Mythical Space, Cosmology and Landscape: Towards a Cultural Geography of India

This book is a collection of essays unravelling the mystery of glorious Indianness embedded in the landscape. The focus of some of the essays is on metaphors, images and symbols that emobody ideas and feelings in the landscape. The symbols transform the landscape into a signifying system. Out of the plurality of cultures that characterise India, the essays are devoted to a few important themes. Although, they define fundamental problems of cultural geography of India in small regions yet they have wider implications. Each chapter deals with a specific theme such as the Hindu worldview, the symbolism of a Hindu religious landscape, the meanings of erotic sculptures on the temple walls, the impress of Hindu cosmology on built environment, the dichotomy of built environment of medieval Hindu cities and the cultural landscape of Muslim Mewat. Besides landscape, a couple of essays are devoted to some other aspects of cultural geography of India such as marital migration in the rural social milieu of North Indian and gotra exogamy but caste endogamy and the sites of cultural contestations in the novels of Mohar Singh Yadav. These essays may be read as tales of how the authors have comprehended some aspects of the cultural geography of India. This book will be of some help to scholars engaged in comprehending the complexities of Indian cultural landscape.