Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya

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Among the places of Hindu pilgrimage Gaya holds a pre-eminent position for reasons more than one. It is only in Gaya that last obseisance to the departed father and forefathers is traditionally paid to let their soul achieve salvation. It is Gaya again which has remained largely unchanged throughout history, thus becoming the focal point of the cultural unity and continuity of Indian: civilization.

The temples, the kunds, the holy trees, River Falgu, and the other sacred zones of Gaya have their own charming mythology and history attached to them. Equally exotic is the family history, lifestyles, and functions of the sacred priests (traditionally known as Pandas) without whom the pilgrimage to Gaya is unthinkable.

This study opens up the mythology, history, and the sacred geography of Gaya in its manifold dimensions. The community life of the Gayawals, the traditional priests, has also been analysed in the light of latest impact of modernism. A complete study of the sacred complex of Gaya in all its religious and sociological aspects, is a potent tool in the hands of social scientists, cultural anthropologists, and scholars of religion, mythology, and civilization.

Originally published in 1961, the book earned international recognization and it is being published with a long introduction updating the text by the author.

Lalita Prasad Vidyarthi, Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology. Ranchi University is an internationally known authority on Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Widely travelled around the world, he has been closely associated with several institutions and professional bodies in India and the world over. In addition to writing books, he supervises and conducts research projects.

Prof. Vidyarthi has presided over the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences since 1973.

Prof. Vidyarthi's books, The Tribal Culture of India, Rise of Anthropology in India & Kashi: A Microcosm of Indian Civilization and Trends in World Anthropology have been received very well in India and abroad.

DR. VIDYARTHI has done me a great honour by asking me to write a foreword to his book The Sacred Complex in Hindu Gaya-a study of the Gayawal of Bihar. Good wine does not need any brush and neither does Dr. Vidyarthi want me to give him a testimonial. As a distinguished pupil, and a loyal one, he has roped me in to show his courtesy, and I am indeed happy to be associated with his useful work, on a levitical sect which has had a spectacular past but today faces an anxious future. I had some acquaintance with an earlier manuscript of his, on his field assignment, for his M.A. Degree at Lucknow where Dr. Vidyarthi recorded the Culture of the dying Gayawal Community. In the present volume Dr. Vidyarthi has given an analytical study of the sacred complex that had motivated the survival of the Community in the past. The changing values and attitudes in popular Hinduism have made significant dents into the Cultural life of the Gayawal, their ritual status has declined, and the structural facades are showing signs of fissures which are widening into schisms likely to destroy the structure itself. In the present volume, Dr. Vidyarthi comes to grips with theoretical problems and has selected the part of Gaya, which incidentally shapes into the study of a traditional city, and of a traditional community and brings out the importance of Gaya as a pilgrim city with its sacred specialists, the Gayawal. The methodological orientation is the unique feature of Dr. Vidyarthi's contribution. The theoretical stand and the rich material on which Dr. Vidyarthi elaborates provide an excellent analytical study of a levitical sect that faces evil days.

In the context of the growing tourist traffic, the question of a professional order, alive to the needs of the tourist public with adequate education and training associated with our larger temples and sacred cities, has assumed significance. One feels unhappy, if not bitter, when one meets the temple priests and guides who sell our religion and mythology to the inquisitive tourists and pilgrims, for they are indeed a miserable lot, both physically and mentally. These render a dubious service to the visitors and pilgrims, and they are more pitied than likedy for most of them have been reduced to penury and social incompetence, and parade the temples and their precincts with the beggar's bowl. The proposed institution of a cadre of!! temple guides, for more informed service to the public and international tourists is so far so good and will certainly raise: the effectiveness of our foreign exchange approach, but it would! be pertinent to ask how far our temple and religious lore will be safe in the hands of the new initiates, and how far the values of our society will remain in tact when secularization is pushed to its logical end. The rehabilitation of the levitical commu- nities, particularly of those that cater to our religious education! in the centres of sacred contacts, requires a planned approach, and it would be a halfway measure to replace the traditional caterers of religion by a new order whose interests and orientation may be entirely secular.

Our temples and centres of religious pilgrimage are our heritage and give the configuration of India's personality. The' folk beliefs, rituals and learning that are associated with them are difficult to separate, or even indentify. The story is not merely in the scriptures and temple art and architecture, but, in the folkways and the mores which are inextricably woven into the "sacred complex" of the cities and temples. The levitical community which still survives, possesses this knowl- ledge, and even the illiterate among it have a deep interest and knowledge of the oral literature that provides the bench- mark data on the religious life of our people. It is necessary to recover this knowledge; to rediscover them from the memory of these people and from the palimpsest manuscripts that some families do still preserve. What is needed is not a sudden divorce from traditional practice, but a modus vivendi, which will secure the sacred lore and ritual practices on the one hand, and provide an orientation for the levitical community on the other, both of which will help in the rehabilitation of the latter, particularly those that already manifest signs of exhaustion and maladaptation.

It gives me an imniense pleasure to ackowledge the courtesy shown to my research's on Gaya by the academic world as, now, it enters the second edition. Though the book was of specialized nature, dealing with a Hindu place of pilgrimages, it attracted the attention of scholars of civilization and complex societies. They found this study useful in understanding the!! cultural roles of a traditional town in context with the complexity of Indian civilization. The descriptive terms and con- cepts used in this study were found rather useful by other researchers in this little explored field and their researches have, further established the wider applicability of the terms and concepts proposed in this book. Personally, it gives me a spiritual satisfaction that this work of mine inspired several researchers to take up contextual studies of our places of pilgrimages (tirtha). I hope that this effort will continue till the other centres of civilization in India and elsewhere are properly studied by social scientists, particularly cultural anthropologists so that their traditional roles as centres of integration and development may be faithfully recorded, before they fade away under the influence of modernism.

The Sacred Complex of Gaya, as described in this book on the basis of my field researches in 1951-56 remains rather unchanged. It has persisted through ages and will perhaps con- tinue to survive in the future as a great symbol of cultural unity and continuity in India. There are, however, some evidences of change, if one carefully scrutinizes the contemporary (1974), sacred geography, the sacred performances and style of life of the sacred specialists of Gaya.

During the last 20 years, the sacred zone of Gaya i.e. Andar Gaya, religiously termed as Gayaji, has put on a some- what modern look. It was not possible to enter the main arena of the Vishnupad temple and the locality of the religious complex by an automobile. The three-wheel rickshaws could go to some distance towards the temple. But now (1969) a fairly wide metalled road connects the secular Gaya (Chandchaura) with the gate of the main temple of Vishnupad.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages