Mapping the Pasupata Landscape

In Mapping the Pasupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Saiva Imaginary in Early Medieval North India, Elizabeth A. Cecil explores the sacred geography of the earliest community of Siva devotees called the Pasupatas. This book brings the narrative cartography of the Skandapurana into conversation with physical landscapes, inscriptions, monuments, and icons in order to examine the ways in which Pasupatas were emplaced in regional landscapes and to emphasize the use of material culture as media through which notions of belonging and identity were expressed. By exploring the ties between the formation of early Pasupata communities and the locales in which they were embedded, this study reflects critically upon the ways in which community building was coincident with place-making in Early Medieval India.