Mana Shah did her masters in Sanskrit and is currently Lecturer of Sanskrit at IIT Gandhinagar. Her research areas are Sanskrit pedagogy, manuscriptology and historical literature in Sanskrit, Prakrit and medieval Gujarati languages.

Abstract of the lecture  

Hardly anyone in India has not visited some pilgrimage site at least once in his/her life. Pilgrimage traditions are so interwoven into Indian cultural practices that they have become an integral part of every Indic faith. This lecture will focus on the meaning and function of these traditions and their sociocultural impact. It will also explore a few popular pilgrim networks of India and how they contributed to the construction of a certain “idea of India”.

Reading  

Agehananda Bharati, “Pilgrimage in the Indian Tradition,” History of Religions, 3(1), Summer 1963, pp. 135–67.