Bhojonkhettro Puri - An Anthropological venture.pdf

2020

This paper attempts to understand the importance, situations and context in food consumption focusing on the rituals and traditions. Odisha, a state in the eastern part of India, being famous for fair and festivals shows a variety of food items that are associated to various rituals either religious or secular. The ritual foods are mainly made from the ingredients that are locally available or most popular in Odisha. Deep understanding of the ritual foods of Odisha can show its continuity with the past and reflect cultural ideas about eating for good health, nutrition and many more. This traditional food items and its making procedures are vanishing or modernizing due to introduction of new food items, ingredients and Western food. Hence the present study has tried to document and describe various type of ritual food in Eastern Odisha, the ingredients used and the way of preparation.

Dane Munro, Noel Buttigieg, and Daniel H. Olsen (eds.) Food and the Pilgrim: Nourishment for Pilgrims and Faith-Based Tourists (pp. 201-220, chapter 12). Series: Pilgrimage Studies, vol. 3. , 2023

Food items in Hinduism are considered essential ingredients for different rituals, pilgrimages, sacred sites, different gods and divinities, seasons, motives, healing, etc. Food is described as ‘prāṇa’ (ethereal energy) in all the celebrations, performances, and pilgrimage traditions. Food, broadly classified into three categories according to its qualities (guṇas), are (i) Sāttvika (‘goodness’, fresh and healthy), (ii) Rājasika (‘passion’, stimulating and tasty that lead to aggressiveness and irritability), and (iii) Tāmasika (‘mode of ignorance’, having a sedative effect on the mind and body). In all the pilgrimage traditions, the food items offered to God (called ‘prasāda’) are taken back by devotees and pilgrims as blessed items that are to be shared and distributed among devotees. Offering food to the gods also provides a way to get attached to the god, thus symbolising ‘Food as God’ (anna devo bhava); thus, making a bridge linking human conscience and sublime power. This chapter describes these notions in the context of cultural history, pilgrimage traditions, specific temples, and related divinities, and the regional variations illustrated with the case study of the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. Finally, some reflections are presumed about its state and prospects. Keywords: symbolism, sacrality, foodscapes, sacred food, typology, sacred places, prasāda, seasonality, laddū.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1995

The cultural landscape of India, from the earliest Vedic period to contemporary times, is littered with food. As a biological necessity, as an economic commodity, as the primary ingredient of ritual and social transactions, as a medium of social and familial interaction, as a marker of social boundaries, as a principle of classification, and as a focus of ethical concerns of both religious virtuosi and common people, food has always been and continues to be at the heart of Indian ritual practice, social behavior, common etiquette, and theological speculation. The Vedic sacrifices, often involving the killing of a sacrificial victim, just as their vegetarian counterparts in modern temples, are essentially offerings of food to the gods. Eating the leftovers of these divine meals provides a major point of contact with the divine for sacrificers and devotees alike (Wezler 1978). In a contemporary celebration of the cowherd god Kr.sna in the region of Braj, the central attraction is the "mountain of food" (annak~ta) created and consumed by the devotees (Toomey 1992). Every Indian life-cycle rite is celebrated with a feast. Food links the dead with the living in periodic drdddha oblations. Food links the Buddhist and Jaina monks with the laity and the Hindu samnydsins with the common folk in the ritual of daily begging-the giving and the receiving of food. Issues relating to food-what one is permitted to eat, how one should prepare it, when and how much one should eat, from whom one can accept it, with whom one can eat-these are central questions both in the legal literature of dharmaddstra and in the minds of ordinary people. An ancient Vedic text uses food and eating to classify all reality-food and eaters of food, that's all there is! 1 A similar thought is echoed in the famous creation hymn of the R gveda (10.90.4) when it divides all things into those that

Pilgrims of Jagannatha Puri, 2021

T he temple of Purushottama-Jagannatha is a celebrated sacred centre in India. Like Badrinath, Kedarnath, Amarnath, Rameswaram and Tirupati it is a large sanctuary which is a main foci for pilgrimage in the sub-continent and it has been accepted as an all-South Asian shrine by James J Preston 1. From t h e early period (at least from the post-Gupta phase) till the present time Jagannatha-Puri has become a full grown Kshetra for the Hindus with considerable political and social support. The name of Jagannatha directs the faithful from provinces of India to Puri. As remarked by Hunter this yearning after holy places seems to form part of the universal religion of mankind 2. To gaze upon the scenes amidst which the deity has dwelt, to bathe in the rivers that once laved his mystical incarnate frame, to halt at noon day under hoary trees beneath which the divine presence has reposed, to pray upon the mountain hallowed by his lonely communing and to behold in the everlasting rock the foot prints of the god, are longings which have

Cogent Social Sciences, 2019

; Aarati-Auscipious waving of lamps before the lord; Madala Panji-The chronicle of the temple; Gajapati Maharaja-The king of Puri who is treated as the representative of Lord; Mahaprasada-The food offering to Lord which is later taken by devotees

2020

This chapter in an edited volume on Religious Materialities considers the place of consecrated food or prasadam translated as " a sacred share" to think of the transformative powers of prasadam and its inherent transformation in neoliberal capitalist worlds. It invites us to consider materiality in religion new and formative ways.

Summer Hill, 2019

A unique composite culture has evolved around Lord Jagannath, the presiding deity of Odisha, India. Every element of this culture appears to have influenced the life and activities of the Chitrakara community residing in Raghurajpur, Dandasahi and other patua villages of Puri. This paper examines the effect of the Jagannath cult on the Chitrakaras, i.e., the pata painters of the Puri District of Odisha.