Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions

Pilgrimage is a feature of all the world religions. The various forms it has taken over its long history reveal much about the basic values of different cultures. At one level the pilgrim makes a physical journey, covering often distant and difficult terrains, at a more profound level, the experience of travelling through a foreign land towards a sacred goal can become a metaphor for the pilgrim's search for his or her religious identity. This book brings together all the major religious traditions, from Classical Greece to the present. It looks at the different practices of the different faiths and asks whether they can be meaningfully compared. Hindus at Benares, Buddhists at Bodhgaya, Muslims at Mecca circumambulate sacred shrines, and Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians all take tokens back from sacred sites - yet in what sense are they really doing the same thing? The experience of pilgrimage is evoked through a variety of photographs and texts ranging from folk tales to first-hand accounts of modern-day pilgrims, whilst picture sections draw together common themes, from saints and tombs to relics, contested sites and the worship of sacred images.