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Sundarbans in Bangladesh, fishermen, wood collectors, honey hunters, and other forest workers bid farewell to their families each time they head into the forest, fearing they may not return. During these farewells, they often perform to appease the local forest god, 'Gazi Pir.'

Paper long abstract

The Sundarbans, a vast mangrove forest in Bangladesh, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. This region is home to the Royal Bengal Tiger, which particularly inhabits the Sundarbans, and the settlements surrounding the forest regard it as the heart of their lives and livelihoods. Fishermen, wood collectors, honey hunters, and other forest workers bid farewell to their families each time they head into the forest, fearing they may not return. During these farewells, they often perform special folk rituals to appease the local forest god, 'Gazi Pir.' These rituals, believed to ensure protection from tigers and to improve their livelihoods, are seen as a vital part of their journey into the forest. As part of an age-old cultural tradition, they sing 'Gazi’s Song,' a folk tale passed down through generations. For this research, data will be gathered through interviews with residents of the Sundarbans who live around the forest, using field surveys. Key informant interviews (KII) and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) will serve as the primary data collection methods. The research data will be analysed using thematic analysis and will follow a qualitative research approach. Review of the existing literature reveals opportunities for new research into the efforts made by the local community to preserve the folktales surrounding 'Gazi Pir.' This paper will primarily explore how these potentially endangered folktales are being preserved in society, focusing on the preservation of Gazi’s stories, which are an integral part of the cultural heritage of the Sundarbans region in Bangladesh.

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In Sikkim, natural disasters are seen as signs that "our deities are angry," caused by human neglect and improper handling of sacred ritual waste. To maintain harmonious relations with these deities, locals perform rituals and offerings to appease them and ensure peaceful coexistence.

Paper long abstract

In Sikkim, environmental disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, and cloudbursts are understood through vernacular Buddhist cosmologies as consequences of disrupted relationships with local deities. Villagers often interpret these events as "our deities are angry" and as divine punishment linked to human negligence and improper handling of sacred ritual waste. This paper explores the ambivalent status of ritual remnants as both sacred and polluting, whose mismanagement provokes ecological imbalance and divine wrath. Through narratives of fear and retribution, Sikkimese communities adopt ritual care and ethical practices emphasizing reciprocity and spiritual responsibility, providing an alternative to technoscientific disaster models. The study highlights how these beliefs sustain more-than-human relations and reflect a distinctive environmental justice grounded in sacred materiality and care.

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This paper attempts to interpret how the narratives associated with the river Brahmaputra and its tributaries reverberate the folklore, culture and ethos of people living in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam in Northeast India.

Paper long abstract

The Brahmaputra, flowing through three countries carries with it a flow of narratives ranging from creation myths to folklore connecting everyday history. Besides crafting Assam’s landscape, the river has been sustaining a multiplicity of ethnic entities since prehistoric times.

Rivers in India bear female names, but the Brahmaputra – ‘son of Brahma, the Hindu god’-- is male, claim the myths and legends. The old Sanskrit name for the river is Lauhitya—blood red—but it is fondly called Barluit or Luit in Assamese. The name Brahmaputra is also said to be a Sanskritized form of ‘Bullam-buthur’, which in the Bodo language means ‘making a gurgling sound’. Testifying its diversity in association with various ethnic cultures, it bears different names in different parts of its course. The million meanders of Brahmaputra conceal many myths and numerous tribal lores. The enigmatic river has also remained the fitting metaphor for the authors and artistes to narrate stories of love, joy, yearning, anguish, and suffering.

Such are the influences of the Brahmaputra on the life, beliefs and cultures of the people who live on its banks that each and every group of people, tribal or non-tribal, has myths and legends associated with the river. Each group has rich treasure of folk-songs and folk-literature associating, adoring, appeasing, and even worshipping the river.

This paper attempts to interpret how the myths associated with the river and its tributaries reverberate the folklore, culture and ethos of people living in the Brahmaputra valley.

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Sikhs’ travels to Rameshwaram, one of India’s most significant pilgrimage sites, generate place-making and place-based narratives that localize and root Sikh tradition on Tamil Soil, fostering a sense of regional belonging and women’s mobility.

Paper long abstract

Sikhs, followers of the monotheistic Indian religion whose founder, Guru Nanak, was born in the 15th century, are dispersed throughout the globe. In each place where they reside, Sikhs create complex diasporic relationships with other Sikhs, with non-Sikhs, with nature, their homeland of Punjab, and with the land on which they have migrated to. Chennai, the capital city of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, hosts a vibrant Sikh community that is part of the internal Indian diaspora. Most studies of the Sikh diaspora focus on communities in Western or Western settler colonial societies. By contrast, this paper examines a pilgrimage by Chennai-based Sikhs living as a minority community within India 1,500 miles south of their cultural and religious homeland.

Guru Nanak’s udasis or travels include his journey to Rameshwaram, one of India’s most significant pilgrimage spots. Stories of Nanak in Rameshwaram as well as current pilgrimages foster Chennai-based Sikhs sense of belonging on Tamil soil and within a broader Tamil and Hindu sacred landscape. By traveling to Rameshwaram, Chennai-based Punjabi Sikhs include themselves in Sikh geography and form themselves within a Sikh community narrative. This paper discusses how Tamil Nadu came to be considered sacred landscape for Sikhs and examines the terrain of Chennai-based Sikhs’ sacred and moral geographies, particularly those of women, as illustrated through the narratives and discourses they employ. Sikh women traveling to Rameshwaram re-enact sacred geography and simultaneously claim a domestic moral geography that provides them with legitimate means to leave the home.

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The paper tries to focus on identifying the space of a river, the river Brahmaputra, as the ‘other’ for selfhood formation that has been expressed through oral narratives. Methodically, the discussion of spatial selfhood will be studied from phenomenological perspectives.

Paper long abstract

Selfhood is constituted linguistically through lived experiences gathered from the surrounding. Cognition of the experiences drives the growth of recognition of oneself in a given environment. It is also to be taken for consideration that the plurality of conscious phenomena has never been fixed in nature. Perceiving the environment is the most normal ecological process to build an absolute synchrony of humanity and nature in a cognizant way. This concept of achieving selfhood ignites studies into the orality of a community. Selfhood can be achieved only and necessarily in a social milieu and the surrounding culture enters essentially into a process of achieving as well as into the resulting character achieved. (Heard: 1923). The individual experiences turn into an articulation for dissemination of thought orally in multiples ways of narratives. The might and magnanimity of the river Brahmaputra that flows through the North Eastern part of India to reach the sea have constantly inspired the people on its bank to identify the vast body of water with the self of people. The connotation of the river entails discourse spotlighting narratives of space. The paper tries to focus on identifying the space of the river as the influential ‘other’ that has been expressed through oral narratives. Methodically, the discussion of spatial selfhood will be studied from phenomenological perspectives.

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Focusing on cave springs, this paper considers modern water rituals related to the Virgin Mary and ancient nymphs. During the Virgin’s festivals Athenians come to her chapel to fetch healing water. Through a comparison I argue for a continual association of water sources with the sacred in Greece.

Paper long abstract

Focusing on springs within caves, this paper considers contemporary Greek water rituals on which the author has conducted field work since the early 1990’s and their relation to ancient pre-Christian traditions and sites. Formerly springs represented water nymphs, and today springs are dedicated to the Panagia (“the All-Holy One” from Pan: all and Agia: holy) who is the Virgin Mary in her identity as Zōodochos Pēgē (that is, the Life-giving Spring). The water is thought to be particularly healing and purifying during festivals dedicated to the Panagia, such as the contemporary celebration of the “Life-giving Spring” on the first Friday after Easter Sunday. During this celebration Athenians come to the Panagia’s chapel inside an ancient circular spring house that was hewn in the rock on the southern slope of the Akropolis to fetch “life-giving water.” The sacred spring is situated inside a cave over which a church was constructed. Comparing the modern practices with ancient evidence, this paper argues for a continual association of water sources with the sacred in Greek narratives and rituals.

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The wood of the Holy Cross, at once object and vegetal substance, functions as a medium of redemption from original sin. The vegetal essence of wood absorbs the sacred values of the cruciform symbol, values that it amplifies when the cross or the church is fashioned from a single piece of wood.

Paper long abstract

Once upon a time there was a great man, / And he took a great axe, / And he went to the great forest, / And he cut a great tree, / And he built a great church. In Romanian popular culture, the motif of the church made from a single piece of wood is attested. Such is the case of the “One wood” church, from Vâlcea County, which, according to local tradition, was founded in the sixteenth century from the timber of a single oak. Our own field research has revealed further instances of this motif, such as the description of a wooden roadside cross from Argeș County. The motif may be situated within a broader constellation of symbolic structures, particularly those pertaining to the “sacred tree” and to the belief in the inherent capacity of certain vegetal substances to become invested with sacrality. On one level, legends of the type “The Cross of Jesus” record the divine injunction given to Adam’s youngest son: to plant a root above his father’s head. From this root grows the tree from which Noah’s Ark is built—an archetypal realization of the “one wood” motif—and from which the Cross of the Crucifixion is also fashioned. Thus, is fulfilled the divine promise that Adam, and humanity as a whole, would be redeemed from sin through the wood of the Holy Cross. On another level, numerous Romanian legends establish associations between specific tree species (fir, maple, willow) and the sacred dimension.

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As part of the Sacred Sites project I interviewed people about the nature sites that they have been using as part of their animistic and spiritual practice. I'm looking at the interview data along with the acoustic measures that were done at the sites later on.

Paper long abstract

Sounds or soundscapes are often connected with the feeling of sacredness and spirituality. In animistic and spiritual practise, we sometimes use sound in nature to communicate with the unseen reality and create meanings in response to the sounds we hear.

In Sacred Sounds project I interviewed eight people of whom majority practices shamanism or uses nature as part of their spiritual practise. I was asking them about the places they felt were important to them and why this was. Many of these places mentioned in the interviews were old, well-known sites that have been used by sages and healers in the past. The historical connection was important to them, but they were constructing multi-layered meanings into the sites. After the interviews we went with the Sacred Sounds research team to measure for example if there was an echo or some other sonic phenomena present in these sites. Through these measures the sites got additional aspects that might explain some of the experiences that people had when visiting these places.

In this paper I will discuss a few of the sites that were mentioned in the interviews along with the acoustic characters that were found in the tests conducted. I propose that some of the supernatural or unusual experiences could be explained to some degree with unusual acoustics.