The Origin and Expansion of Hindu Traditions of Salvific Space

Prof. Dr. Knut Axel Jacobsen/University of Bergen, Norway

The concept “salvific space” points to a feature of Hindu pilgrimage sites, that they are promoted as, and often believed to be places that are able to grant salvational rewards to persons who visit them. The ability to grant salvific rewards might be thought to be a property of space as such, but in the South Asian religious traditions, this concept of salvific space often signifies institutionalized space with rituals of place and priests in charge of the rituals. How did the Brāhmaṇical institution of salvific space originate? And how did it spread? In the book Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge, 2013), I argue that the early Hinduization of salvific space probably took place in interaction with Buddhist pilgrimage traditions, and the subsequent expansion of salvific space is connected to processes of Hinduization and feudalization. One of the changes that took place in Brāhmaṇical tradition was a transformation of the understanding of the relationship between divinities and space and gradually the placelessness of the Vedic gods was replaced by statues and temples which represented a living presence of particular gods and goddesses at particular places. Instead of gods travelling to the sites in which humans organized rituals, humans now travelled to places where divine and salvific power had a permanent presence. The efforts by some Brāhmaṇa priests to promote these new conceptions of divinity and space probably provoked opposition from other Brāhmaṇas who did not support these non-Vedic conceptions. Once institutionalized as a Brāhmaṇical practice, it became an important element in the subsequent processes of Hinduization and feudalization.