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The Narmada valley is a peculiar region. Enclosed on its entire length by mountain ranges, the river valley forms a separate
geographical and cultural unit. The valley itself shows a continuation of human settlement from the beginning of the stoneage up to present times. People have given birth to the sacred character of the Valley through the ages.
The divine character of the Narmada has been narrated in the Epics, the Puranas and the later literary works. The concept
of Narmada as a mother deity spawns mythology, oral history, art, music, architecture, history, spirituality, rituals, and
traditions in the Narmada valley. Each of them has a clear identity, style and spirit.
Pilgrimage is an ancient practice, common to many religions. Narmada is considered one of the seven sacred rivers in India
where traditional act of pilgrimage exists and the only river in India to merit a parikrama (circumambulation). The devotees
perform parikrama of the entire length (around 2624 Kilometers) of the river.
Parikramavasis believe traversing the two banks of Narmada; they will pass through innumerable tirthas, each granting
families and the absence of discrimination towards every caste and creed towards Parikramavasis is unique to the Narmada
valley.
The river banks of the Narmada have been hallowed by several saints; great institutions of spiritual research and teaching
were built. The historic facts and information tells us about the locations of major tirthas. Innumerable ghats built on the
two banks of the river perform unlimited rituals. Fairs and festivals concentrated on the divine character of the river
conducted all the year round are countless.
Today the sustainable development like dam constructions represented by the relics representing them has been lost by
submersion in the dams. It has altered the traditional route because of which parikramavasis have to walk more than 300
kilometers, as by the rule they cannot cross the Narmada during parikrama.
The thesis will focus on Tripuri (Bhedaghat) which is one of the tirtha of major importance with unique natural setting in
the Narmada valley. Detailed description of all the tirthas is beyond the scope of present work. The thesis will also focuses
at the understanding of the Narmada Parikrama. Further it intends to establish Bhedaghat as a sacred landscape within the
landscape of the Narmada Parikrama and to establish the significance of Bhedaghat. Developments have caused
degradation of natural and cultural resources. Due to urbanization secular have taken over, protection and management
of sacred landscape of Bhedaghat have become a challenge.
Thesis is more inclined towards being an anthropological and social one. It involved less quantitative data while stressing
more on qualitative data. The ethnographic and phenomenological approach is taken for this research. The ethnographic
landscape of pilgrimage route. The phenomenological approach tries to
understand how the other person views the world. (In my topic, how the person views the river)
Written Data This mainly includes the references drawn about the content from already existing documents. It is the
secondary data collected on our study and used as reference for our post research work.
Direct Observation Going to the place of observation and staying there in a different culture and context, helped in getting
the general feel of the environment. All the non-verbal cues were observed and taken note of. |
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