India’s long tradition of travelling without going anywhere: The pilgrimage nakshas of Rajasthan

With travel paralysed by the Covid-19 pandemic struck, technology still allows us to visit far-flung places vicariously. It isn’t just museums and galleries that have made their spaces accessible digitally. Even the very specific tirtha yatra or pilgrimage, which is intrinsically tied to physical presence, is substituted online. More Hindu temples are embracing the concept of digital darshans, allowing devotees from any corner of the world to experience the sacred act of seeing deities.

As it turns out, such impulses to travel without actually going anywhere have long been manifested in Indian visual and oral traditions. When certain sites developed as tirthas and became centres of religious and ritual practices, devotees, artists, and storytellers in distant parts of the country devised creative methods to “view” them and reap spiritual benefits.

In an ingenious inversion of the pilgrimage process, the tirtha became portable and was transported to the devotee. By way of visuals like pilgrimage maps, Shatrunjaya patas, for example, difficult to reach locations are brought into homes and local shrines. Often, these include not just the main temples or shrines but depictions of entire cities and landscapes.

Scroll paintings

While some of these images are commissioned by elite patrons and viewed by an exclusive audience, popular traditions have also…

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