PILGRIMAGE

The practice of journeying to locations of special significance is a common feature of many religious traditions and it has played a formative role in the history of Buddhism. Given this rich pilgrimage tradition, there are several ways to approach the subject of pilgrimage in Buddhism. These range from analytical perspectives that highlight the distinctive histories and social dynamics of individual pilgrimage sites in the diversity of cultures shaped by Buddhism, to perspectives reflecting a broader comparative framework. These latter approaches emphasize features common to a number of Buddhist pilgrimages, and to religious pilgrimage in general. This entry examines Buddhist pilgrimage from several angles and is organized in three sections: historical overview, pilgrimage practices, and contemporary perspectives.

Historical overview

We cannot say with assurance when pilgrimage first became a part of Buddhist tradition. However, the fact that the canonical collections of several early Buddhist schools include a s?tra in which Gautama Buddha himself exhorts his followers to visit sites associated with his life indicates the centrality that pilgrimage came to have in the early centuries of the Buddhist movement. This passage occurs in the Mah?parinirv??a-s?tra, which narrates the Buddha's last days before his final passing away. In the P?li version, four places identified with pivotal events in his life (birth, enlightenment, first teaching, and final passing away) are described as worthy of being seen and productive of strong religious feeling, and the passage concludes by promising that anyone who dies while undertaking such a journey with serene joy will be reborn in a blissful heavenly realm.

The earliest archeological evidence of Buddhist pilgrimage comes from inscriptions commissioned by the Indian emperor A?oka in the third century b.c.e. There are also later textual traditions that give A?oka a formative role in the creation of a Buddhist sacred geography through the enshrinement of Gautama Buddha's relics in eighty-four thousand relic monuments throughout his empire. According to the Rumminde? pillar edict in Nepal, A?oka visited the site of the Buddha's birth and erected a commemorative pillar there. Another inscription may refer to A?oka's pilgrimage to the site of the Buddha's enlightenment at Bodh Gay?, and a third, located at Nig?l? S?gar in Nepal, tells of A?oka's visit to and enlargement of the relic monument of the former Buddha Ko??gamana, suggesting that a devotional cult centered on the lives of previous buddhas had also emerged at this time.

The history of Buddhist pilgrimage becomes clearer during the ?u?ga period (second to first centuries b.c.e.) with the relic monuments at Bh?rhut and S?Ñc?, where we also find extensive donative inscriptions. These remains suggest the existence of well-developed regional pilgrimage centers supported by a wide range of donors, including lay and monastic men and women. Significantly, neither Bh?rhut nor S?ñc? is identified with the presence of Gautama Buddha during his lifetime. Instead, the sites have been rendered religiously powerful through the enshrinement of relics, and through vivid artistic representations of scenes from the Buddha's biography, including his past lives.

The sites attested in the A?okan inscriptions and in the ?u?ga-era monuments point to the two primary means through which particular locations became the focus of special religious devotion: claims that the Buddha himself visited them during his lifetime and later enshrinements of physical objects that represent him, either through alleged historical continuity (bodily remains or objects he used) or visual evocation (sculptures and paintings). These were not mutually exclusive options, as many sites were associated with events in the Buddha's life and with later relic and

image enshrinements; some were associated with the presence of previous buddhas, as well. As many scholars have noted, there was a close relationship between the development of a comprehensive Buddha biography, which was not a part of the earliest tradition, and the emergence of pilgrimage sites.

Buddhism was first transmitted into China around the beginning of the common era. Beginning around 400 c.e., we find the earliest surviving accounts of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India. These testify to the emergence of major pilgrimage routes, extending through Central Asia and northwest India into the Ganges basin, which attracted pilgrims from distant lands. Among the most prominent of these monkpilgrims were Faxian (ca. 337–418) and Xuanzang (ca. 600–664), each of whom traveled to India through Central Asia and spent many years collecting texts and visiting important religious centers throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Faxian's account testifies to the great proliferation of places that had come to be associated with events in Gautama Buddha's life, particularly those of a miraculous character, and to the number of relic monuments attributed to A?oka's great relic distribution.

Faxian also spent two years in Sri Lanka, and he mentions the tradition that Gautama Buddha visited the island in order to pacify the n?gas residing there, a tradition narrated in detail in the monastic histories of the island (e.g., D?pava?sa, Mah?va?sa). On one of his sojourns, the Buddha is said to have visited and consecrated a number of different locations around the island and these form the nucleus of what was eventually defined as an authoritative list of sixteen Sri Lankan pilgrimage sites. Narrative traditions of a similar character later developed in Southeast Asia, linking the movement and enshrinement of relics and images with locations in the region already sacralized by legendary visits of Gautama Buddha.

As Buddhist traditions spread throughout Asia and became institutionalized through royal patronage and popular support, the network of Buddhist pilgrimage expanded in two senses. On the one hand, monks and nuns throughout the Buddhist world traveled back to the Buddhist heartland for access to texts, to places of religious power associated with buddhas and other powerful religious figures, and to centers of Buddhist learning (thus a centripetal force). An analogous, centrifugal movement drew Buddhist relics and images (and in some cases, Gautama Buddha himself, as recounted in later texts) outward to create new centers of pilgrimage in what had been the territorial margins of Buddhist tradition. In many cases these new devotional centers were established in places long regarded as religiously powerful because of the presence of local or regional deities, places often marked by striking natural features such as mountains, lakes, and caves. Typically, these "pre-Buddhist" beings were not simply replaced, but instead subdued and converted into guardians of Buddhist sacralia. Such centers of pilgrimage undoubtedly brought together devotees with diverse religious identities and forms of practice, thus facilitating the integration of Buddhist ideas and practices into broader religious milieux.

The fluidity of interaction that pilgrimage so effectively orchestrates has contributed greatly to the expansion and adaptation of Buddhist traditions outside the land of its origins. Buddhist pilgrimages are generally voluntary undertakings motivated by a range of individual concerns, including the acquisition of merit, the need for purification and expiation, and hopes for healing, increased prosperity, fertility, and so on. They also commonly bring together people from diverse social and religious groups. As a result, they have frequently encouraged the interplay of different symbolic systems and behaviors, thus facilitating the adaptation of Buddhist traditions to new historical circumstances. In the case of Chinese pilgrimage sites, for example, it is difficult to determine what defines a "Buddhist" pilgrimage, since popular beliefs and practices were drawn from Daoism and Confucianism, as well as Buddhism, and these seemingly exclusive religious designations are meaningful only when referring to professional elites. Thus these sites have commonly enabled a multivocality of meanings and a diversity of practices to flourish side by side with varying degrees of integration.

Pilgrimage practices

Certainly the most salient feature of pilgrimage is movement. A minimal definition of pilgrimage is a journey to a place of special religious significance, and movement here means the movement of individual bodies away from the places where they typically reside and toward a center of intensified religious power. A pilgrimage is usually an exceptional undertaking, often involving significant disruption of the pilgrim's ordinary life and frequently entailing some element of physical discomfort or ordeal. Among the more striking examples are the protracted journeys of the early Chinese pilgrims to India; Faxian was away for fifteen years, Xuanzang for sixteen. The degree of difficulty and danger faced by the pilgrim obviously varies widely; in addition, specific Buddhist pilgrimage sites have been more or less accessible at different historical periods. The availability of cars, buses, and planes has clearly transformed the pilgrimage experience for many modern participants.

As was the case for the early Chinese pilgrims, the goal of the journey was often not a single site of religious significance, but rather the completion of a pilgrimage route punctuated with a succession of sites, each with its distinctive associations. Japanese Buddhist pilgrimages, such as those to Shikoku and Saikoku, typically involve the clockwise completion of an extensive pilgrimage circuit; these reflect the common Buddhist practice of circumambulation (Sanskrit, pradak?i?a) in which one ritually honors a person or object of religious authority by circling them clockwise, thus keeping the right side of the body facing them. Circumambulation of sacred mountains is a prominent feature of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage, with some pilgrims going so far as to complete an entire circuit, sometimes hundred of miles long, with a succession of full-body prostrations.

Other forms of ritualized devotion include various forms of offering, such as flowers, incense, light in the form of candles or lamps, gold leaf, and so on, as well as the recitation of appropriate chants or mantras. Offering rituals are often not limited to the Buddhist figures represented at Buddhist shrines; as noted above, other supernatural beings and forces are commonly believed to reside in pilgrimage sites and these are also venerated, sometimes in fulfillment of a special vow to honor the deity in return for a specified benefit. Finally, a broad range of Buddhist figures are deemed worthy of veneration by pilgrims, including buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats. In some Chinese Chan Buddhist communities, the miraculously mummified bodies of deceased teachers became the object of pilgrimage.

One of the fundamental organizing principles of pilgrimage is the contrast between the heightened power and purity of the pilgrimage site and the space around it, and this is reflected in special modes of bodily

deportment. Many pilgrims wear special clothing that clearly distinguishes them from non-pilgrims. The hierarchical classification of the body according to standards of purity, with right favored over left and higher over lower (head/feet), structures much devotional behavior, such as circumambulation and offering rituals. Social hierarchy is present, as well, in the authority exercised by experienced pilgrims over novices, and by local officiants and guides who mold the behavior of the visiting devotees. Hierarchies of purity and sacrality are also commonly reflected in the spatial and architectural organization of pilgrimage centers; this may explain why mountains and other elevated locations are so frequently the "natural" settings for pilgrimage. Pilgrimage traditions in some cases also define time, as well, by their connections with calendars of religious observance. Many Tibetan pilgrimages operate on a twelve-year cycle, while visits to a number of Sri Lankan pilgrimage sites are organized around a calendar of full-moon-day observances.

Contemporary perspectives

Considerable scholarship has been devoted to pilgrimage, much of it focused on Christianity. Victor Turner's theory of pilgrimage as a "liminoid phenomenon" has been the most influential general theory of pilgrimage. Turner asserts that pilgrimage places its participants in an ambiguous social status that frees them from some of the dominant social structures of their regular lives and enables particular kinds of personal transformation to occur. In part this transformation takes the form of a heightened group identification among people who would normally be socially distinguished. The "betwixt and between" character of pilgrims' social status also renders them more emotionally vulnerable to the powerful symbolic systems that dominate pilgrimage sites, a vulnerability often heightened by physical ordeal. This model, which knits together social and psychological factors, and which attempts to take into account both the cognitive and affective dimensions of pilgrim's experiences, is sufficiently flexible to illuminate many specific pilgrimages from various religious traditions. As many scholars have noted, however, this approach also emphasizes the commonality of pilgrims' experience, and may mask the divisive social and political forces that often constellate around pilgrimage centers.

In Sri Lanka, for example, Buddhist pilgrimage tradition played an important role in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Buddhist revival in response to British colonial rule; it has also heightened conflict between Sinhalas and Tamils. In Tibet, the pilgrimage tradition centered on Mount Kail??a (Kailash), which identifies it as Mount Meru and ?iva's abode, has long drawn pilgrims from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions who venerate it with circumambulation. In the wake of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, however, pilgrimage was prohibited for nearly two decades beginning in 1962; since the early 1990s restrictions have been relaxed somewhat, and increasing numbers of Western practitioners of Buddhism are making this arduous pilgrimage to the "center of the world" as new Buddhist communities are established in Europe and North America.

See also:Merit and Merit-Making; Relics and Relics Cults; Space, Sacred

Bibliography

Coleman, Simon, and Elsner, John. Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

McKay, Alex, ed. Pilgrimage in Tibet. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1998.

Morinis, Alan, ed. Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Naquin, Susan, and Yü, Chün-fang, eds. Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Nissan, Elizabeth. "Polity and Pilgrimage Centres in Sri Lanka." Man (New Series) 23, no. 2 (1988): 253–274.

Reader, Ian, and Swanson, Paul L., eds. "Pilgrimage in Japan." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24, nos. 3–4 (1997): 225–452.

Turner, Victor, and Turner, Edith. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

Kevin Trainor