Visualizing Space In Banahas: Images, Maps, And The Practice Of Representation

摘要

Banaras. The name alone conjures at once an image in the mind's eye, a panorama of temple towers and broad steps rising steeply from the river bank, facing the flat plain on the opposing shore, over whose rim the sun rises. The visitor might glimpse this view - depicted so often by artists - while entering the city by crossing the northern bridge, or study it more carefully from a slowly rowed boat. But there may also be a lurking sense that behind the facade of the familiar waterfront lies only muddle. To the casual visitor the city seems to have no clear layout or plan, only a maze of congested winding lanes, punctuated by irregular market places. The crumbling stucco balconies of once fine mansions hint at a more orderly past. But to the pilgrim (as even the visitor may be dimly aware) the city appears very differently: as a ritually organised space. The pilgrim sees a collection of shrines, not heaped randomly but laid out in logical relation to each other; and he or she carries a mental map of the routes between them, a different picture of Banaras that can be made real as a tirtha patha.