Pilgrimage and Patronage: Ahilyabai’s Contribution to India’s Sacred Landscapes

Presenter:

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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between pilgrimage patronage and performance. I investigate the ways that Ahilyabai Holkar (1725-95), the queen of Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh, created pilgrimage networks by sponsoring not only temple construction but also the construction of roads, dharmshalas and wells to facilitate pilgrimage journeys. The study is based on field work carried out in Maheshwar in 2014 and 2017 and a review of textual sources. The focus is on the relationship between a weekly yātrā which has been carried out since her death, and continues to this day, in Maheshwar and her patronage of Indian pilgrimage networks. I describe how every Monday a group of royal servants carry a palanquin bearing the queen, now represented by a painting of her, on a ritual journey from her palace to three temples where she makes offerings and then back to her palace. She visits the temples of two local deities, Sahasrabahu Arjun and Dudhiya Devi, and then a Kashi Vishvanath temple she had constructed in Maheshwar at the same time as she sponsored the rebuilding of the Kashi Vishvanath temple in Varanasi. I then explore how local story telling traditions from Maheshwar explain her motivations for undertaking this yātrā by linking her external pilgrimages to her visions of pilgrimage as an internal act of devotion. I conclude that through her patronage of pilgrimage networks and sculptural and architectural traditions and the construction of Kashi Vishvanath temples in both Varanasi and Maheshwar she sought to link her inner personal devotional practices to sacred journeys in Maheshwar envisaged as a microcosm of the sacred landscape of India.