Paper short abstract:

I illustrate Śaktipur’s 'cosmological architecture', or the manifestation of Śakti and Śiva’s eternal play (the negotiation between, on one side, the manifest and expanded and, on the other, the abstract and contracted) through spaces and activities that reflect Śakti'a and Śiva's respective nature.

Paper long abstract:

Nested in a rural valley surrounded by nine hills, the South Indian temple-complex Śaktipur is more than just a place of worship. Presenting two main temples (Śrī Meru, dedicated to Śakti, and Dakśavati, for Śiva), two shrines (Kāmākhyā, manifesting Devī’s yoni, womb or vulva, and Śivalāyam, embodying Śiva’s liṅga, phallus), two homam salas, one ashram housing Guruamma and Gurujī’s friends and family members, one dormitory where ritual specialists and pilgrims live, one canteen, some fields and gardens, and a cow-shed, in Śaktipur the worldly and the transcendent merge in ways that invite us to rethink conventional rural–urban and human–divine dichotomies.

In this talk, I illustrate what I call Śaktipur’s ‘cosmological architecture’, or the manifestation of Śakti and Śiva’s eternal play (namely the negotiation between, on one side, the manifest and expanded and, on the other, the abstract and contracted) through spaces and activities that reflect Śakti’s and Śiva’s respective nature.

As emerges from their distinct architectonic features and the different types of ritual and worldly activities they host, (1) Śrī Meru is a ‘cosmic household’ that embodies Śakti’s life-affirming expansion, (2) Kāmākhyā and Śivālayam manifest Śakti and Śiva’s playful quarrel and, finally, (3) Dakśavati embodies Śiva’s contraction beyond beingness.

In manifesting Śakti and Śiva’s cosmic play through spaces and practices that span the ritual and worldly domains, Śaktipur blurs the human and the divine. The ensuing conceptual ambiguity calls for new analytical frameworks which, I suggest, can emerge from a methodology that is rooted in dwelling.