Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas [Hardcover]

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 lives, movements, and materiality, Shaligrams then reveal fascinating new dimensions of religious practice, pilgrimage, and politics. But as social, environmental, and national conflicts in the politically-contentious region of Mustang continue to escalate, the geologic, mythic, and religious movements of Shaligrams have come to act as parallels to the mobility of people through both space and time. Shaligram mobility therefore traverses through multiple social worlds, multiple religions, and multiple nations revealing Shaligram practitioners as a distinct, alternative, community struggling for a place in a world on the edge.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.The Shaligram phenomenon reveals how sacred objects can connect diverse peoples while reflecting patterns of migration and community formation in contested spaces.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 Religionl3e