Sitings and Sightings
Sitings and Sightings
Hanuman in the Cultural Landscape
The chapter opens with a description of Hanuman's traditional role as a guardian of spatial boundaries, and shows how this “peripheral” status has changed in recent times as his shrines have grown in size and have appeared in diverse and often central locations in villages and cities. Drawing on temple surveys and recently published guides to Hanuman shrines, it offers a verbal pilgrimage to well-known temples throughout India, and then presents more detailed descriptions of five major sites, each suggestive of a different aspect of Hanuman's character. The sites include two prominent temples in Delhi, a healing shrine specializing in the treatment of possession by ghosts, a martial arts club devoted to wrestling, and a New Age temple in the American Southwest. The chapter then turns to the implications of Hanuman's bodily immortality: the lore and experience of his embodied presence in particular locales and forms, as well as his occasional manifestation in human avataras.
Keywords: avatara, ghosts, Hindu temples, healing, icons, immortality, martial arts, New Age spirituality, pilgrimage, possession
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