Religion (1990) 20, 185-198

BOOK REVIEWS

Bardwell Smith and Holly Baker Reynolds teds), The City as a Sacred Center: Essays 072 Six Asian Contexts. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1987, pp. vii + 139. 50 guilders.

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 pro- ceedings: 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, how- ever, 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

186 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