broadly dispersed patterns documented during the SSP [1][2][3]40,41 . In recent years, other similar projects focusing on historical socio-economic, agrarian and religious landscape dynamics have proliferated, from those dealing with Buddhist contexts 6,[42][43][44][45][46] , to those more aligned with later Hindu traditions [47][48][49] .…”

Section: Survey Archaeology In the Indian Subcontinentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A ‘Reflexive’ Multi-Stage Survey Methodology for Historical Landscape Research in Central India:Field-Walking, Local Knowledge, and Satellite Imagery as Archaeological Site Prospection and Mapping Tools in the Sanchi Survey Project

Shaw¹

2017

Current Science

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The present article evaluates the relative usefulness of systematic versus unsystematic field-walking, local knowledge frameworks and satellite imagery as archaeological prospection and mapping tools for the Sanchi Survey Project (SSP) in central India. While the satellite imagery proved helpful as a supplementary site prospection and mapping tool during later phases of the project, initial site identification was more effectively facilitated through ground-based explorations, and a 'reflexive' approach that included a sensitivity to local memory and the continued currency of archaeological sites in today's socio-ritual landscape. Set within discussions of the role of local traditions in 'reflexive' field methodologies, as well as broader public archaeology discourse, the article stresses the importance of local perceptions of place and history in the development of a regionally specific research design.

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Changing Religious Landscapes in Gupta Times: Archaeological Evidence from the Area of Baḍoh-Paṭhāri in Central India

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Religion, ‘nature’ and environmental ethics in ancient India: archaeologies of human:non-human suffering and well-being in early Buddhist and Hindu contexts

Back to basics: returning to the evidence and mapping knowledge in south Asian archaeology

A ‘Reflexive’ Multi-Stage Survey Methodology for Historical Landscape Research in Central India:Field-Walking, Local Knowledge, and Satellite Imagery as Archaeological Site Prospection and Mapping Tools in the Sanchi Survey Project

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