Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

centuries of changing practices where people have spun
different webs of significance. Spinning these webs is
like building temples – they exist for a long time – but
all practices are continuously modified and
reconstructed. The “continuity” of practices creates
traditions, and once traditions are made they continue to
exist and cannot dissolve easily except through active
de-construction by spiritually authorised people. The
monumental manifestations of divinities are partly
reflected in the rich mythology that defines and glorifies
spatial constructions such as temples, shrines, and idols.
Myths are materialised and particularly locations are
divine revelations; myths and matters constitute each
other, or in other words, the materiality possesses
immanent and spiritual qualities: divine revelations take
material forms.
Heritage is therefore not just a matter of securing and
preserving the material construction of a temple.
Without a spiritual protection or spiritual preservation,
the physical conservation is at best useless, at worst
desecrating. In Western countries preservation and
conservation of monuments are essentially antiintellectual
(Biddle 1994:9), unless the management
process and conservation are not seen as an end in itself
but merely as a means to other ends (Oxley 1999:143).
In living traditions the conservation and preservation of
tradition consist of both the material and the spiritual
dimensions. The religious and cultural functions of a
monument – the ideological sphere in a wide sense – are
the rationale for creating continuity from the past
through the present into the future through the
maintenance of the material. Without the spiritual
dimension the physical reconstruction is merely an
empty shell. This is partly the case at Pashupatinath
nowadays. The largest phallus or linga at the
Pashupatinath area is the Tulo Mahadev linga. For
decades or perhaps even longer it has been destroyed,
and it has been tilted and it is almost lying on the
ground. According to a myth, before the linga was made
there was a well at this spot, and in the mirage of the
water one could see one’s next incarnation. The king
came one day and saw a black pig in the reflection of the
water, and he became so furious that he closed the well
by filling it with sand. The linga was constructed
afterwards, but later destroyed, and very few worshipped
Tulo Mahadev. Before Shivaratri 2003, the linga was
“restored”, but only by making the area around
presentable. The linga itself was not raised and it was
still laying tilted on the ground, and as before, very few
devotees made offerings at the Shiva image. Physical
restoration does not make sense if it is not a part of a
coherent, spiritual world.
Conservation of living traditions is a difficult task since
every tradition is changing. Urban archaeology aims to
bridge present and past by constructing multiple
ethnographies of places (Mayne & Murray 2001), and
archaeologists help to reconstruct the physical
characteristics within such a contextual web of historical
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data (Derry 2000:28). Urban archaeology approaches its
subject through the concept of landscape, and it has
moved beyond the traditional incremental focus on
excavation unit-house-community to the space between
these units because technical, social, and ideological
meanings are constructed and shared within these
spaces. The same landscape is used in different ways by
various actors and represents a contested space (Zierden
2000:94). Landscape includes “all of the natural and
cultural features that exist both inside and outside human
settlement” (Orser 1996:368). Life in a city is not static
but a dynamic process, and therefore, urban archaeology
is a very productive and informative form and empirical
foundation of spatial social science (Schofield 1987:6):
“Any building is a physical realisation of its creator’s –
and its creator’s successors’ – resources and
intentions…Any building also embodies or reflects the
constraints, values and aspirations – social, economic,
political and cultural – of the age and the society in
which it was produced or altered” (Stell 1999:60).
Consequently, standing buildings represent and
constitute an important source of historical and
archaeological evidence, which “has both an
independent and a contributory value, complementing
and corroborating, or indeed sometimes contradicting
and confusing, other sources of evidence” (ibid).
An even more important structuring feature is the water
worlds, and in particular the rivers, which constitute a
longue durée creating and structuring living traditions.
Webs of significance are constantly spun around the
water worlds, which define the physical surroundings in
which sacred and profane architecture are constructed.
For instance the Indus civilisation was a townscape
within a water cosmology. According to Gordon Childe,
the Indus civilisation “represents a very perfect
adjustment of human life to a specific environment, that
can only have resulted from years of patient effort. And,
it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms
the basis of modern Indian culture. In architecture and
industry, still more in dress and religion, Mohenjodaro
reveals features that have always been characteristic of
historical India” (Childe 1952:183-184). This statement
is perhaps too conclusive, but regarding the waterworlds
I will agree. Changes in the river courses of the
Indus and Hakra river systems had profoundly
influenced the settlement pattern and the cultural
changes (Mughal 1992). Stability in the water
environment creates cosmologies, not due to
environmental determinism, but because myths and
traditions materialise in due course of time. The lifegiving
processes, which are the underlying strata for the
performance of penance, are efficaciously expressed in
materialised myths which also constitute social realities
by defining and creating spatial hierarchies. Religion
does not work above or beyond the actual life of people
but it works in accordance with the life-world and actual,
daily problems as they are experienced by the devotees.