Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Control the Divine: Integrating Sacred Spaces and Rituals at the ‘Fringes’ (Ancient Central and South Asia)
Content:
Some lands are bound to become cultural crossroads. Ancient Central and South Asia have been the setting for the meeting of different cultures through the ages and, in consequence, represents a very interesting case of study for diachronically analysing religious integration and re-integration. These locations have often been relegated to fringes in scholar discussions, and this session aims to flip the approach by giving prominence to these lands.
Central and South Asia knew several important nodes of (global) interactions between the East and the West in Antiquity, either as part of the Hellenistic world or wider trade networks of the so-called Early Silk Roads. The interactions between multiple cultural groups were often categorised using simple acculturation models, but nuanced approaches to religious interplay are necessary to fully apprehend the ways in which cultural impact was felt in different communities at varying degrees.
The contact between locals and newcomers -either transient or permanent- always prompted a two-way interaction between their respective belief systems. The situation necessarily entailed challenges and generated answers in both communities. The effects could be perceived at different levels, from purely pragmatic to deep religious transformations: mutual influences ensured that their religious practices no longer remained the same.
Topics suggested within the frame of Ancient Central and South Asia for this session include, but not exclusively:
• Establishment of new sacred spaces in multicultural contexts.
• Religious adaptation at the fringes: challenges and solutions.
• Peripheral religiosity as seen from the centre.
• Comparison of religious rituals between the centre and periphery.
• Introduction of new rituals, ceremonies and convivial practices.
• Religious coexistence: delimitation, interaction, exclusion.
• Archaeological evidence for religious interaction: transference of motifs and iconography, adoption and resignification of ritual objects, etc.
• Archaeological evidence for religious conflicts.
• Religious syncretism: scholar myth or reality?
Keywords:
Rituals, Sacred Spaces, Multiculturalism, Religion Studies, Central Asia, South Asia
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Marc Mendoza Sanahuja (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Ashwini Lakshminarayanan (India) 2
Affiliations:
1. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2. Sapienza Università di Roma
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