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Sacred Forests of Asia

Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume

engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space,
place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of
the Anthropocene.
Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses
the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource
management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during
the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical
perspectives from political ecology, the book views ecology and polity as
constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and global networks.
Readers will find the very first systematic comparative analysis of sacred forests
that include the karchall mabhuy of the Katu people of Central Vietnam, the
leuweng kolot of the Baduy people of West Java, the fengshui forests of southern
China, the groves to the goddess Sarna Mata worshiped by the Oraon people
of Jharkhand India, the mauelsoop and bibosoop of Korea, and many more.
Incorporating in-depth, field-based case study, each chapter shows how the
forest’s sacrality must not be conceptually delinked from its roles in common
property regimes, resource security, spiritual matters of ultimate concern, and
cultural identity.
This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of indigenous
studies, environmental anthropology, political ecology, geography, religion and
heritage, nature conservation, environmental protection, and Asian studies.

Chris Coggins is Professor of Geography and Asian Studies at Bard College

at Simon’s Rock, USA. He is editor and author of Mapping Shangrila: Contested
Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (2014, with Emily Ting Yeh); The
Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and Conservation in China (2003); and
The Primates of China: Biogeography and Conservation Status—Past, Present, and
Future (2002).

Bixia Chen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Agriculture at the

University of the Ryukyus, Japan. She is co-editor of Traditional Rural Landscapes
in Island Topography in East Asia (2012, with Yuei Nakama).
The Earthscan Forest Library
Series Editorial Advisers
John L. Innes
University of British Columbia, Canada
John Parrotta
US Forest Service—Research & Development, USA
Jefrey Sayer
University of British Columbia, Canada
and
Carol J. Pierce Colfer
Center for International Forestry Research, USA

This series brings together a wide collection of volumes addressing diverse

aspects of forests and forestry and draws on a range of disciplinary perspectives. It
is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, professionals,
policy-makers and concerned members of civil society.

A New Era for Collaborative Forest Management

Policy and Practice insights from the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Program
Edited by William Butler and Courtney Schultz

Forest Conservation and Sustainability in Indonesia

A Political Economy Study of International Governance Failure
Maxton Bernice-Lee

Masculinities in Forests
Representations of Diversity
Carol J. Pierce Colfer

Adaptive Collaborative Management in Forest Landscapes

Villagers, Bureaucrats and Civil Society
Edited by Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Ravi Prabhu, and Anne M. Larson

Sacred Forests of Asia

Spiritual Ecology and the Politics of Nature Conservation
Edited by Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
books/series/ECTEFL
Sacred Forests of Asia
Spiritual Ecology and the Politics
of Nature Conservation

Edited by Chris Coggins

and Bixia Chen
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Coggins, Chris, 1963– editor. | Chen, Bixia, editor.
Title: Sacred forests of Asia : spiritual ecology and the politics of
nature conservation / edited by Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054055 (print) | LCCN 2021054056 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367698720 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367698737 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003143680 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political ecology—Asia. | Sacred space—Asia. |
Forest conservation—Asia.
Classification: LCC JA75.8 .S235 2022 (print) | LCC JA75.8 (ebook) |
DDC 304.2—dc23/eng/20211123
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054055
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054056
ISBN: 978-0-367-69872-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-69873-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14368-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003143680
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xiv
Foreword xv
Prasenjit Duara

Introduction: Forests, Rivers, and Civilizations—

The Oikos, Polis, and Cosmos of Asia’s Sacred Groves 1
Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen

PART 1
South Asia 11

South Asia—Sacred Forests and Human-Environment

Relations 13
Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins

1 The Politics and Poetics of Forested Sacred Natural

Sites in East-Central India 23
Radhika Borde

2 “Come Let Us All Play”: Sacred Groves, Sarna, and

“Green” Politics in Jharkhand, India 36
Mukul Sharma

3 Forest Gods and Forest Conservation: Local Perceptions

of Village Sacred Forests in the Bhimashankar Region,
Western India 50
Shruti Mokashi
vi Contents
4 Daikhos—Sacred Groves, Clan Rituals, and Gender
Exclusion Among the Dimasas of Assam 64
Prithibi Pratibha Gogoi

5 Muslim Graveyard Groves: Plant Diversity, Ecosystem

Services, and Species Conservation in Northwest Pakistan 77
Abdullah, Shujaul Mulk Khan, Zahoor Ul Haq,
and Zeeshan Ahmad

6 Sacred Forests as Sites of Bio-Cultural Resistance and

Resilience in Bhutan 88
Elizabeth Allison

Can Tamil Sacred Groves Survive Neoliberalism? 102

Eliza F. Kent

PART 2
East Asia 105

East Asia—Sacred Forests and Human-Environment

Relations 107
Chris Coggins, Bixia Chen, and Dowon Lee

7 China’s Fengshui Forests: The Fate of Lineage

Wind-Water Polities Under Ecological Civilization 119
Chris Coggins, Jesse Minor, and Bixia Chen

8 Korea’s Sacred Groves—The Maeulsoop: Forest Types,

Ecosystem Services, and Current Distribution 136
Dowon Lee, GoWoon Kim, Wanmo Kang, Insu Koh,
and Chan-Ryul Park

9 Utaki and Ashagi Sacred Forests in the Ryukyu Islands:

Vegetation Structure and Conservation Management
Challenges 150
Bixia Chen

10 Nostalgia, Restoration, and Reinventions of Sacred

Groves in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China 169
Lily Zeng
 Contents vii
Shrine Forests in Honshu, Japan 184
Naoya Furuta

PART 3
Southeast Asia 187

Southeast Asia—Sacred Forests and

Human-Environment Relations 189
Chris Coggins, Nikolas Århem, Agni Klintuni Boedhihartono,
Hoan Phan, Ha Le, and Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani

11 Stories of the Trees: Understanding Traditions and

Transitions in the Katu Peoples’ Perceptions of Forests
in Central Vietnam 203
Hoan Thi Phan and Ha Van Le

12 The Katu Spirit Landscape: Forests, Ecology, and

Cosmology in the Central Annamites 217
Nikolas Århem

13 Roles and Importance of Sacred Forests for

Biodiversity Conservation in Thailand 231
Prasit Wangpakapattanawong and Auemporn Junsongduang

14 The Role of Spirits in Indigenous Ontologies and

Their Implications for Forest Conservation in
Karen State, Myanmar 246
Man Han Chit Htoo, Bram Steenhuisen, and Bas Verschuuren

15 Sacred Forests, Sacred Natural Sites, Territorial Ownership,

and Indigenous Community Conservation in Indonesia 261
Yohanes Purwanto

16 Governance Must Evolve to Meet New Needs of

Indonesian Forest Communities 277
Agni Klintuni Boedhihartono

The Sacred Forest of the Orang Rimba Hunter-Gatherers

of Sumatra 292
Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani
viii Contents
PART 4
Asian Sacred Forests in Global Perspective 295

Conclusions and Preludes: The Many Lives of

Sacred Forests 297
Chris Coggins and Bas Verschuuren

Afterword 310
Shonil Bhagwat
Index 313
Contributors

Abdullah is a PhD scholar at the Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam

University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has diverse, multidisciplinary, and inno-
vative research experience in the feld of ecology and ethnobiology in topics
that include vegetation dynamics, seed dormancy, palm population ecology,
and species distribution modeling under diferent climate change regimes.
Zeeshan Ahmad is a PhD scholar and research associate in the Department
of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He has
diverse research experience in the feld of plant and pollution ecology. He
has published more than 40 high-quality research articles at this early stage
of his academic career.
Elizabeth Allison, PhD, studies the convergence of religion, ethics, and envi-
ronmental policy. She is an associate professor at the California Institute of
Integral Studies and chairs the graduate program in ecology, spirituality, and
religion. She edited After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future
of Human-Nature Relations.
Nikolas Århem is a cultural anthropologist and associate researcher at Uppsala
University. He has conducted ethnographic feldwork among several Katuic-
speaking peoples in Laos and Vietnam. His research interests include indig-
enous cosmology and ritual, natural resource utilization, biodiversity, and
sustainable development.
Shonil Bhagwat is Professor of Environment and Development at the Open
University, UK. His work engages critically with a variety of global chal-
lenges such as agriculture and food security, biodiversity conservation, and
climate change. His work addresses these challenges through direct engage-
ment with cultural and spiritual values of nature.
Agni Klintuni Boedhihartono (Intu) is an Indonesian visual anthropologist
and advocate for forest-dwelling and natural resource–dependent peoples.
She has worked with the Punan hunter-gatherers (Borneo) and Baka-Ba’Aka
pygmies (Congo Basin) and for international organizations (IUCN, CIFOR,
UNEP). She is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia,
Canada.
x Contributors
Radhika Borde is a researcher at the Charles University in Prague, Czech
Republic, and a member of an International Union for Conservation of
Nature specialist group working on issues of nature and culture. She has
published on indigenous movements against mining and gender aspects of
indigenous eco-religious movements in India.
Bixia Chen is an Associate Professor on the Faculty of Agriculture, University
of the Ryukyus, Japan. She has been working on the fengshui village land-
scape and fengshui trees in Okinawa, Japan, with a comparative perspective
focusing on other regions of East Asia, including Mainland China, Hong
Kong, and Korea.
Chris Coggins is a Professor of Geography and Asian studies at Bard College at
Simon’s Rock (OSUN). Chris is the co-editor (with Emily Yeh) of Mapping
Shangrila: Contested Landscapes of the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (Washington,
2014) and the author of The Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and Con-
servation in China (Hawaii, 2003).
Prasenjit Duara holds the Oscar Tang Chair at Duke University. He was Pro-
fessor of History at the University of Chicago (1991–2008) and the Raffles
Professor at the National University of Singapore (2008–2015). His last book
is The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (2014).
Naoya Furuta is a Professor in the Public Policy Department, Taisho Uni-
versity, and a coordinator at IUCN Japan Liaison Office in Tokyo. Having
studied both natural and social science at the University of Tokyo, he stud-
ies and practices Shugendo at Omine mountain range and holds the rank of
Sendatsu—leader.
Prithibi Pratibha Gogoi is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Soci-
ology working under the supervision of Professor Kedilezo Kikhi. She has
recently published a book chapter on the gendered sacred sites of an ethnic
group of Northeast India.
Ha Van Le (MA human ecology) is a researcher at the Institute of Human
Ecology in the Vietnam Academy of Social Science, Hanoi. His research
focuses on climate change, water and forest management, and the political
ecology of water and forests in Central Vietnam.
Auemporn Junsongduang is an Assistant Professor. She is also an Assistant
Dean for academic services and special affairs, Faculty of Liberal Arts and
Science, Roi Et Rajabhat University, Thailand. Her specialties include the
ethnobotany of ethnic groups, ecology, and the biodiversity of community
and sacred forests.
Wanmo Kang became interested in maeulsoop when he started his master’s
program in Professor Dowon Lee’s lab. He has studied the spatial context of
maeulsoop. He is especially interested in the sustainability of maeulsoop from
a landscape planning perspective.
 Contributors xi
Eliza F. Kent teaches at Skidmore College. A scholar of religion in South
India, her publications include Sacred Groves, Local Gods: Religion and Envi-
ronmentalism in South India and articles in Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture
and Ecology and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.
Shujaul Mulk Khan is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Conservation in
the Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, a member of the Pakistan Academy
of Sciences, and visiting Faculty of the University of Gastronomic Sciences,
Italy. He has published two books, 18 book chapters, 112 journal articles,
and 126 abstracts.
GoWoon Kim’s experience with maeulsoop dates back to the early 1990s,
when she had to pass through a village grove on her way to elementary
school. Thanks to her rich childhood experience, she has developed a model
of socio-ecological memory (SEM) that is essential for community resilience.
Insu Koh completed his PhD with Dr. Lee, focusing on the ecosystem services
of maeulsoop from the perspective of landscape ecology. Since completing
his post-doctoral research, Dr. Koh has conducted biostatistical research on
the relationship between nature and human health in the College of Medi-
cine at the University of Vermont.
Dowon Lee (Seoul National University) grew up in a village with two sacred
groves. A large one at the village entrance was removed in 1970. The second
divided the village in two but was reduced to a single tree. Since 2002, he
has conducted research on Korea’s remaining maeulsoop.
Man Han Chit Htoo, born and raised in Karen State, has worked for NGOs
providing humanitarian assistance to remote communities. With an MA
in health and international development (Flinders University), his interests
include indigenous healthcare systems, disaster healthcare, and health in
marginalized communities. He works for ICRC, Myanmar.
Jesse Minor is a critical physical geographer with research interests in human-
environment interactions in sacred forests, wildfire, and effective field peda-
gogy. Jesse teaches courses in physical and environmental geography, risks
and hazards, environmental issues, and political ecology. He has been an
assistant professor of geography at UMaine Farmington since 2018.
Shruti Mokashi is a post-doctoral research associate at the Ashoka Trust for
Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru, India.
Her research interests are in the areas of community-based conservation,
forest governance, sacred natural sites, traditional ecological knowledge, eth-
ics and community-based research, ethnographic methods, and biocultural
restoration.
Chan-Ryul Park (National Institute of Forest Science) was born in a village
in Gwangyang, where he enjoyed catching Chinese mitten crabs around
the Seomjin River. This nurtured his commitment to nature and inspires
xii Contributors
his research on networks linking humans, animals, and plants as a means to
explore Asian viewpoints on nature.
Hoan Thi Phan (PhD Ethnology) is a researcher at the Institute of Family and
Gender Studies, part of the Vietnam Academy of Social Science in Hanoi.
Her research focuses on environmental anthropology, political ecology, gen-
der issues, and the responses of households and communities to natural and
human-made disasters and shocks.
Yohanes Purwanto is Professor of Ethnobiology, Indonesian Institute of Sci-
ences (LIPI), and Executive Director of the Indonesian Man and the Bio-
sphere (MAB) Program National Committee. He has published more than
110 articles, 14 books, five edited volumes, and three booklets. He teaches
and supervises graduate students in Indonesia and abroad.
K G Saxena is a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaha-
rlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, with interests in ecology, natural
resource management, and sustainable development.
Mukul Sharma is Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University,
India. He has worked in the academic, development, and media sectors. He
has published 16 books and booklets. His forthcoming publication is Dalit
Ecologies: Caste and Environmental Justice.
Bram Steenhuisen (BSc development studies and politics—SOAS, MA
human rights—University of Essex, MSc forest and nature conservation—
Wageningen) has lived in Myanmar since 2011, working on counter human-
trafficking, democratization, multi-stakeholder dialogue, community-based
water governance, and beliefs-and-values approaches to nature conservation.
Zahoor Ul Haq is a faculty member in Botany at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto
University, Sharingal, Pakistan. He has been Research Scholar in the
Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan. He is an emerging writer
and dynamic young researcher in the field of plant syntaxonomy and
ethnoecology.
Bas Verschuuren, PhD (Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group,
Wageningen University), specializes in the politics of values, beliefs, and
worldviews in conservation. Bas leads IUCN’s Cultural and Spiritual Values
of Protected Areas Specialty Group and the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative.
He has published over 50 book chapters and articles and edited five volumes
on human-nature relationships.
Prasit Wangpakapattanawong is an Associate Professor and Head of SUTHEP
Mountain Nature Center, which provides education on the sacred moun-
tain’s rich biodiversity. He coordinates the Forests, Climate Change Miti-
gation, and Adaptation Higher Education Cooperation Mekong Region
project, developing curricula on forest restoration. His specialties include
ethnoecology and carbon accounting.
 Contributors xiii
Ekoningtyas Margu Wardani is an Indonesian. For more than 16 years, she
has been working on several research and consultation projects, publish-
ing papers and articles on natural resource management, environmental
economics, food security, indigenous peoples, disaster risk management,
sustainable livelihood, and public administration reform.
Lily Zeng received her PhD from Yale University. Her research combines
anthropology and ecology to examine biodiversity conservation in sacred
groves, with funding from the United States National Science Founda-
tion, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and
National Geographic Society. She currently works in environmental and
social policy.
Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Prasenjit Duara for recommending that we submit a

workshop proposal for the Conference on InterAsian Connections VI: Hanoi.
The conference allowed us to convene 15 of the researchers whose work
appears in this book. We thank the Social Science Research Council for their
acceptance of our proposal and for orchestrating an exceptionally productive
and enjoyable conference. We thank the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences
for hosting the conference in Hanoi and Ninh Binh. We are also deeply grateful
for the editors at Earthscan Forestry Library Series for taking an interest in our
work. We would like to thank Hannah Ferguson and John Baddeley for their
support and patience in seeing this book through to publication. Finally, we
dedicate this book to the people who made the work featured in each chapter
possible—the members of the forest communities who took the time to teach
us about the forests that you have protected against the odds and in the face of
often daunting and destructive forces.
Foreword

The signifcance of this pioneering volume on sacred forests in Asia is mani-

fold, whether viewed from the scholarly perspective of political ecology, as an
alternative vision of the human-nature relationship, or in its approach to the
Anthropocene. I shall try to speak here of the importance of this volume to
these three matters of great planetary concern.
Historical and cosmological ideals of forest conservation have of course been
around for millennia across the world. Modern ideas of scientifc forestry were
developed from the early 19th century in response to rapid deforestation in the
British colonial empire and globally by the late 19th century. But advances in
these scientifc policies and measures could by no means keep up with the scale
of deforestation and devastation conducted under the aegis of extractive colonial
and developmental states globally during the last two centuries.
As the relationship between deforestation and climate change began to be
noted in the last few decades, the problem of deforestation has gained a strik-
ing presence in global environmental policy. In 2008, the UN recognized the
value of forests as carbon sinks when it developed the Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program granting money to
developing countries to protect rather than cut down forests. Other landmark
events followed, such as the Bonn Challenge of 2011, which targeted the
restoration of over a million square miles of deforested and degraded land by
2030, and the Paris Agreement of 2015, which enhanced and reinforced the
REDD+ framework. These initiatives have accompanied and catalyzed many
thousands of public, government, and corporate projects in restoration and tree
plantings across the world, as well as wider movements that include rights of
peoples, cultures, and nature historically associated with forests, exemplifed in
the Rights of Nature movement.
To be sure, from a climate change perspective, some scientists believe that the
benefts of reforestation in absorbing carbon emissions have been overestimated.
In the heady rush to overcome the climate crisis with the low-cost option of
planting trees, the benefts have not always been clear. Tree plantation mono-
cultures often stand in for native old-growth forests, depleting soil nutrients,
biodiversity, and water resources. Mature broadleaf forests are roughly 40 times
better at storing carbon than coniferous plantation trees. They also provide a
xvi Foreword
variety of ecosystem services within local watersheds: capturing, storing, and
fltering water; removing pollutants from the air; preventing erosion; reducing
land degradation; and, not least, preserving diverse fauna and fora. Deforesta-
tion and destruction of wildlife habitat are implicated, as we are painfully aware
today, in global pandemics.
The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) sponsored by Norway and the
UN in 2017 and supported by many world religious and indigenous peoples’
leaders made a case for native forests and a declaration that is germane to this
volume. The IRI reports that its mapping project “reveals that the most suc-
cessful or best-kept rainforests are in areas where rights of indigenous peoples
are respected; this shows that they are the best stewards and custodians of the
rainforests.” Without prejudice to this declaration, I would venture to say that
the researchers in this volume explore and assess the complexities and implica-
tions of such a statement.
Ten of the 16 chapters representing the core of this volume were frst writ-
ten for a three-day workshop in Ninh Binh, Vietnam, in December 2018, part
of the InterAsian Connections VI. Hanoi Conference, sponsored by the Social
Science Research Council and the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences.
Entitled, “Sacred Forests and Political Ecology: Cosmological Properties and
Environmentality,” the scholars discussed their feldwork on forests and the
production of sacred space across a diverse geographic region encompassing
numerous ethnolinguistic groups, indigenous cosmologies, traditional local
resource management practices, and environmental governance systems in East,
South, and Southeast Asia.
The editors and authors draw their concern for the role and fate of sacred
forests from developments in our era of climate change. Relatedly, they are
concerned with how sacred forests point to other ways of managing nature
and society viewed historically, comparatively, and through their contemporary
transformations. For what Madhav Gadgil once called “ecosystems people,”
who depend directly on these forests, this sacrality and their spiritual world are
inextricable from the variety of services that the forests provide, particularly, as
the editors identify, in the local watershed.
At the same time, the authorizing symbolism of the sacred is entangled with
the social system of access, particularly with regard to gender and other exclu-
sions. Through the lens of political ecology, the authors critically examine
the dynamics of hierarchy and authority in these communities and beyond to
assess their potential for regenerating nature sustainably as well as for attaining a
measure of contemporary social justice. They assess whether and how an older
vision, in which “oikos was integrated with the cosmos and the polis,” may be
restored.
In today’s world, there is a vast, if loose, convergence of social activism that
seeks to replace the subject-object, God-world, human-nature dualism at the
base of the systemic imperative to conquer nature for human consumption with
alternative, more holistic visions of the human-nature relationship. Forest dwell-
ers, indigenous peoples, small island societies, threatened rural communities
 Foreword xvii
are joined by—or coalesce with—environmental NGOs, other civic groups of
youth, professionals, scientists, and various local and transnational agencies in
the efort to protect the environment.
This coalescence converges on a loose notion of the sacrality of nature with
social and legal underpinnings. While for many of the threatened precariat,
sacrality is part of the ecology of life and livelihood, for the more disenchanted
moderns, the sacrality of nature is expressed through the notion of legal protec-
tion as the “common heritage of humankind.” Legislation and judicial decisions
of this kind have often been initiated, advocated, and pushed through by civic
groups. This contemporary version of sacred nature is continuous with the
older conception because it represents an inviolability arising from the elemen-
tal urge to protect the sources of life. I believe this volume is a critically valuable
contribution to that undertaking.
Prasenjit Duara
Introduction
Forests, Rivers, and Civilizations—The
Oikos, Polis, and Cosmos of Asia’s Sacred
Groves
Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen

Seeing how the trees in the fercely hot sun . . . with their shade served Him as
parasols, He [Krishna] said: “[L]ook at these fortunate trees protecting us against
rain, wind, heat and snow. Their life is exclusively there for the beneft of others!
[T]hese trees ofer support to all living entities, like great souls do. . . . With their
leaves, fowers and fruits, shade and roots, bark and wood, their fragrance, sap, ashes,
pulp and shoots, they ofer everything you desire. To perform with one’s life, wealth,
intelligence and words always for the sake of the welfare of all embodied beings, to be
in this world of such a kind of birth, is the perfection of life. . . . Thus . . . He arrived
at the Yamunâ. There the gopas drenched the cows in the crystal clear, fresh and cool,
wholesome water . . . and also themselves drank their fll of the sweet water. In a
grove along the Yamunâ . . . they allowed the animals to roam freely.
Bhagavata Purana (8th–12th century)

As Europeans crossed and recrossed the globe pulling out what they needed and leaving
what was superfuous to them behind, it created a new hegemonic order of things: an
emergent and exploitative western classifcation of existence. . . . The hegemonic force of
this order of things was secreted in . . . emerging routes such that things could be used and
moved only if they appeared as one kind of thing. These diferent logics of use and abuse
certainly included what was grievable, what was killable, and what could be destroyed in
order to enhance someone else somewhere else. If you are the subject of capitalist extrac-
tion (which everyone is but not qualitatively or quantitatively equally) and you wish to
eke out an existence, then the everyday ethical, social, and political hierarchies and difer-
ences of things have to be treated as if their materialities do not matter.
Elizabeth Povinelli, “The Urban Intensions of
Geontopower,” (2020: np)

Hope as an essential ingredient of a transcendent force may allow for more dialogi-
cal and honest engagement with messy realities. Achievements, to be sure, are liable
to be politically appropriated for some other sacred purpose such as the nation, but
. . . pan-Asian ideas of sacred forests, lands and waters, or newer ideas of indigeneity
and conservation . . . [hold] humans and nations to higher standards beyond existing
arrangements and national jurisdictions . . . international law possesses . . . a transcen-
dental” dimension . . . that posits inviolability without signifcant military backing and
pursues its case through rational and responsible argumentation.
Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions
and a Sustainable Future (2015: 287–288)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003143680-1
2 Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen
Forests and the Sacred: A Tangled Legacy
In the long course of human transformation of terrestrial ecosystems, sacred
forests have played a vital role in protecting wild fauna and fora, safeguarding
agro-ecologies, informing cultural values, and enriching the human imaginary.
Oddly, the very notion of a “sacred forest” remains exotic to modern sensibili-
ties for the simple reason that ascribing cosmological value to nature contradicts
the fact-value dichotomy of science and the division between the human and
non-human that underwrites capitalist private property. If Lord Krishna praised
the trees as “parasols . . . protecting us against rain, wind, heat, and snow,”
eulogizing the infnite blessings of “leaves, fowers and fruits, shade and roots,
bark and wood” for denizens of a pastoral agrarian world, capitalism renders
forests, trees, leaves, and all the rest “killable,” that is, “destroyable in order to
enhance someone else somewhere else” (Povinelli 2020). Is there a place for
sacred forests in the “Anthropocene Epoch,” when execration is the universal
prelude to fungibility, and entire landscapes are susceptible to commodifcation,
if not for direct consumption then in the form of billable “ecosystem services”
or recreational amenities?
The answers are neither clear nor simple. This book explores this question
through detailed descriptions of, and refections on, community sacred for-
ests in villages across South, East, and Southeast Asia. Our observations and
deliberations invoke a diversity of interests, concerns, and conficts.1 Still, we
present these case studies at a time when indigenous rights, incipient forms of
plurinationalism (Merino 2018), and rights of nature (Tola 2018) are gaining
international legal recognition. In broader terms, the ontological groundwork
of modernity, a worldview in which humans and nature are supposed to inhabit
distinctly separate domains, runs counter to terrestrial realities. The modern-
ist cosmopolitical order that requires resource extractivism while promoting
highly selective and fragmented forms of nature conservation is widely viewed
as a path to world destruction. Advocating “a world of many worlds” compris-
ing a plurality of ontologies that include place-based indigenous cosmologies,
De la Cadena and Blaser (2018: 4) propose the “pluriverse” that encompasses
“heterogeneous worldings coming together as a political ecology of practices”
for the relational, coevolutionary becoming of humans and non-humans. Our
contributors draw on works by social theorists associated with “the ontological
turn” in social science (Holbraad and Pedersen 2017), which includes renewed
attention to the cosmologies (or ontologies) of animism, totemism, analogism,
naturalism, and we would add vitalism (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Descola 2013;
Coggins 2020). It is at the intersection of conficting and converging worlds
that we ofer the frst comparative study of Asia’s sacred groves. As primeval
forest patches, cultivated groves of select species, or a combination of both,
sacred forests are living testimonials to the ancient and complicated legacies of
human-environment relations across a tapestry of diverse cultural and biophysi-
cal regions. They inspire us to think in old and new ways about paths beyond
a fractious and unsustainable present.
 Introduction 3
Oikos, Polis, Cosmos—The Socioecology of
Asian Sacred Forests
By the early Neolithic period of post-glacial plant and animal domestication, vil-
lage sacred forests, groves, and trees were fully woven into the fabric of community
ecosystems in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Ramakrishnan et al. 1998;
Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008). Woodlands formed the connective tissue linking
and protecting soils, water sources, microclimates, croplands, humans, and their
non-human cohabitants within a protective cosmological order of gods, spirits, and
a variety of supernatural forces. As a network of innumerable beings, even a small
forest patch could become sacrosanct. Contrary to common understanding, this was
not because of its separation from a “profane” world but rather because of its vital
role as a nexus gathering and storing water and carbon resources by safeguarding
and stabilizing topsoil, slopes, benefcial organisms, microclimates, and food pro-
duction systems. For the highly social and symbol-wielding primates that sustained
them, sacred groves held a still greater place within a collective regard for the local
landscape, connecting the oikos of community economy and ecology with the polis
of the common social order, all embraced within a cosmos, or world order, endowed
with transcendent and potentially permanent meaning and value (Figure I.1).2

Historical Socio-Ecology of Asian Sacred Forests

Cosmos
(Cosmological/
Ontological
Realm; World
Order)

Village
Forest
Community
(Identity;
Personhood)
Oikos
(Ecological, Polis
Economic (Political Realm;
Realm; Body Politic)
Household/
Collective)

Figure I.1 Sources of transcendent authority and group or individual agency in regard to
sacred forests include the polis (the body politic), oikos (economy and ecology),
and cosmos (the world order as defned by religion or ideology).
4 Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen
We present this tripartite heuristic device not as an explanatory model but
as a prism through which to view the spectrum of political, ecological, and
cosmological assemblages shaping and informing village forest communities
and residents who must mediate within and between the discursive formations
and justifcatory narratives that animate each of the three through time. While we
adopt political ecology as a disciplinary perspective and practice that contends
that there is no apolitical ecology (Robbins 2004), we augment this perspective
by contending that there are no non-ecological politics and, moving further,
that the dyadic structure of “political-ecology” is insufcient in light of the fact
that ontology and cosmology must also fgure into any robust account of socio-
ecological processes. As de la Cadena and Blaser (2018: 5) note, political ontology

designate[s] an imaginary for a politics of reality, and a feld that stands where
political economy and political ecology, formulated with ideas of nature and
economic growth, are insufcient (at times even unable) to think [through]
antagonisms that . . . involve things like mountains and forests that emerge as
resources through some practices but also as persons through other practices.

Where these authors leave of, we continue by placing both economy and
ecology under the assemblages associated with their Greek great-grandparent
oikos, for the household of human habitat is a function of both economy and
ecology.3 To repeat, the oikos, polis, and cosmos do not constitute an ontologi-
cal triad constitutive of the world. Rather, each one is, to diferent degrees at
any given time, assumed to hold transcendent power or value on its own or in
conjunction with one or both of the others and is thus invoked or assumed to
support claims of authority at diferent scales—local, regional, national, and now
global. In each case study, readers will see that claims on the meaning, power,
efcacy, and importance of sacred forests coalesce around, or are challenged by,
one or more of these poles. Often their survival is contingent on resonating
with all three simultaneously; failure to do so presages conficts over the status
and meaning of both sacred groves and the cultures within which they persist.
Such conficts and accommodations have recurred over the course of continu-
ing watershed colonization throughout the three regions under study, starting
with the pre-imperial period and continuing through the imperial, colonial, and
post-colonial periods, each of which marks a series of shifts in ecology, polity, and
cosmology. In the pre-imperial period of the early Neolithic (~9000–5000 BP),
hunting and gathering and shifting (or swidden) cultivation made up the predom-
inant modes of resource use. Anthropogenic impacts on the forests were probably
greatest in tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests and along the margins of
dry scrublands and savannas, where regular burning to improve forage for game
and clear land for swidden plots could have lasting impacts on the vegetation. In
the geographically extensive tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest biome,
low-density shifting cultivation increased habitat heterogeneity through the open-
ing of small, temporary plots for crops such as taro, yams, bananas, and dry rice
in the precolonial period and maize, manioc, and other indigenous American
cultivars following their colonial introduction. Soil nutrients are typically depleted
 Introduction 5
within 3–5 years and plots are fallowed to become secondary forest. Shifting cul-
tivation mimics natural patterns of rainforest disturbance, perpetuating high levels
of biodiversity in areas with low human population density. Under such condi-
tions, sacred forest protection might not be necessary, but remarkably, 11 of our
17 case studies show that shifting cultivators maintain sacred forests or have in the
recent past. Covering hilltops and mountain slopes, these groves house powerful
deities or vengeful spirits who guard springs, streams, and other vital ecosystems.
Asia’s grain-based agricultural civilizations, arising frst in Mesopotamia and
later in the valleys of the Indus, Yellow, Yangzi, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna,
Irrawaddy, and Chao Phraya ushered in new ecologies, polities, and cosmologies
(Figure I.2). The long developmental arc leading to state domination of alluvial

Figure I.2 Intensive deforestation typically begins in close proximity to towns and cities
in broad riparian and coastal plains, spreading upstream into higher elevations.
Community sacred forests have helped safeguard village resources. Higher human
demand on biomass resources in areas of higher population density results in a
greater abundance of sacred forests in the peripheries, where sacred groves have
greater average areas, and tend to hold cosmological value specifc to local polities.
6 Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen
floodplains endowed with abundant arable land and irrigation sources gave rise to
large-scale mono-cropping of barley, millet, wheat, and wet rice, providing food
surpluses, sociopolitical stratification, taxation, conscription, writing systems,
ecclesiastical religions, and extensive market and trade infrastructures. Powerful
grain-producing valley states drove numerous peoples into the rugged upland
peripheries at the outer margins of major drainage basins. To see history through
a “Zomian lens” (Zo being a Tibeto-Burman signifier for hill(s) and mi referring
to people) requires foregrounding the intentional state evasion techniques mastered
by numerous upland peoples in northeast India, southwest China, and throughout
mainland Southeast Asia (Scott 2009). Highland ethnogenesis arose from dwelling
at state margins and adopting trade, raid, and evade strategies to face emergent
threats and opportunities in the lowlands. Swidden became the “escape agricul-
ture” for upland polities with “escape social structures” (Scott 2009)—anarchic,
socially fluid groups that embraced animist cosmologies granting local tutelary
deities dominion over hydro-ecological resource zones. Dynamic adaptation freed
montane polities from imperial overlordship, and many remained beyond the reach
of European colonial states as well. For the holdouts, the post-colonial-Anthro-
pocene world of capitalist resource appropriation presents an age of reckoning.
Fine-tuning Scott’s analysis (2009, 2017), we provide evidence of less linear,
less binary upstream-downstream socio-ecological relationships. Upland villages
of southern China, for example, lay somewhere between “Zomia” and the total
thrall of the valley imperium, relying on proximate watershed resources when
political economic strife stifled regional trade and shouldering goods down-
valley to trade in market towns during boom times. The tens of thousands of
fengshui forests (fengshuilin) in China and mauelsoop (village forests) in Korea
represent a high level of collective ecological governance even in villages long
subject to state power. Over time, however, technological advances in transpor-
tation and communication infrastructure have extended the reach of lowland
polities. Many regions inaccessible to imperial infantry, cavalry, chariots, and
the canals and roadways built with corvée labor became accumulation zones
for European colonizers endowed with modern military forces, steam engines,
mechanized canal and road construction, and railroads. The advent of fossil fuel
vastly accelerated resource exploitation and transport; Europeans traversed the
globe “pulling out what they needed and leaving what was superfluous to them
behind” (Povinelli 2020: np). The new hegemonic order made many things
into “one kind of thing”—commodities for global capitalism through processes
of accumulation by dispossession and fodder for industrial socialism. Political
economies built on industrial productivism in both its socialist and capitalist
forms deracinate sacred forests, sacred landscapes, and the cosmopolitical orders
that hold them in place. Today, many remaining forests are paltry shadows of
their past selves; they would be unrecognizable to their stewards of centuries
past. Today it is not unusual to find a few spare trees bereft of understory vege-
tation—a sacred site housing a shrine but lacking the multilayered inter-species
relationships that thrive in healthy forests and no clear role in protecting springs,
streams, aquifers, and croplands. Understanding socio-ecological patterns that
 Introduction 7
make these forests sacred is critically important, and we are fortunate that thou-
sands of villages across Asia still protect sacrosanct woodlands spanning upland
watersheds that make up some of the only remaining old-growth and late suc-
cessional forests representative of their biomes (Bhagwat and Rutte 2006; Cog-
gins 2020). Anyone who has lived in a village lacking electricity, fossil fuel, and
roads to regional markets well knows that everyday life and annual subsistence
depend on local biomass resources. The problem is especially acute in areas
devoid of robust vegetation assemblages. This was the norm throughout most
of Asia until quite recently, which makes collective forest protection a signif-
cant long-term achievement and an intentional investment in intergenerational
well-being. With state laws and enforcement mechanisms beyond reach or at
best tenuous, cosmology provided the ultimate source and reference point for
constitutional authority over community, polity, and ecology.
In summary, the transcendent value of sacred forests is typically expressed via
local, animistic, indigenous cosmologies; over time, these frequently undergo
syncretism with large-scale, state-sanctioned, canonical, ecclesiastical reli-
gions—Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, Shinto, and, following colo-
nialism, Christianity.4 Deities and rituals combining local animist beliefs and
practices with imperial cosmological systems tend to fourish, often lasting
down to the present, and our case studies show that spiritual beliefs and ritu-
als governing sacred landscapes play a mediating role between local, regional,
and national political, ecological, and religious interests. Our contributors
also provide numerous examples of how surviving sacred forests, sacred spe-
cies, and sacred landforms (mountains, caves, water bodies), as manifestations
of geopiety (reverence for terrestrial features not built or created by humans),
are incorporated into regional, state, and international nature conservation
initiatives (Verschuuren and Furuta 2016). On this note, critical interrogation
of sacred forests shows that they can present complex challenges to nature con-
servation projects (Sheridan and Nyamweru 2008; Dove et al. 2011; Coggins
2020). Our contributors interrogate the ecological, political, and cosmological
implications of the sacred-profane dichotomy. We note that many sacred for-
ests are responses to earlier deforestation at spatial scales exceeding the areas of
the groves themselves. Three chapters show that some sacred forests are spaces
of social exclusion. Others reveal forest entanglement in ethno-nationalist or
cosmopolitan discourse. All show that they are not simply fragile “living fossils”
condemned to extinction.

Asian Forest Biomes

The forests of South, East, and Southeast Asia extend from the Hindu Kush
range of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, across the Indian Subcontinent
and the Himalaya, through Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia, and north
through China, Korea, Japan, and the mountains of Mongolia (Figure I.3). The
predominant biomes are tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests; tropical
and subtropical dry broadleaf forests; and temperate broadleaf, mixed forests.
8 Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen

Figure I.3 The forest biomes depicted in this map are based on the World Wildlife Fund
Ecoregions of the World dataset (2006), which depicts terrestrial vegetation biodi-
versity patterns in 825 ecoregions and 14 biomes. The predominant forest biomes
found in our study region are the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests;
the tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests; and the temperate broadleaf,
mixed forests.

Deserts and xeric scrublands predominate in Pakistan, northwest India, and

central to southern India in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats. Mangrove
forests extend along many of the region’s shorelines. Within these diverse forest
biomes lie myriad habitats encompassing an astonishing variety of fauna and
fora, and, until recent times, keystone species such as tigers (Panthera tigris) and
leopards (Panthera pardis) ranged across these vastly varied landscapes virtually
uninterrupted, from the tropical rainforests of the Indonesian Archipelago north
to the Siberian taiga, where boreal forests grade into subarctic tundra, and west
along wooded river corridors to the Caspian Sea.
Climatologist Tetsuzo Yasunari (2018) calls this assemblage of biomes, habi-
tats, and species the “Asian Green Belt,” the essential biotic component of the
“land-atmosphere-ocean system” of the Asian monsoon. We also view it as a
hopeful term with the potential to activate large-scale, internationally coor-
dinated ecological restoration projects to reconnect hundreds of thousands of
forest fragments and save tigers, leopards, snow leopards, clouded leopards, their
prey, and the myriad species and habitats on which they depend. This hope is,
 Introduction 9
in short, one of the greatest conservation challenges of all time—not a matter of
“nature conservation” alone but one of ecological civilization and social justice.5
The long history of deforestation and habitat destruction in Asia, as elsewhere,
mirrors changing sources of transcendent authority and value. The trialectic of
oikos, polis, and cosmos can help us understand and reverse long-term trends
through steadfast engagement with socio-ecological relations. Asia’s sacred
forests number in the tens of thousands, making up patches of a once-vast tap-
estry of diverse living systems and providing living lessons on the complexities
of community-based conservation and ecological justice. At this juncture, we
should heed Prasenjit Duara’s (2015: 287–288) observation:

[D]ecentered, multiply ordered networks are already beginning to cre-

ate new objects, spaces and fows of sacrality and furnish them with the
autonomy required to launch resistance and regeneration . . . not only [in]
the commons of local communities protected—however weakly—by pan-
Asian ideas of sacred forests, lands and waters, or newer ideas of indigeneity
and conservation, but also to the more authoritatively declared heritage
zones to preserve natural and cultural diversity.

These do indeed constitute “a force that posits inviolability without signifcant

military backing and pursues its case through rational and responsible argumentation.”

Notes
1 For an excellent critique of sacred forests as a problematic feld of study, see Dove et al. (2011).
2 We seek to enhance the theoretical efcacy of political ecology by using ancient Greek terms
to deconstruct and reclaim the English words “ecology,” “economics,” “politics,” and “cos-
mology.” We hope that our readers will not view the use of Greek signifers as yet another
egregious example of Orientalism. To this end, we note that within the troika of oikos, polis,
and cosmos, the frst two have close relatives in Sanskrit. Visah (house) and vit (dwelling,
house, settlement) are related to oikos. Pur, puram, and purah (city, citadel) are related to polis.
3 The idioanthropic qualities of human habitat construction comprise the future defnition
and necessary guiding principles of the discipline of economics if it is to contribute to
ending anthropogenic scarcity and establishing global ecological justice.
4 The epigraphic quote from the Bhagavad Purana exemplifes Vedic cosmology—the sacred
qualities of trees, waters, and groves are depicted as analogues for universal Dharma (spiritual
conduct) in accord with Rta (cosmic order) rather than the property of a specifc genius loci.
5 China’s campaign of the same name (Shengtai Wenming 生态文明) includes elements of
environmental authoritarianism that we reject. Still, we hope that the term, and many of
the principles, may be recouped to engender a vibrant demos.

References
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Management.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 4(10): 519–524.
Coggins, Chris. 2020. “Sacred Watersheds and the Fate of the Village Body Politic in Tibetan
and Han Communities Under China’s Ecological Civilization.” Religions, 10(11): 600.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110600.
10 Chris Coggins and Bixia Chen
De la Cadena, Marisol, and Mario Blaser. 2018. A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press.
Dove, Michael, Percy E. Sajise, and Amity A. Doolittle. 2011. Beyond the Sacred Forest: Com-
plicating Conservation in Southeast Asia. Durham: Duke University Press.
Duara, Prasenjit. 2015. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holbraad, Martin, and Morten Axel Pedersen. 2017. The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological
Exposition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Merino, Roger. 2018. “Reimagining the Nation-State: Indigenous Peoples and the Making
of Plurinationalism in Latin America.” Leiden Journal of International Law, 31(4): 773–792.
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of-geontopower/
Ramakrishnan, P. S., K. G. Saxena, and U. M. Chandrashekara. 1998. Conserving the Sacred
for Biodiversity Management. Enfeld, NH: Science Publishers.
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Blackwell.
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Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Scott, James C. 2017. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Sheridan, Michael, and Celia Nyamweru (Eds.). 2008. African Sacred Groves: Ecological
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Verschuuren, Bas, and Naoya Furuta. 2016. Asian Sacred Natural Sites: Philosophy and Practice
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Keynote Speech, East Asian Federation of Ecological Societies (8th EAFES), April 21.
Part 1

South Asia
South Asia—Sacred Forests and
Human-Environment Relations
Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins

Goddess of wild and forest who seemest to vanish from the sight.
How is it that thou seekest not the village? Art thou not afraid?
...
Now have I praised the Forest Queen, sweet-scented, redolent of balm,
The Mother of all sylvan things, who tills not but hath stores of food.
(Rig Veda, Aranyani Suktam, 1700–1000 BCE)

Precolonial South Asia—Polities, Cosmologies,

and Sacred Forests
South Asia’s earliest state systems emerged in the Indus Valley around 3300 BCE
and further east in the Gangetic Plain following the formation of Indo-Aryan
Kingdoms in 1700 BCE.1 Vedic culture catalyzed dramatic socio-ecological
transformation throughout South Asia. Preceding the rise of grain-based urban
kingdoms, endogamous tribal groups practiced hunting and gathering, nomadic
pastoralism, shifting cultivation (widely known as jhum) or a mix of several
of these modes of resource use. Animist belief and practice involving myriad
place-based deities and spirits provided the cosmological foundation for the co-
existence of thousands of small, diverse, non-state polities. Ecological historians
contend that these groups were incorporated into the cosmology, ecology, and
polity of the Vedic system rather than displaced or destroyed by it. The class
system of Vedic culture was based on varna (class, type), which delineated four
primary occupation groups and their cosmopolitical status.2 This provided the
armature for the development of a vastly more complex system of jati (castes),
endogamous groups with their own jatidharma, “caste duties,” defning specifc
ecological-economic niches that appear to have helped conserve resources. As
Gadgil and Guha (1993: 88) state,

the basket-weaving community of the Kaikadis in Maharashtra did not use

the palmyra palm as a raw material . . . because it violated [their] jatidharma.
And the Baigas, a group of [swidden] cultivators in Central India, believed
that it was a sin to lacerate the breast of mother earth by plough cultiva-
tion. . . . Similarly, the Agarias, whose hereditary occupation was charcoal
DOI: 10.4324/9781003143680-3
14 Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins
iron-making, held all cultivation to be against their own jatidharma. . . .
Violations of caste duty were punished by the displeasure of other group
members in the village, and much more efectively by social sanctions . . .
enforced by the council of their own endogamous group.

As classes difered by jatidharma, they were seen as complementary aggregations.

Along with the protection of sacred groves, water sources, mountains, and other
sacred natural sites, jatidharma supported intricate socio-ecological relationships
between endogamous groups, ensuring temporal and occupational specializa-
tion. While there may indeed have been dynamic harmonies and signifcant
resilience in these systems, we should not imagine them as static and timeless
given the vicissitudes of larger-scale political and economic change (Guha
1999). Lines dividing supposedly endogamous castes and separating caste groups
and Adivasis (Hindi, endogamous “aboriginal” groups not subsumed within the
system of Varna) could be blurred in the course of regional socio-ecological
change. While forest dwellers are, to this day, often assumed to be Adivasis (now
legally known as Scheduled Tribes), Sumit Guha (1999: 199–200) suggests
that ethnogenesis may have been in part an adaptive response to competition
over woodland resources and territories, as well as a corollary of ecological
transformation.

Agrarian crises could bring refugees into [a woodland community’s] ter-

ritory and encourage the formation of a subordinate peasantry whose
surpluses contributed to the lordly leisure of the woodland warriors. An
ethnic mosaic would easily be transformed into an ethnic hierarchy. How-
ever, such processes in turn might hollow out the forest and attach it to
the sown, creating a new agrarian region or sub-region out of thicket and
swamp. Climatic fuctuation or political collapse could once again bring
thorn jungle or tree forest to cover abandoned felds and ruined cities.

Within these dynamic and non-linear socio-ecological processes, precolonial

political ecologies of imperial South Asia can be characterized as “paths of
selective incorporation” that contrast with the “paths of extermination” that
characterize both the spread of Christendom in Europe and European settler
colonial conquests in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond (Gad-
gil and Guha 1993: 91). In cosmological tandem with this political ecology,
spiritual ecologies within Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism to a large degree,
and within Islam in certain ways as well, demonstrate what Duara (2015: 6)
calls “dialogical transcendence,” which “permits coexistence of diferent levels
and expressions of truth.” With the spread of Vedic culture throughout South
Asia, the diverse cosmologies encompassed by the many evolving traditions of
Hinduism readily incorporated or accommodated existing cosmolo-ecologies,
with their essential sacred natural sites spanning a tremendous range of geo-
graphic scales. For instance, the Ganges River is worshiped as Ganga, the only
Goddess to descend to earth permanently, originating from the toe of Vishnu,
 South Asia—Sacred Forests 15
passing through the hand pot (Kamandal) of Brahma, the hairs of Shiva, and
the bodies of seers. In fact, all rivers and their points of origin and hot springs
are considered sacred and worshipped in diferent forms. Sacred rivers, lakes,
mountain ranges, and coastal zones are numerous throughout South Asia; in
India they include, inter alia, the rivers Yamuna, Narmada, Godavari, and
Kaveri; the lakes Chandratal, Naini, and Renuka; the mountain peaks Nanda
Devi, Hariyali Devi, Trishul, Kailash, Kinnar, Mansa Devi, and Tirumala; and
the coastal areas Dwarka, Puri, Rameshwaram, and Ganga Sagar. These are still
considered sacred sites and pilgrimage areas for Hindus. Thus natural phenom-
ena and wild areas, ranging from small, simple forms, such as a single tree, to
large, complex forms, such as forests, alpine regions, and the Ganges Basin itself,
are manifestations of the superhuman subjects who are the very originators of
Hindu philosophy and religion. Similarly, Indian kings (Rajas) set aside forests to
sages and seers for their own intellectual exercises, spiritual guidance, education,
and training. Some forests were designated as abhayaranya (no war land), sanc-
tuaries where deforestation or forest degradation due to war was ruled out and
which provided opportunities for rejuvenation of friendship between enemies
through discussions. Some forests were recognized for their immense potential
for securing extraordinary wealth, while some were recognized as the dwelling
places of superhuman powers (Table ISA.1).

Table ISA.1 Sacred forests described in Hindu epics and mythology (Source: Based on
Saraswati 1998).

Name in epics Description/functions Ecological features

and mythology

Abhayaranya “Forests Where War Forbidden”: refuge Not impenetrable, not dense
of wisdom and peace for sages and
students of higher learning, including
princes and renunciates
Tapovan “Penance Forests” where hermits, monks, Not impenetrable, not dense
and recluses engaged in spiritual practice
Mahavana “Great Forests” where Shiva, the god of Impenetrable, highly dense,
fearlessness, resides pristine
Srivana “Prosperity Forests” surrounding Commonly surround Adivasi
settlements, contributing to their prosperity settlements; diferent stages of
succession
Devavana “Deity Forests” where deities reside; not Sacred groves generally
related to profts or loss to people undisturbed
Vrindavan “Sacred Basil Forest”: a forest where Lord Riverine and food plain
Krishna dwelled and basil is a sacrament forests with high pastoral
values
Badri Van “Berry Forest” found in Himalaya, the Alpine forests and temperate
abode of Vishnu forests
Nimisaranya “Forest Free of Demons” by Vishnu, Alluvial food plain forests
explained the Vedas over thousands of years
16 Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins
Our case studies from India, Pakistan, and Bhutan provide brilliant examples
of syncretism, accommodation, contestation, and reterritorialization that play
out in the landscapes in and around sacred forests on a daily basis. These include
forms of Buddhicization and Islamization, as well as more dialogical cross-fer-
tilizing processes in which enduring local traditions infuence the three “Great
Traditions.”

Colonial and Postcolonial Transformation—State Control

of Forest Resources
British colonial imperialism was in many senses antithetical to indigenous cos-
mological, ecological, and political precepts and practices of life in precolonial
South Asia. Our case studies provide insights into the calamity of British colonial
forestry as the dismemberment of ancient and intricate sylvan socio-ecologies,
but they also illustrate the resilience of cosmo-ecologies that persevere in fea-
tures such as sacred groves, rivers, and lakes. The Indian Forest Acts of 1865,
1878, and 1927 imposed a hegemonic system of German forestry in order to
maximize state capital accumulation through “a great simplifcation of the for-
est into a ‘one-commodity machine’” (Scott 1998: 19). The clear-cutting of
vast forestlands not only yielded teak for imperial shipbuilding but also fuel and
sleepers for the world’s largest colonial railway network, spanning 37,000 miles
by 1921 (Sivaramakrishnan 1995). Deforestation simultaneously opened new
agricultural lands whose proprietors were subject to taxation. Implementation of
the forest acts reduced village forest commons into Reserved Forests, Protected
Forests, and Village Forests (the last of these radically diminished and subject to
colonial control). Colonial administrators converted millions of acres of tropical
and subtropical moist and dry forests into monoculture plantations of sal, teak,
deodar, sandal, rubber, tea, cofee, and spices. Many swidden cultivators were
sedentarized and induced to end “slash and burn” practices. In short, the colo-
nial political economy combined resource exploitation (mining, deforestation,
plantation agriculture) with the development of transportation infrastructure
(roads, railroads, canals) and the radical reconfguration of hydrological systems
(D’Souza 2016). This assemblage of industrial resource expropriation radically
disrupted rural livelihoods and cultural ecology while destabilizing traditional
ecological knowledge and values (Gadgil and Guha 1993; Gadgil 2018).
With the end of British India in 1947 and its partition into West Pakistan (now
Pakistan), India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Burma (now Myanmar), and
Sri Lanka, post-colonial governments continued to follow similar forest policies
(Sivaramakrishnan 1999, 2002, 2006). India’s National Forest Policy of 1952 and
the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 maintained state control over large-scale for-
est planning and prioritized the rights of corporations (Gadgil and Guha 1993).
Deforestation, conversion to permanent farmlands, urbanization, and industrial-
ization accelerated the long-term clearance that had begun in the Indo-Gangetic
Plain early in South Asian history and spread south. Today, extensive forest tracts
remain mostly in higher-elevation zones or in less accessible areas such as the
mangroves of the Sundarbans (Figure ISA.1 and Table ISA.2).
 South Asia—Sacred Forests 17

Figure ISA.1 Land cover in South Asia in 2015 based on Landsat and other remote sensing
data (GFW 2021; Hansen et al. 2013; Afghanistan not shown). In 2010, India
had 31.3 million hectares of natural forest, covering 11% of its land area. In
2019, it lost 115 thousand hectares of natural forest, equivalent to 43.5 million
metric tons of CO₂ of emissions. See Table ISA.1 for national comparisons.

Table ISA.2 Natural forest cover or tree cover including plantations (2010), recent one-year
losses (2019), and CO2 equivalent for selected countries of South Asia (Source:
GFW 2021). Natural forest or tree cover gains and losses cannot be compared
due to diferent data collection methods.

Country Natural forest cover and Total tree cover loss in Emissions from biomass loss
percentage of land area (2010) 2019 in 2019 (CO2 equivalent)

Afghanistan 71.8kha (0.11%)* 17.1ha* ND

Bangladesh 2.22Mha (16%) 22.1kha 8.19Mt
Bhutan 648kha (65%)* 820ha* 346kt
India 31.3 Mha (9.9%) 121 kha 45.6 Mt
Nepal 4.80Mha (33%) 2.08kha 913kt
Pakistan 648kha (0.74%)* 81.2ha* 24.8kt
Sri Lanka 3.53Mha (54%) 10.3kha 2.80Mt
* These fgures represent tree cover, including plantations; in these cases, natural forest cover fgures would
be less and data are not available.
18 Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins
As forest areas continued to decline, sacred forests sufered the same fate, but
there is no systematic quantitative data refecting the extent of these losses over
large areas. In the absence of any systematic monitoring, quantitative assess-
ments of regional losses and gains in the number and extent of sacred groves
are not possible. The national forest cover monitoring conducted by the Forest
Survey of India, for instance, is based on satellite data with a spatial resolution of
23.5 m and a minimum mappable unit of 1 ha, which is not designed to discern
spatio-temporal dynamics of sacred forests. These forests are also not treated as
a separate land use category in village-level censuses, surveys, or detailed forest
management maps. On the other hand, abundant descriptive and qualitative
data show that during the colonial and postcolonial periods, the decline in
number, area, and ecological conditions of sacred forests in India has exceeded
their expansion or enhancement.
Several factors account for this problem. First, sacred forests were not
treated as a distinct class of land when all uncultivated lands were taken over
and classifed as forest and wasteland by the colonial regime during the late
19th century. This resulted in the inclusion of sacred groves in the Reserved
and Protected Forests administered by the Forest Department or in the Civil
Forests by the Revenue Department. Since most sacred forests were locally
valued and the government departments hired outsiders with diferent cul-
tural and religious values to assess the silvicultural value of forest areas based
on felling parameters and the timber trade, sacred forests contiguous with
more commercially valuable stands sufered overexploitation, more so when
they were rich in timber species. Local communities, deprived of political
power, remained mute spectators of this onslaught until the 1970s, when
the government banned many of the activities of its own agencies, includ-
ing the conversion of natural forests and the felling of live trees in the hills.
This was due partly to the pressure of the global community to promote the
conservation, restoration, and management of forests to serve the interests
of the communities and to provide global benefts. It was also due in part
to active political resistance on the part of local communities and their allies
against the exploitation of resources that had been managed for the beneft of
industries and national development. Second, the integration of isolated com-
munities into the mainstream and the transition from subsistence to a market
economy altered community value systems that had long protected forest
commons. The use values and tangible benefts (including commodity values
and associated income) of forests overshadowed non-use values and intan-
gible benefts, in many cases replacing the original concept of the sacredness
of the forests, trees, other plants, organisms, and more. These changes were
concomitant with a higher value placed on idols and icons within the forests
(see Kent this volume). Third, sacred groves owned by individual families
sufered fragmentation due to increasing preferences for nuclear families over
traditional extended families and consequently the loss of property division
that followed Hindu inheritance laws and indigenous customs. Fourth, some
policies directly undermined traditional forest conservation, such as those
 South Asia—Sacred Forests 19
promoting the supply of substitutes for forest based goods and services at
subsidized prices. This included cooking gas or kerosene replacing fuelwood,
chemical fertilizers serving the functions of manure generated from forest leaf
litter and excreta of livestock that fed on forest fodder, modern health facilities
replacing forest resource-based local healthcare, and the supply of drinking
and irrigation water from sources other than the traditional ones recharged by
forests. The government did promote organic farming and non-timber forest
product-based enterprises, which necessitated conservation and sustainable
use of forest resources, but not to the extent of the interventions that did not
depend on forest resources (Maikhuri et al. 2015; Rao et al. 2016).
In India, the most dramatic attempt to reverse these trends came with the
Forest Rights Act of 2006 [formally entitled “The Scheduled Tribes and Other
Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006”], which
recognizes 1) individual forest rights (IFRs) to cultivate and settle; 2) commu-
nity usufruct rights to forest resources such as frewood, grazing, non-timber
forest products, water bodies, fsh, and utilization of traditional ecological
knowledge; 3) rights to use community forest resources (CFRs) within tradi-
tional village boundaries; and 4) the empowerment of individual rights hold-
ers or village councils to implement forest, wildlife, biodiversity and cultural
conservation. As of 2017, only about 8% of the potential area for CFR rights
recognition (2.7 out of 35.6 million acres) was achieved (Kumar et al. 2017), but
there remains great potential for either innovative community-based conserva-
tion or poorly managed forest and ecosystem degradation. Of the many serious
challenges remaining, we highlight two: state fnancial support for community
forestry, including restoration of degraded and conservation of intact forests, has
been too low to mobilize whole-hearted community and familial participation.
Traditional forest knowledge and institutional structures are quite efcient for
the conservation of intact forests meeting subsistence needs but not in restoring
degraded forests and sustainable income generation from forest products. There
are no efective rewards for voluntary restoration or penalties for deforestation
or forest degradation. Community participation in forest management is gain-
ing increasing recognition in national forest policies, but the actions prioritize
shifting the rights and responsibilities of management from government agen-
cies to local communities rather than the scientifc enhancement of indigenous
knowledge and the local capacity for the storage, value addition, and marketing
of forest products. Directly related to this problem is the fact that rural people
are not fully aware of the new opportunities to earn income from conserving
and enhancing forest carbon stocks provided in the UN Programme on Reduc-
ing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) estab-
lished in 2008. At the same time, the national governments in South Asia have
not yet clarifed and informed local people as to how funds received under such
programs would be shared between diferent stakeholders. While some critics
will warn of the commodifcation of more-than-human landscapes entailed in
such policies, they may be an efcacious measure in the course of building a
clear and durable path to ecological justice.
20 Krishna Gopal Saxena and Chris Coggins
South Asia’s Sacred Forests Today
Our chapters on South Asia’s sacred forests address these matters in great detail.
Eliza F. Kent’s research in Tamil Nadu challenges the assumption that Sanskri-
tization (the intentional domination of local religious practices by Hinduism) is
the primary cause of ecological decline in sacred groves. She shows, rather, that
neo-liberal anxieties within the precarious middle class are a more important
factor, fueling the rise of ostentatious temple construction at the expense of
trees and forests.
Radhika Borde’s work with three Adivasi groups in Jharkhand and Odi-
sha shows how sacred groves emplace global discourse on climate change,
biodiversity conservation, and indigenous rights, catalyzing ecological and
ethno-nationalist movements. In Jharkhand’s Sarna movement, sacred groves
serve as ethno-national symbols and cosmopolitical ritual sites. Possession by
the forest spirit, Sarna Mata, empowers Oraon women ritually and politically.
The Santhals gain similar power by hosting the Lugu Buru pilgrimage to a for-
mer spiritual university within a hilltop forest. Similarly, the Dongaria Khond
sacralization of Niyamgiri Mountain fortifes their struggle against a UK-based
corporation threatening their homeland with bauxite strip mining.
Mukul Sharma’s work on Sarnaism in Jharkhand highlights several prob-
lematic contradictions accompanying the reinvention of sacred groves, includ-
ing their severely degraded ecological state and their role in exacerbating the
social exclusion of Dalits. He traces the history of “sacredness” in Sarnaism and
how tribal religion defnes Jharkhand today, highlighting conficts over power,
authority, ownership, and caste. Sharma calls for Sarnaism to seek new sacrali-
ties within landscapes, beliefs, and practices, ensuring the capacity to hold “a
place for all” and raising questions about the horizons of Jharkhand’s indigenous
cosmopolitics.
Shruti Mokashi’s research on the conservation prospects for sacred forests
in and near the Bhimashankar Wildlife sanctuary of Maharashtra explores the
meanings and beliefs attributed to them by the local Mahadev Koli. She shows
that conceptions of the groves change through time. Reverence for Vandev
(Forest God) guides rules and taboos regulating tree cutting, hunting, and
extraction. Biodiversity is a byproduct of local cosmo-ecology that mandates
sustainable resource use. Still, ascriptions of transcendent value to sacred groves
difer across generations—youth view forests as ecological assemblages, under-
scoring the dynamism of oikos, polis, and cosmos and how they afect the
socio-ecology of sacred forests.
Prithibi Pratibha Gogoi describes sacred forested spaces known as Daikho,
practiced by the Dimasa, swidden practitioners of northeast India. Taboos sur-
rounding these sacred natural sites forbid females from entering; the Daikho are
exclusively male ritual spaces. In Dimasa cosmology, land is not a homogeneous
surface but a segmented space demarcating the sacred and the everyday. The
Dimasa’s unique mode of double lineage descent constitutes the cosmological
foundation of their socio-ecological relationships.
 South Asia—Sacred Forests 21
Abdullah, Khan, Haq, and Ahmad provide an ethnobotanical study of plant
diversity, ecosystem services, and species conservation in Muslim graveyards
of the Pashtun culture region along the Afghan border in Northwest Paki-
stan. Among the least disturbed areas within the region’s human-dominated
landscapes, graveyards help conserve biodiversity while protecting religious,
spiritual, and cultural plant species. Culturally important trees, shrubs, and
herbaceous plants provide medicinal, nutritional, symbolic, and other socio-
ecological services while helping prevent calamities caused by soil erosion,
fre, deforestation, high winds, invasive species, and more. The authors call for
conservation measures involving community participation.
Elizabeth Allison describes the deity citadels (pho brang), including sacred
groves, in the high Himalaya of eastern Bhutan—sites of bio-cultural resistance
and resilience that ground spiritual beliefs in the landscape. Sanctifying the
landscape empowers Bhutanese communities to sustain their own relational
ontology in the face of hegemonic development norms. Sacred groves rich
in deciduous broadleaf species provide ecological refugia for other fora and
fauna while also serving a wide variety of local needs for food, fodder, and fuel.
Allison’s case study exemplifes the remarkable ways in which Himalayan com-
munities draw on traditions involving the strong integration of oikos, polis, and
cosmos as a means to safeguard people and their lands from potential devastation
by the infrastructures of global neoliberalism.

Notes
1 The eight countries of South Asia are Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Ban-
gladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.
2 Varna (“type,” “order,” “color,” or class”) comprises four groups—Brahmins (priests,
scholars, teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers, warriors, administrators), Vaishyas (agriculturalists,
merchants), and Shudras (“low grade” manual service providers). A “ffth varna,” once
called “Panchamas” (“ffth ones”) or “untouchables,” and now known as Dalits (“the scat-
tered, broken), encompasses diverse groups once deemed polluted, and thus outside of
the varna system. They were spatially excluded from everyday sites and practices of food
production and consumption, movement, education, worship, and public water sources
such as springs, ponds, and wells. See Sharma (Chapter 2 this volume) on ways in which
social exclusion can be perpetuated through the cultural revitalization of sacred groves.

References
D’Souza, Rohan. 2016. Drowned and Dammed: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern
India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duara, Prasenjit. 2015. The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadgil, Madhav. 2018. “Sacred Groves: An Ancient Tradition of Nature Conservation
Scientifc American.” Scientifc American. https://www.scientifcamerican.com/author/
madhav-gadgil/
Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. 1993. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of
India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the land of the
lion and sun, or, modern Persia
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: In the land of the lion and sun, or, modern Persia
Being experiences of life in Persia from 1866 to 1881

Author: C. J. Wills

Release date: November 14, 2023 [eBook #72128]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1891

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE LAND

OF THE LION AND SUN, OR, MODERN PERSIA ***
 IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN.
 The Minerva Library.
1. Darwin’s Journal in the “Beagle.”
2. The Ingoldsby Legends.
3. Borrow’s Bible in Spain.
4. Emerson’s Prose Works.
5. Galton’s Tropical South Africa.
6. Manzoni’s The Betrothed Lovers.
7. Goethe’s Faust (Complete). Bayard Taylor.
8. Wallace’s Travels on the Amazon.
9. Dean Stanley’s Life of Dr. Arnold.
10. Poe’s Tales.
11. Comedies by Molière.
12. Forster’s Life of Goldsmith.
13. Lane’s Modern Egyptians.
14. Torrens’ Life of Melbourne.
15. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.
16. Barth’s Travels in Africa.
17. Victor Hugo: Select Poems, &c.
18. Darwin’s Coral Reefs, &c.
19. Lockhart’s Life of Robert Burns.
20. Barth’s Travels in Africa (II.)
21. Lyra Elegantiarum. Locker-Lampson.
22. Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, &c.
23. Life and Letters of Franklin.
24. Beckford’s Vathek, and Travels.
25. Macaulay’s Historical and Literary Essays.
26. Yonge’s Life of Wellington.
27. Carlyle’s French Revolution.
28. Wills’ Land of the Lion and Sun.

London: WARD, LOCK & CO.

 SOLOMON IN ALL HIS GLORY.

(From a Native Drawing.)

IN THE
LAND OF THE LION AND SUN,
OR
MODERN PERSIA.

BEING EXPERIENCES OF LIFE IN PERSIA FROM

1866 TO 1881.
ILLUSTRATED BY FULL-PAGE PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
AND FROM
NATIVE DRAWINGS.

BY
C. J. WILLS, M.D.,
LATE ONE OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HER MAJESTY’S TELEGRAPH
DEPARTMENT IN PERSIA.

THE ARMS OF PERSIA

(from the Teheran Gazette).

NEW EDITION.

WARD, LOCK AND Co.,

LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE,
1891.
The right of translation is reserved.
 EDITORIAL NOTE.
The author of the Land of the Lion and Sun may claim an
exceptional degree of credit for his book on one of the most
interesting countries in the world; for he derived his knowledge not
merely from a journey through the country, but from a sufficiently
prolonged residence to make him thoroughly at home with the
people, and to understand their inner life. The Times, on its first
appearance in 1883, characterized it as probably the most amusing
book of travel that had been published in recent years. The author’s
profession gave him access to the personality of the people to a
marked extent, giving origin to many of the amusing anecdotes
referred to. The verdict of the Times was endorsed by very many
journals. Nature described the anecdotes as “distinguished by three
cardinal virtues: they are characteristic, they are well told, and they
are infinitely varied.”
Since his return to England, Dr. Wills has become well known as a
novelist and writer of short stories, which he has contributed to most
of the leading magazines and society journals. His novels, some of
which have been written in collaboration with Mr. F. C. Philips, have
been widely read and highly appreciated.
The illustrations, on separate plates, appear here for the first time.
They are reproduced from native drawings, and from Dr. Wills’s
photographs and drawings.
G. T. B.

TO
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR F. J. GOLDSMID,
C.B., K.C.S.I.,

FORMERLY DIRECTOR IN CHIEF OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN

 GOVERNMENT TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENT,

SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF THE

PERSIAN FRONTIER,

This Book is Dedicated,

WITH AFFECTIONATE ESTEEM, IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY

KINDNESSES,

BY HIS MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.
 PREFACE.
My reason for calling my book ‘The Land of the Lion and Sun’ is
that the Lion and Sun are the national emblems of Persia, while the
second title alone, ‘Modern Persia,’ would have suggested an
exhaustive and elaborate array of matter which is beyond the scope
of this work.
In a personal narrative, it is necessary to use a good many I’s; and
to avoid being obscure, I fear I have been at times over minute, but I
have preferred this to the risk of giving a false impression.
I have striven to describe life in Persia as I saw it, not
exaggerating or softening anything, but speaking of Persia as it is.
The whole narrative may be considered as a record of life in an out-
of-the-way corner of the world; and the reader being left to make his
own reflections, is not troubled with mine.
Usually no names are given, save of those of the dead, or public
men.
The important subject of our fast-dying commerce with Persia, and
the means of really opening the country, I have relegated to an
Appendix.[1]
As to the spelling and transliteration of Persian words used, it is
not classical, it does not pretend to be; but it will convey to the
ordinary reader the local pronunciation of the colloquial; and the
reader not knowing anything of Oriental languages is troubled very
seldom with accents and (apparently) unpronounceable words. Thus
Mūnshi is spelt Moonshee, as that gives the exact sound: ū is often
used to avoid the barbarous appearance of oo. Of course there is no
C in Persian; still as, from habit, we write Calcutta and not Kalkutta,
so some words, like Cah, that use has rendered common, are
inserted under C and K. I think that all that is required is, that the
ordinary English reader shall pronounce the words not too
incorrectly; and it is only when a work is philological that accuracy in
transliteration is of any real importance. With this end in view, I have
tried so to spell Persian words that by following ordinary rules, the
general reader may not be very wide of the mark. To avoid continual
explanation I have added a Glossary, with a correct transliteration. I
have to gratefully acknowledge the valuable help of Mr. Guy le
Strange in correcting this Glossary, and kindly favouring me with the
transliteration according to the system adopted by Johnson, in
several cases in which that author has not noted words, &c.
Oriental Club,
Hanover Square.
 CONTENTS.
PAGE

CHAPTER I.
I GO TO PERSIA.
Wanted a doctor—The Director-in-chief—Doubt and distrust
—Simple advice—Am referred to ‘Hadji Baba’—My kit—
Saddle for riding post—Vienna—Rustchuk—Quarantine
—Galatz—Kustendji—Constantinople—Turkish ladies—
Stamboul—I have my hair cut—“Karagews”—Turkish
coffee—A philo-Turk—Shooting party—The theatres—
The Opera—Armenian theatre—Gambling house—A
Bashi-bazouk—We leave, viâ the Black Sea—The
Russian captain—Unarmed vessels—White Crimean
wine—Foreign wines in Russia—Deck passengers—
Sinope—Batoum—Poti—The post-house—Difficulty in
getting food—Travelling en tröika—Kutais—A tarantass
—Apply for horses—An itching palm—We start—Tiflis—
Lecoq’s beer—A happy reprieve—The joys of travel—
Chief of the Telegraph in Tiflis—Uniforms—Persian
Consulate—Coffee and pipes—Smoking, an art—Effects
on the tyro—Tea—The Consul—His age—Dyeing the
hair—The Opera, varied costumes at—The Tiflis ballet—
Leave Tiflis—Erivan—The Pass—We lighten our load—
Hotel—Washing—Nakchewan—Julfa, the frontier of
Persia 1
CHAPTER II.
POST JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL.
Preparations for the start—Costume—Chaff bed—First fall— 20
Extra luggage—The whip—Stages and their length—
Appearance of the country, and climate—First stage—
 Turk guides—Welcome rest—Weighing firewood—
Meana bug—Turcomanchai—Distances—New friends—
Palace of Kerrij
CHAPTER III.
TEHERAN.
Teheran—The Director’s house—Persian visits—Etiquette—
Pipes, details of—Tumbakū—Ceremony—Anecdote—
The voice of the sluggard—Persian medicine explained
—My prospects as a medico—Zoological Gardens 28
CHAPTER IV.
TEHERAN.
The Gulhaek Road—Visit to a virtuoso—His story—Persian
New Year—Persian ladies—Titles—The harem—Its
inhabitants—A eunuch—Lovely visions—The Dervish—
The great festival—Miscellaneous uniform—At the Court
of Persia—The Shah—The ceremony—Baksheesh—
Rejoicings 36
CHAPTER V.
HAMADAN.
Start for Hamadan—Bedding—Luggage makes the man—
Stages—Meet Pierson—Istikhbals—Badraghah—
Pierson’s house—Hamadan wine—Mode of storing it—
My horses—Abu Saif Mirza—His stratagem—
Disinterested services—Persian logic—Pierson’s horse’s
death—Horses put through their paces—I buy Salts and
Senna—The prince’s opinion—Money table—Edict 54
CHAPTER VI.
HAMADAN.
Morning rides—Engage servants—Dispensary—A bear- 64
garden—Odd complaints—My servants get rich—
Modakel—The distinction between picking and stealing
—Servants—Their pay—Vails—Hakim Bashi—Delleh—
 Quinine—Discipline—I commence the cornet—The
result of rivalry—Syud Houssein—Armenians—Cavalry
officer—Claim to sanctity of the Armenians—Their
position in the country—Jews
CHAPTER VII.
HAMADAN.
Tomb of Esther and Mordecai—Spurious coins—Treasure-
finding—Interest—A gunge—Oppression—A cautious
finder—Yari Khan—We become treasure-seekers—We
find—Our cook—Toffee—Pole-buying—Modakel—I am
nearly caught—A mad dog—Rioters punished—Murder
of the innocents 75
CHAPTER VIII.
HAMADAN.
Antelope—Hunting and hawking—Shooting from the saddle
—Thief-catching—The prince offers his services as
head-servant—Our hunting party—The prince takes the
honours—Kabobs—A provincial grandee—His stud—
Quail-shooting—A relative of the king—Persian dinner—
Musicians and singers—Parlour magic—The anderūn—
Cucumber-jam—Persian home-life—Grateful Armenians
—Lizards—Talking lark—Pigeon-flying—Fantails—
Pigeons’ ornaments—Immorality of pigeon-flying—Card-
playing—Chess—Games—Wrestling—Pehliwans—
Gymnastics 84
CHAPTER IX.
KERMANSHAH.
Leave for Kermanshah, marching—Detail of arrangements— 100
Horse-feeding—Peculiar way of bedding horses—Barley
—Grape-feeding—On grass—Nawalla—Colt, anecdote
of—Horses, various breeds of—Turkomans—Karabagh
—Ispahan cobs—Gulf Arabs—Arabs—Rise in price of
horses—Road cooking—Kangawar temple—Double
snipe—Tents—Kara-Su River—Susmanis—Sana—
 Besitūn—Sir H. Rawlinson—Agha Hassan—Istikhbal—
Kermanshah—As we turn in another turns out—
Armenians—Their reason for apostatising—Presents of
sweetmeats
CHAPTER X.
KERMANSHAH.
Kermanshah—Imād-u-dowlet—We visit him—Signs of his
wealth—Man nailed to a post—Injuring the wire—
Serrum-u-dowlet—Visits—We dine with the son of the
Governor—His decorations and nightingales—Dancing
girls—Various dances—The belly dance—Heavy dinner
—Turf—Wild geese—The swamp—A ducking through
obstinacy—Imādieh—Wealth of the Imād-u-dowlet—The
Shah loots him—Squeezing—Rock sculptures—
Astrologers—Astrolabes—Fortune-telling—Rammals—
Detection of thieves—Honesty of servants—Thefts
through pique—My lost pipe-head—Tragedy of two
women 112
CHAPTER XI.
I GO TO ISPAHAN.
Deficiency of furniture—Novel screws—Pseudo-masonry—
Fate of the Imād-u-dowlet’s son—House-building—
Kerind—New horse—Mule-buying—Start for Ispahan—
Kanaats—Curious accident—Fish in kanaats—Loss of a
dog—Pigeons—Pigeon-towers—Alarm of robbers—Put
up in a mosque—Armenian village—Armenian villagers
—Travellers’ law—Tax-man at Dehbeed—Ispahan—The
bridge—Julfa 123
CHAPTER XII.
JULFA.
Illness and death of horse—Groom takes sanctuary— 136
Sharpness of Armenians—Julfa houses—Kūrsis—
Priests—Arachnoort—Monastery—Nunnery—Call to
prayer—Girls’ school—Ancient language of the
 Scriptures—Ignorance of priests—Liquor traffic—Sunday
market—Loafers—Turkeys—Church Missionary school
—Armenian schools
CHAPTER XIII.
ISPAHAN.
Prince’s physician—Visit the Prince-Governor—Justice—The
bastinado—Its effects—The doctor’s difficulties—Carpets
—Aniline dyes—How to choose—Varieties—Nammad—
Felt coats—Bad water—Baabis—A tragedy—The
prince’s view 145
CHAPTER XIV.
JULFA AND ISPAHAN.
Julfa cathedral—The campanile—The monk—Gez—
Kishmish wine—The bishop—The church—Its
decorations—The day of judgment—The cemetery—
Establishment of the Armenian captives in Julfa—Lost
arts—Armenian artificers—Graves—Story of Rodolphe—
Coffee-house—Tombstone bridges—Nunnery—Schools
—Medical missionary—Church Missionary establishment
—The Lazarist Fathers 157
CHAPTER XV.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Tame gazelle—Croquet-lawn under difficulties—Wild 167
asparagus—First-fruits—Common fruits—Mode of
preparing dried fruits—Ordinary vegetables of Persia—
Wild rhubarb—Potatoes a comparative novelty—Ispahan
quinces: their fragrance—Bamiah—Grapes, Numerous
varieties of—At times used as horse-feed—Grape-sugar
—Pickles—Fruits an ordinary food—Curdled milk—Mode
of obtaining cream—Buttermilk—Economy of the middle
or trading classes—Tale of the phantom cheese—
Common flowers—Painting the lily—Lilium candidum—
Wild flowers—The crops—Poppies—Collecting opium—
 Manuring—Barley—Wheat—Minor crops—Mode of
extracting grain—Cut straw: its uses—Irrigation
CHAPTER XVI.
ISPAHAN AND ITS ENVIRONS.
Pig-sticking expedition—Ducks not tame, but wild—Ruined
mosque with tile inscription—Ancient watch-towers—The
hunting-ground—Beaters—We sight the pig—Our first
victims—The bold Gholam—Our success—Pig’s flesh—
A present of pork—How Persians can be managed—
Opium—Adulteration—Collection and preparation—
Packing—Manœuvres of the native maker—Opium-
eating—Moderate use by aged Persians—My dispensary
over the prison—I shift my quarters—Practice in the
bazaar—An ungrateful baker—Sealing in lieu of signing
—Seals—Wisdom of a village judge 176
CHAPTER XVII.
ISPAHAN.
Cost of living—Servants—Our expenses—Price of provisions
—Bargains—Crying off—Trade credits—Merchants—
Civil suits—Bribery—Shopkeepers—Handicrafts—
Damascening—Shoemakers—Other trades—Bankers—
An Ispahani’s estimate of the honesty of his fellow-
townsmen 186
CHAPTER XVIII.
ISPAHAN.
Daily round—The river—Calico-rinsers—Worn-out mules and 193
horses—Mode of treating the printed calico—Imitations
of marks on T-cloths—Rise of the waters of the Zend-a-
Rūd—Pul-i-Kojū—Char Bagh—Plane-trees—The college
—Silver doors—Tiled halls and mosque—Pulpit—Boorio
—Hassir—Sleepers in the mosque—Cells of the
students—Ispahan priests—Telegraph-office—Tanks—
Causeways—Gate of royal garden—Governor’s garden
—Courtiers and hangers-on—Prisoners—Priests—The
 Imām-i-Juma—My dispensary—Ruined bazaar—A day
in the town—Bazaar breakfasts—Calico-printing—
Painters—The maker of antiquities—Jade teapot—Visit
to the Baabis—Hakim-bashi—Horse-market—The
“Dar”—Executions—Ordinary—Blowing from guns—A
girl trampled to death—Dying twice—Blowing from a
mortar—Wholesale walling up alive—A narrow escape
from, and horrible miscarriage in carrying it out—Burning
alive—Crucifixions—Severity: its results
CHAPTER XIX.
MY JOURNEY HOME AND MARCH TO SHIRAZ.
Julfa quarters—Buy a freehold house—I ornament, and make
it comfortable—Become ill—Apply for sick leave—Start
marching—Telegram—Begin to post—Reach Teheran—
Obtain leave—Difficulty at Kasvin—Punishment of the
postmaster—Catch and pass the courier—Horses knock
up—Wild beasts—Light a fire—Grateful rest—Arrive at
Resht—Swamp to Peri-Bazaar—Boat—Steamer—
Moscow—Opera—Ballet—Arrive in England—Start
again for Persia—Journey viâ Constantinople—
Trebizonde—Courier—Snow—Swollen eyes—Detail of
journey from Erzeroum to Teheran—The races—Ispahan
—Leave for Shiraz—Persian companions—Road-beetles
—Mole crickets—Lizards—Animals and birds—The road
to Shiraz—Ussher’s description—Meana bug legend
again 206
CHAPTER XX.
SHIRAZ.
Entry into Shiraz—Gaiety of Shirazis of both sexes—Public 218
promenade—Different from the rest of Persians—Shiraz
wine—Early lamb—Weights: their variety—Steelyards—
Local custom of weighing—Wetting grass—Game—Wild
animals—Buildings—Ornamental brickwork—Orange-
trees—Fruits in bazaar—Type of ancient Persian—
Ladies’ dress—Fondness for music—Picnics—Warmth
 of climate—Diseases—The traveller Stanley—His
magazine rifle and my landlord’s chimney—Cholera—
Great mortality—We march out and camp—Mysterious
occurrence—Life in a garden—The “Shitoor-gooloo”—
Bear and dog fight—The bear is killed
CHAPTER XXI.
SHIRAZ WINE-MAKING.
Buy grapes for wine-making—Difficulty in getting them to the
house—Wine-jars—Their preparation—Grapes rescued
and brought in—Treading the grapes—Fermentation—
Plunger-sticks—Varieties of Shiraz wine and their
production—Stirring the liquor—Clearing the wine—My
share, and its cost—Improvement by bottling—Wasps—
Carboys—Covering them—Native manner of packing—
Difficulties at custom-house—The Governor’s
photographic apparatus—Too many for me—A lūti-pūti 229
CHAPTER XXII.
SHIRAZ AND FUSSA.
Cheapness of ice—Variety of ices—Their size—Mode of
procuring ice—Water of Shiraz: its impurity—Camel-fight
—Mode of obtaining the combatants—Mode of securing
camels—Visit to Fussa—Mean-looking nag—His powers
—See the patient—State of the sick-room—Dinner sent
away—A second one arrives—A would-be room-fellow—
I provide him with a bedroom—Progress of the case—
Fertility of Fussa—Salt lake—End of the patient—Boat-
building—Dog-cart—Want of roads—Tarantulas—
Suicide of scorpions—Varieties—Experiment—Stings of
scorpions—The Nishan 240
CHAPTER XXIII.
SHIRAZ—THE FAMINE.
Approach of famine—Closing of shops—Rise in mule-hire— 251
Laying in of stores—Seizures of grain—Sale of goods by
poor—Immigrations of villagers to the towns—Desertions