Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

This of course raises epistemological problems in an
archaeology of religions. Firstly, all religions change
through time, and there is no religion that is “finished”
and developed once and for all. Secondly, in the
archaeological record religions are found as material
traces of rituals, practices, and lived lives. “Humans live
in a world of material objects they themselves have
produced, in a world of institutional rules and
regulations they have created, and in a world of
symbolic meanings they have constructed” (Haaland,
Haaland & Dea 2004:75). Although rituals are
intentional and motivational actions based on prescribed
religious knowledge and beliefs, the materialisation of
these practices, intentions, and faiths are not easy to
reconstruct. Thirdly, there is no direct correlation
between a religion’s thoughts and beliefs, and material
culture. Although a stupa might easily be identified, it is
more difficult to categorise it is a Buddhist or Jain stupa.
Moreover, as seen in Muktinath, Hindus and Buddhists
may use the same shrines, and in Bangladesh Muslims
may worship Kali and Ganga. Therefore, even if one
labels certain monuments as “Hindu” or “Buddhist”,
neither the terms nor the temples and shrines are
necessarily exclusive for one religion only. Fourthly,
since all religions develop and many of today’s world
religions share both ritual and theological similarities, it
is often difficult to say how these religions are
materialised at a certain point in history. There are also
various religious paths and traditions which have not
developed into world religions, but they were important
in their time. The latter religions are only possible to
trace through the archaeological record. Fifthly, one may
assume that, on the one hand, there has been a constant
inter-exchange of ideas and practices between the
religions, and on the other hand, because of this
bricolage, (minor) theological and eschatological
differences may have triggered differentiations between
the religions, which are not necessarily manifested in the
archaeological record. Sixthly, to complicate the matter
even further, there is a disjunction between notions of
religious space in sacred texts and the practical
constructions and uses of sacred geography in daily life.
While the landscape of the high culture or religion made
monumental structures such as temples and later
mosques in Islam, much of what was important in the
folk tradition – local goddesses, trees, sacred water,
village shrines, etc – was not textually imaged (Lahiri
1995). This is also evident in the scared topography as
discussed in Bangladesh in part 2. Finally, the
development of a religion is also, seen from the point of
view of knowledge production, a matter of regularity,
distribution, and institutionalisation of truth. Hence,
there is often a difference between the Great and Little
Traditions or the High and Low Religions. World
religions have a corpus of written, sacred texts, and there
is a contradiction or tension between “the written
tradition of the ascetic religion and the everyday social
practice of merit-making combined with the rites of the
“magico-animist”, the spirit cults” (Goody 1986:25). In
some cases the priests are the only category of persons
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able to read, and for a major part of Indian history
literacy was restricted to Brahman priests (and Buddhist
monks), which created a division between literateilliterate
corresponding to the difference between priest
and laity (ibid:17).
How is it then possible to approach world religions
archaeologically? The first obvious answer is that
archaeology provides a unique opportunity to study
religion as it has been practiced by people and not only
as theological explanations or speculations. This
approach can be defined as microarchaeology, which
aims to focus on executed practice or how actions were
actually performed in the past (Cornell & Fahlander
2002, Fahlander 2003). An archaeological approach may
reveal a different picture than a textual study. Since
religions are in a constant process of change where the
various feedback mechanisms influence each other, I
will focus on (1) the historical, religious development at
Pashupatinath, and (2) the second half of the first
millennium BCE where Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism,
and Buddhism were in the “mould”, so to speak. Not
only was the latter period special on the Indian subcontinent,
but at the same time the Greek civilisation
developed in the West. There were exchanges of ideas,
goods, and people between the East and the West, which
culminated in, as seen from the West, Alexander the
Great’s conquest. The picture differs when these
processes are analysed from the East, and in the middle
of both the development of the world religions, the wars
and conquests between East and West, is Taxila, a
cosmopolitan town in its time. Therefore, this
archaeological part ends with a discussion of Taxila (in
chapter 17) as an approach to the development of the
world religions and mutual exchange and
interdependency between the East and West.
Since religions are not “finished” but in a process of
consolidation and development, it does not make sense
to search for the origin of either of them but rather
stressing the bricolage and inter-exchange of ideas and
practices. Thus, I will focus on certain topics, namely the
use of water and fire regarding purity and pollution,
reincarnation and caste, and death rituals. I will start in
Nepal and Pashupatinath where I aim to date particular
practices in a religious tradition. Then I will turn to both
textual and archaeological traces for the development of
reincarnation and contact between India and Greece in
chapter 15. In chapter 16 I will continue this journey by
introducing Zoroastrianism and its development, both
regarding the prehistoric Persians and the contemporary
Parsees. It seems that Zoroastrianism and Brahmanism
have the same origin, and the parallel development of
the religions reveals how and why traditions evolve, and
it illuminates how it is possible to trace world religions
in the archaeological record. Finally, all these threads
and processes will be woven together in a discussion of
the archaeological material at Taxila, with a reference to
Mohenjo-daro. But first, the excursion starts from
today’s Pashupatinath.