294 Pages
by
Routledge
294 Pages
by
Routledge
294 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams, has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worshippers. Through their... Read more
Acknowledgements, Note on Transliteration, Chapter 1 - Living Fossils, Chapter 2 - Spiral Notebooks, Chapter 3 - Picked Up Pieces, Chapter 4 - A Mirror to Our Being, Chapter 5 - A Bridge to Everywhere, Chapter 6 - Turning to Stone, Chapter 7 - The River Road, Chapter 8 - Ashes and Immortality, Conclusion - Touch Stones,Primary Sources, Bibliography, Index.
Biography
Dr. Holly Walters is a cultural anthropologist (Wellesley College, Massachusetts) whose work focuses on sacred objects, ritual practices, pilgrimage, and mobility in South Asia. Her work also addresses the interpretation of fossils as texts and the challenges of religious revival online.
In Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, the author's careful treatment of the subject matter allows the reader to consider the lives of stone persons alongside our own and personhoods that derive from vast natural cycles beyond human control. To do so was no easy task, I'm sure, and the result is an important addition to interdisciplinary object studies.- Donna Yates, Journal of Material Religion, July 2021,
Walters' book represents almost a decade of in-depth study in India and Nepal in search of the meaning of shaligram worship. [...] Her meticulously researched book provides deep insight into the culture of these sacred fossils and of the age-old pilgrimage to Muktinath. Shaligram Pilgrimage is the most comprehensive study of the living fossils written to date.- Don Messerschmidt, Himal Southasian, July 2021
