Sacred spaces of India

India is the birth place of four great religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. An important part of the population is Moslem (12%); in fact, India, after Indonesia, is the country with the largest number of Moslems. Also, in Kerala, in the southern part of India, there are Christian and Jewish communities.

Of the four religions of India the oldest is Hinduism. Hinduism started around 2,500 years before the Christian era. The word Hinduism is a sort of western summary given to the religion of the people of the Hindi Valley and encompasses a combination of beliefs but many of them have common denominators, including the influence of the teachings of the Mahabarata and the Ramayan. Presently there are over 800 million people that practice Hinduism.

A visitor should not be surprised to find all over India an enormous amount of statues representing divinities that are sold on the street. These statues are human representations of the divine and form a part of the everyday life of a Hindu. The most important divinities are Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva that compose the trinity that represents Ishvara. Shiva also appears with other names including Nataraja. Ganesh, represented by a human body with an elephant head, is very popular and possibly the image most known outside of India. For Hindus, he transmits good luck, wisdom and compassion.

Jainism was founded by the hermit Vardhamana approximately in the year 400 before the Christian era, approximately fifty years before the coming of Buddha. There are only 10 million Jainists in India. Vardhamana preached a simple life, contemplative, totally separated from material things. The Jainists are vegetarians and the most strict Jainists cover their mouths with a cloth so that they do not swallow by error some living being such as a fly or a mosquito.

Buddhism is an intermediate way between some of the excesses of Hinduism and the excessive rigor that was brought about in Jainism. Even though Buddhism was the principal religion of India at the time of the emperor Ashoka, today less than 1% of the Hindu population is Buddhist. Buddhism, however, has left a strong mark in India not only in the form of monuments but fundamentally in the sense of religious tolerance and cultural tolerance that has prevailed in India until recent events. Emperor Ashoka, in one of his edicts proclaimed that “the kind that is loved by the Gods honors all forms of religious faith ... the root of this is a reference to one’s own faith without ever insulting the faith of others (Ashoka, 12th Edict stamped on stone, taken from Radhakrishnan).

Sikhism was founded by the Guru Nanak (1469-1529). It is a monotheist religion that believes in equality and rejects discrimination by caste; an intermediate step between Hinduism and Islam. The center of Sikhism is the city of Amristar, founded in 1577 where you find the Gurdwara Temple (better known as the Golden Temple).

Hindus have a special sense of what is sacred that comes to the attention of any visitor in the country. In the first place, religious beliefs and rights are an important part of their answer to life. The temples and religious monuments in India are living examples of faith. In the temples a visitor will always find people meditating, praying or complying with an offer to God in his different representations. The visitor should always have present the power that visual contact has in India. In India a greeting is always made with a short bow and the person that is making the greeting puts his hands together and first looks into the eyes of the person that he is greeting. Visual contact produces spiritual contact between two beings. More important for Hindus as well to Jainists is darzan, that is, the visual contact with God. Due to this, the images, specially the eyes in the religious images that represent divinities for the Hindus, are very important. The faithful make contact with God looking at the representation of the divinity in the eye.

Aurangabad (the Ellora Caves)

The Ellora Caves are a combination of 34 caves that shelter Buddhist temples, Jainist temples and Hindu temples. The temples or caves were carved by hand in the IX century. The carving started from the upper part of the temple and came down. They are a really incredible achievement of architecture and engineering. To know the Ellora Caves you can take a plane to Aurangabad. You can also take a train but I do not recommend it. Aurangabad is located in the center of India. There are flights from Delhi or Mumbai. From Aurangabad you get to Ellora by car or tourist bus in less than one hour (25 Km).

Profeta Vardhamna Templo Janista - Ranakpur

Ranakpur is about three hours by tourist bus from the city of Jodhpur in Rajasthan. You can arrive in Jodhpur from Mumbai or Delhi. In Ranakpur you will find the most important temple of the Jainist religion. The Temple of Ranakpur is totally built in marble and has 1,444 columns. Each column contains different decorations from the rest of temple. The temple was built approximately in the 15th century. To enter into the temple the visitor cannot carry any object made of leather or of any type of animal skin, including cannot use shoes, belts or leather portfolios.

Khajurano

In the state of Madhya Pradesh you find Khajurano, a place where the temples of the sane name are located. At the present time there are 25 temples. The temples of Khajurano are Hindu temples. Some of the temples are still used today for prayer. The temples are covered by sculptures, a good number of these sculptures are erotic. Taken from these sculptures is the well known book of Kamasutra. The erotic nature of the sculptures causes repulsion for some. However, one must remember that in Hinduism erotism is a positive sensation of force. The temples were built between the X and the XII century and they were rediscovered in 1838. Originally there were 85 temples.

Varanasi

It is a sacred city for the Hindus. It is on the banks of the river Ganges. The river Ganges is considered a divinity and therefore, for the Hindus, when a person dies the remains of the person are transported to Varanasi, where cremation of the body is completed and later the ashes are thrown into the river. In India still today they will not cremate the body of a pregnant lady, a guru, a person recently born or somebody that has died from a cobra bite. In these cases the bodies are thrown into the river and they float all the way up to the estuary of the Ganges in Calcutta.

Sarana

Sarana is about one hour away from Varanasi. Sarana is considered as the birthplace of Buddhism, since it was here that Buddha gave his first sermon known as the Dharmachakra-pravartana (approximately 350 years before the Christian era). In this sermon, Buddha expressed the four fundamental truths: that there is sadness in the world; which are the reasons for the sadness; the end of sadness and the eight steps to obtain inner peace. Buddhism was spread through India by the emperor Ashoka, who built in Sarana two stupas. A stupa is a solid monument (it is not a temple) and it contains in its interior ashes of an enlightened (budi satya). Sarana is a center for obligatory pilgrimage for many Buddhists. A visit to Sarana gives you a sensation of peace that must have existed at the time of Buddha. One finds in Sarana small groups of disciples of Buddha, normally sitting on the ground listening to the sermon given by a monk.

Armistar - El Templo Dorado

Amritsar is in the extreme northwest corner of India, in the state of Punjab. It was founded in 1577 and there you find the Temple of Gurdwara, better known as the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple is located in a complex that constitutes a sacred space for the Sikhs. In this complex you also find a lake as well as a very large dining area that offers free food to all the visitors of the complex. To enter into the complex you must remove your shoes and socks, and men must also use a turban to cover their hair. Visitors are allowed in the complex and there is a welcoming atmosphere.

To go to India you can take flights from any part of the principal capitals of Europe. The flights arrive in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi and Chennai. From any one of these cities you can get to Khajurano, Varanasi and Aurangabad with an internal flight. I do not recommend the use of trains which, though they give you an opportunity to meet a lot of people, they do offer some very fundamental problems of hygiene. The food in India is good but the traveler must choose the restaurant well and abstain from eating raw food. Running water can never be drunk. India has in the state of Rajashan some of the most spectacular hotels in the world. However, the hotels in Varanasi, Amritsar and Aurangabad are simple but clean. If you are staying in less expensive hotels in Varanasi you should be careful because the monkeys tend to walk into the hotel rooms. You should keep your windows closed at all times. Before visiting sacred places in India it is recommendable to read something about the religions that one is going to encounter. For this there are innumerable books and websites. The great legacy of the British Empire is that over 50% of the population in India has a good command of the English language. In some cities like Varanasi, the traveler will find sacred cows that are free on the streets but they do not represent any risk for the tourist. Somewhat more uncomfortable are the monkeys.

This note was prepared based on to three different trips to India between 2003 and 2007. A portion was published in the Caracas' newspaper El Universal, on May 22nd, 2006.