Religion (1990) 20, 185-198

BOOK REVIEWS
Bardwell
Smith and Holly Baker Reynolds teds),
Essays 072 Six Asian Contexts. Leiden,
E. J. Brill,
guilders.

The City as a Sacred Center:

1987, pp. vii + 139. 50

This collection of essays is published in the series, International Studies in Sociology

and Social Anthropololly edited by K. Ishwaran, which over the past fifteen years has
regularly included volumes primarily by and of interest to scholars of Asian religions.
The issue under review here, volume 46 in the series, features essays by seven U.S.A.based scholars, most of the papers having originally been presented as part of a panel
at the American Academy of Religions 1982 annual meeting. As such, the collection
displays characteristics common to many publications
derived from conference proceedings: some overlapping focus in the individual
papers; rather limited evidence
that the contributors
have read each others work; and uneven quality. A general
noteworthy feature is the inclusion of helpful maps and plans. As is typical of such
collections, most readers will want to pick and choose what to read given their own
historical-geographical
interests. The editors solicited an introductory
essay from
Diana Eck that bears the same title as the book itself. I will return to Ecks introduction
after commenting on each of the other six more narrowly focused papers.
The essay by Holly Baker Reynolds on Madurai, south India, is the only one about
a Hindu sacred city, though Eck also draws on her extensive knowledge of Hindu
sacred geography in her introduction.
Reynolds sets out the features of both Sang-am
Madurai (early centuries C.E.) and medieval Madurai (mainly 15th-17th centuries,
culminating
in the reign of Tirumala
Nayak in the mid-17th century), showing
continuities and discontinuities
between the two periods understanding
of the city.
Never far from Reynoldss awareness is the modern city of Madurai which is clearly
contintious with the historical phenomena that are her primary focus. This essay is
one of the volumes best in overall quality and sophistication.
It could well be used
with advanced undergraduates,
especially in conjunction with the excellent two-part
documentary film on Madurai, Wedding of the Goddess, which is often shown in
undergraduate
courses on the Hindu tradition.
Four essays on Theravada Buddhist phenomena follow. Ananda Wickremeratne
writes about Shifting Metaphors of Sacrality at Anuradhapura.
Wickremeratne
argues that a sacred pre-Buddhist
Anuradhapura
was transformed into a Buddhist
sacred city .by importing new elements into the sacred complex (e.g. the Bodhi Tree)
and by imposing a new ideology and ritual programme upon it. The claims made
about pre-Buddhist
Anuridhapura
seem to me quite speculative. Wickremeratnes
description of the Buddhist city is overwhelmingly
based upon the Mahavaisa, an
important Sri Lankan monastic chronicle. In this case I wish that more use had been
made of available archaeological
evidence. Bardwell Smiths essay on Polonnaruva
could have been a fitting complement to Wickremeratnes,
picking up the Sinhalese
Buddhist understanding
of sacred cities where Wickremeratne
left off. Smith, however, has agendas other than the analysis of sacred locality as it is understood by the
other contributors to this volume. His paper is not really about a city at all but rather
discusses problems posed by pluralism
for Sinhalese political and cultural unity
0048-721X/90/020185

+ 14$0200/O

0 1990 Academic Press Limited

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Book Review

during the Polonnaruva period. Smiths essay will doubtless be of interest to scholars
of medieval Sri Lanka (it assumes considerable prior knowledge of the period), but
I found it curiously out of place in this collection.
Michael Aung-Thwin
writes about exemplary pre-colonial sacred capitals in Burma.
He shows how the Burmese capital was designed simultaneously
to be a microcosm
of the Tavatinisa heaven, a microcosm of the rightly ordered earthly kingdom, and
a model for the organization
of the Burmese pantheon of Nats. Here one readily
detects powerful notions of interlocking
levels mirroring
each other, homologies
between levels and their ritual manipulation,
and the sacred citys importance in the
quest for harmony in a complex, hierarchically
conceived universe. Aung-Thwins
paper, however, is about ideals, and one gains little sense of the extent to which these
norms were actually realized. The Northern
Thai Center by Donald Swearer,
though brief, is more successful at integrating ideal and empirical evidence while also
exhibiting an awareness of the theoretical issues in analysing sacred cities. Swearer
demonstrates how in northern Thailand sacred cities (his focus is not on one single
place) are related to cosmogony, cosmology, and sacred histories, and how as a group
they define a sacred geography that structures pilgrimage in the region.
The final essay by Jeffrey Meyer very ably discusses the cosmically oriented design
and rituals of traditional
Peking. Perhaps because he is dealing with data that differ
significantly
from the South and Southeast Asian phenomena
under discussion
elsewhere in the volume, Meyer is more concerned with comparative matters than
are the other contributors,
Ecks introduction
excepted. Meyer suggests three types
of sacred city, a morphology
which if more fully developed might prove useful in
future research. These are: the cosmic city (where he locates Peking), the city of local
sacrality (e.g. Banaras, Jerusalem, Mecca), and the city of the saints (e.g. Calvins
Geneva, early Mormon Salt Lake City).
In her introduction
Eck does not summarize the essays that follow but engages
ideas in them, interweaving
material from her own work, mainly on Bar&as. She
concludes with an intriguing
suggestion about the tendency of the monotheistic
traditions to have unitary sacred foci (she mentions Mecca and Jerusalem; one also
thinks of Rome), while Indian Asia has developed multiple centres of sacrality, the
most powerful of which (e.g. Banaras) become exemplars for duplication elsewhere.
I have emphasized Meyers and Ecks comparative ideas, for thoughtful comparison
enriches research on sacred cities. The editors of this volume mention that they
unsuccessfully sought to include essays on a north Indian city and on NaralKyoto.
Even more useful, I think, would have been essays on the great sacred cities of
western Asia, e.g. Jerusalem and Mecca. In the contemporary
world the sacred city
is interesting because so many of us are surrounded by non-sacred megalopolises (e.g.
Los Angeles, Bombay, Mexico City) or by capitals that celebrate the civic religions
of national heritages (e.g. Paris, Washington,
Delhi). The further we extend the
comparative agenda the better the grasp we will probably get on the traditional
sacred city. The essays in this collection are competent and valuable contributions
to be sure, but set in a larger framework of inquiry on sacred and non-sacred locality
such specific studies become more valuable still.
GLENN YOCUM
Whittier College