India’s sacred geography is not a static entity but a continuously enacted system of relations, brought into being through the interplay of place, story, and movement. Diana Eck’s foundational study reveals a landscape where sacred presence is distributed through patterns of repetition, multiplication, and connection rather than concentrated at a single center.

From Center to Network

Banaras (Kāśī / Vārāṇasī) appears at first to conform to familiar models of sacred space — a single, supreme center where death grants liberation. Yet Eck shows that this structure dissolves upon closer examination. Multiple cities (Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Ujjain, Kanchipuram, Dwarka) are all described as “mokṣadāyaka” — givers of liberation. The landscape is organized not as a hierarchy radiating from one center but as a network of interconnected nodes.

The Logic of Repetition

Repetition emerges as a governing principle. The landscape is filled with clusters following numerical and symbolic patterns:

  • Seven sacred rivers — the seven Gaṅgās as a template recognized in multiple rivers
  • Twelve jyotirliṅgas — patterns through which Śiva’s presence is distributed and made accessible
  • Fifty-one Śakti Pīṭhas — sites where parts of Satī’s body fell, mapping feminine divine presence

These patterns are not meant to be exhaustive but express a principle by which multiple sites participate in the same sacred origin and function. Repetition is not redundancy; it is the means by which sacred presence avoids being confined to a single point.

The Imagined Landscape

The connections linking sites to one another are not physically visible like roads or rivers. They exist in the form of stories, ritual associations, and shared recognitions. A pilgrim encounters each site as part of a network already mapped in narrative and memory. This “imagined landscape” is sustained not by centralized authority but by the cumulative practices of those who traverse it.

Pilgrimage and Movement

Pilgrimage (tīrthayātrā) actualizes the sacred network. By moving through the landscape, the pilgrim performs the connections that constitute sacred geography. The act of traveling to a tīrtha (“crossing place”) is itself a ritual of transition — a movement from the profane to the sacred, from the periphery to the center, and from the multiplicity of ordinary life toward the unity of the divine.