The challenges of representing Shiva: image, place, and divine form in the Himalayan Hindu shrine of Kedarnath
Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical environment of the shrine is represented. Analysis of printed depictio...
| Published in: | Material religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2012]
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2012, Volume: 8, Issue: 2, Pages: 215-241 |
| Further subjects: | B
Kedarnath
B Shaivism B Uttarakhand B Visual Culture B Hinduism B Shiva B Place B South Asia |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical environment of the shrine is represented. Analysis of printed depictions of Kedarnath helps to understand this fluidity. Yet these images tell a complicated story. In doing justice to the numerous ways in which Shiva is understood to be present in Kedarnath, print images of Kedarnath navigate a complicated set of representational challenges. They solve these challenges through particular usages of photographic and painted montage, composite composition, and overpainting (painting over a photographic image). A careful examination of popular depictions of Kedarnath shows how the everyday, historic, and symbolic realities of the site are in a certain tension with the existing technical and aesthetic parameters available for creating what Martin Gaenszle and Jörg Gengnagel have called "cultural representation of space." In addition to the formal characteristics of the images and their contingent receptions and functions, this tension can itself be read as an important ethnographic datum that illuminates the distinctive, and distinctively contingent, nature of the site. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2752/175183412X13346797481113 |