Early Mathurā

Abstract

In this article certain established scholarly views about religious life in early Mathurā are put to the scrutiny of material and textual evidence brought together here in a new interpretive relationship. Maintaining that texts construct sacred geography by overlaying narrative and mythic associations on the physical features and spread of the terrain, this article first turns to the Harivaṃśa Purāṇa for its mythic depiction of Mathurā and the Vraja region and compares it with the scant references from the Divyāvadāna and Paumacariya, for their putatively Brahmanical and Buddhist–Jaina treatments of Mathurā, respectively. The article then draws attention to the paradox that while Buddhism and Jainism had a strong presence in the archaeological remains from early Mathurā, there does not appear to have been textual involvement with the city in these traditions like there is in the cult of Kṛṣṇa worship which, though relatively late in making an appearance among Mathurā’s ruins, comes to textually identify itself with the city and its environs. Is this paradox a function of different literary genres and their worldviews? Relatedly, is early Kṛṣṇite Mathurā to be understood as merely a literary figment, with no connection to ground realities, as some suggest? Or did texts contract complex relationships with sacred spaces, re-fashioning their local histories and multiple traditions of belief and worship to articulate new identities that were yet founded on continuities? This article correlates art and archaeological remains from early Mathurā with textual imaginaries to suggest ways in which to reinterpret the relationship between sacred site, text and practice.