Yogi Pilgrimage and Puranic Lore in the Śrīnāthatīrthāvalī

Abstract

The Śrīnāthatīrthāvalī is a Sanskrit pilgrimage guide commissioned by Maharaja Man Singh of Jodhpur in the early 19th century. It gives descriptions of almost one hundred pilgrimage sites visited by Nāth yogis across the subcontinent, as far as Karnataka, Assam, Baluchistan and Nepal. The descriptions vary in length from two to twenty anuṣṭubh verses and include Puranic myth, Nāth legend, folklore, history and first-hand reports. The text was published in Rajasthan in 1950. This rare unannotated edition from a single manuscript contains many errors which I have been able to correct through comparison with a manuscript of the text from Jodhpur itself, and recourse to a wide range of sources of contextual data, including Puranic texts and māhātmyas, contemporaneous travellers’ reports, current pilgrimage practices and modern cartography. Drawing on this philological work I shall map the pilgrimage networks presented in the text, identify the different sources of data adduced in the sites’ descriptions and analyse the interplay between Puranic and other sources. This will lead to an assessment of the reasons for the production of the text and its likely use and circulation.