Belief, Bounty, and Beauty —— Rituals around Sacred Trees in India

----- 信仰，慷慨和美丽：印度圣树周围的仪式

ISBN: 9789004146013 出版年：2005 页码：519 Albertina Nugteren Brill

This study is focused on the interaction of material and symbolic values in the domain of sacred trees in India. By presenting samples from 3,000 years of Indian ritual practice, it is shown that in many sacred geographies trees continue to connect the present with the past, the material with the symbolic, and the contemporary ecological with the traditionally sacred. Although in India religion may have become very much a temple cult, its embeddedness in the natural world enhances today's 'green' interpretation of religious traditions. That in environmental matters such religious inspiration may be both successful and highly ambivalent at the same time is the thought-provoking position taken in the final chapters.