Garlands for Gods in Southeast India
Abstract
This is a study of flowers and garlands in Tamil South India as they travel through temples and markets. While garlands are ubiquitous in South Indian Hindu temple décor and rituals, they are also grown, sold, and bought by a variety of communities with a wide range of religious, social, commercial, and aesthetic aims. In this snapshot of flower culture, I primarily focus on a few garlands that decorate the elephant-faced god Ganesha. Various threads of sensory engagements, including colors, fragrances, and the clamor of the market and festive temple grounds, all accumulate into a sense of community aesthetics and the sensational forms, as per Meyer and Verrips (2008), from which a devotee might draw to interpret and participate in forms of material religion.
Citation: Comeau, Leah. “Garlands for Gods in Southeast India.” The Jugaad Project, 7 Jun. 2020, thejugaadproject.pub/garlands-for-gods-in-southeast-india [date of access]
According to The Jugaad Project (TJP), material religion is defined as “how and why people use material interfaces/mediums such as objects, bodies, spaces, senses and aesthetics to access the invisible, otherworldly, supernatural, magical, mystical, ancestral, and/or divine to achieve certain goals” [i]. The present study focuses on how a common ephemeral object is used to express human devotion to a Hindu deity. In particular, we will move among flowers and garlands (which are not inherently religious materials) in Tamil South India. Flowers are ubiquitous in South Indian Hindu temple décor and rituals. Yet, they are also grown, sold, and bought by a variety of communities with a wide range of religious, social, commercial, and aesthetic aims. For a few local examples, Tamil Muslim brides wear jasmine in their hair, Christians garland their dead in funeral rites, and politicians receive bouquets at academic functions. I will show how flowers are presented in market baskets, garlands, temples, and other expressive forms of decoration and devotion. In this snapshot of flower culture, I focus on a few garlands that decorate the elephant-faced god Ganesha, also known as Ganapati, Pillaiyar, or Vinayakar in Tamil South India.
In addition to the language of TJP, I adopt the concept of sensational forms from Birgit Meyer. Sensational forms are transmitted and shared, align the personal and the social, invoke and organize access to the transcendental, and thus create and sustain links between religious practitioners [ii]. Sensational forms involve shared aesthetics such as common garland designs as well as sensory experiences of the body, like that of the bustle of a local marketplace or the choice of a woman to match her flowers with her sari [iii]. In Southeast India, communities share practices of decorating deities, hairstyles, textiles, homes, vehicles, and so on, all with flowers. Shoppers and sellers in the flower market deliver, tie, weave, cut, choose, bundle, carry, and drape kilos of flowers every day. To use Meyer’s term, the garland is a sensational form around which people develop community practice, personal aesthetics, and rituals of devotion.
This essay begins at the large Ganesha temple called Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar Temple. It is located on Manakula Vinayagar Koil Street in White Town, Pondicherry.
New Year display inside Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar Temple in White Town, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
This photo was taken just after the New Year in 2019. Inside the temple, the elaborate display was constructed in the side hall where people were encouraged to view it, take photos, and snap selfies to share on social media. Encountering a brilliantly-dressed murti (deity form) and decorated altar in a temple, procession, or on a cinematic screen can be a devotional experience of visual contact known as darsan [iv]. Urmila Mohan has shown how the design and practices for dressing the murti aim to communicate opulence and approachability to worshippers [v]. In the lessons that Mohan describes about how to dress Krishna at the Iskcon temple in Mayapur, West Bengal, the instructor “taught the students how to enhance these [the garments] using jewelry and drapery. Krishna’s dancing form was animated through flowing fabrics, flower garlands and bead necklaces” [vi]. While the deity highlighted in this essay is Ganesha, the emphasis on adornment is similar. One might even speak of a common devotional emphasis on alankara or adornment that is believed to literally strengthen the body of the wearer, in this case the deity [vii].
According to the temple’s Executive Officer (henceforth EO), the display of fabrics, flowers, and bejeweled deities in Pondicherry was assembled in five or six hours on the night of December 31st. The temple opened at 3:30am on January 1st for devotees to gain an auspicious early morning darsan of the deities. Once the temple doors opened, he estimated that 30,000 people visited that day, with queues stretching well down and around the streets. The display is a combination of garlands, jewelry, enamel arches, and platforms to which the murtis were secured. The narrative depicted here is that of sons returning home and reuniting with family, in this case, spear-wielding Murugan and elephant-faced Ganesha stand on either side of the bejeweled linga, representing their father, the god Shiva. The display theme changes every year. The EO explained to me that this 2019 design appealed to many parents with children and grandchildren who work and study abroad. The temple administration hoped to encourage families to come together in the new year.
The divine figures are backed by what appears to be a solid, striped, arched wall of flowers. A closer look reveals that the background is actually composed of thick individual garlands stacked on top of one another and attached to each other and to the frame of the structure by black string. As people are drawn to the color and shine of the grand display, they are also drawn into the presence of the gods. As people approach the gods, they are also incorporated into the aesthetic experience designed by the garland makers and priests.
These garlands and threads are special to the annual temple display; however, the flowers, colors, patterns, and the tied garland form pictured here are not remarkably different from local aesthetic norms. Rather, the components invoke and are at home in a variety of local contexts not all of which are explicitly religious. For example, the same seasonal flowers, balls of string, and nearly identical miniatures of the golden garlands are sold in the town’s flower market.
Large garlands displayed in front of stalls where men sit tying special orders and basic garland designs for daily sales, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
Goubert Market, or the Grand Bazaar, is a leisurely ten minute walk from the temple, less than 700 meters down Jawaharlal Nehru Street, formerly Rue Dupleix. There are many entry points, but the flowers are sold at the Barathi Street entrances on the west side of the market.
Scenes from Goubert Market, Pondicherry 2020. Video by author.
The flower section has two main aisles. One aisle is for garland production and sales, where mostly young men sit and weave garlands in the shade of their small concrete stalls. The other aisle is filled with bags and baskets of loose flowers delivered and sold in bulk by agents. Between the two aisles, there is a small Ganesha temple which is built around a tree and into the architecture of the surrounding flower stalls. On one early morning visit, just there on the backside of the temple hung a single sales display, one of the first shops to open at the start of business.
Small garlands for sale near the Barathi Street entrance of Goubert Market, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
The small golden-yellow garlands hanging in this shop invoke the materials and forms of the larger temple display. The small yellow garlands also invoke and simultaneously constitute the larger context of Goubert Market and the flower stalls in particular. By mid-morning rows of garlands hang from plastic ropes with a disc tied on the end of each line. The draped flowers hang at eye level in the market to encourage and entice the inspecting customer. The passerby can visually check the freshness of the work by the edges of the petals which could be sharp and clean, soft and wilting, or even recently trimmed by sheers to disguise their age.
Detail of a wilting marigold garland that will either be trimmed or discarded when the shop opens, Pondicherry 2020. Photo by author.
The sensational form of the garland organizes a wide range of scales and designs. And, in spite of the petite form hanging in the market, it nonetheless provides a metonymic connection between the sites, as well as a direct opportunity to encounter the same flowers and red-yellow color sequencing seen in the Ganesha temple in White Town. These small garlands are mostly made of sweet-smelling yellow chrysanthemums with a stripe of red roses. The bottom of the garland is tied off with a bundle of fuzzy, almost velvety dark red cockscomb, or Celosia cristata, which has no fragrance.
Stalls where loose flowers are sold in bulk. A large basket of flowers rests on the ground in the nook of a column at the corner of the small market temple visible on the left, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
Moving past the heavy but slightly swaying yellow circlets, the customer finds herself walking along a short temple wall. On that particular morning, the priest arrived at the temple at his usual time and brought with him a small plastic bag of garlands. He unlocked the red metal gate and immediately began his work to tidy and refresh the temple interior. He stood on a step-stool to remove a wilting garland from around Lakshmi’s crown in her position over the center of the interior shrine entrance. Although the red and purple flowers looked fairly vibrant, the white blossoms had shrunk and taken on a brownish tint. He also removed the day-old orange garland from around the shoulders of the interior murti of Ganesha.
Temple priest changing the garlands of the market temple shrine, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
He tossed the old garland with wilted white flowers into the garbage bin under the table on the left. The priest replaced the old garland with one of the pink and yellow garlands that he brought in the plastic bag. More garlands of the same flowers were added around the small Nandi statue and across the front of the central shrine. The new garlands were relatively slim, soft, and flimsy compared to the previous flowers. The priest said that the flowers were from “outside.” It was striking to me that the garlands used to decorate a temple in a flower market were not provided by that very same market especially given that in order to enter that temple, one must walk past dozens of flower baskets and rows of hanging garlands. As one considers the items used in temple worship and how those items are acquired or supplied, it seems like a temple situated in a flower market would get its flowers from that place. On this morning, however, the priest had picked them up during a different part of his morning routine. (Vendors and weavers in the market do in fact contribute garlands to the market temple on other occasions.)
View of the refreshed market temple flowers, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
In addition to flowers, Goubert Market also houses shopping for fresh produce, fish, coffee and spices, clothing, women’s accessories, live chickens, and some houseware needs, such as brooms and rope. Thus, many people who fill the market have no intention of interacting with the small temple or buying flowers.
Another small Ganesha shrine at the corner of the houseware and vegetable stalls, Pondicherry 2020. Photo by author.
Nonetheless, flowers are seen not only bobbing through crowds, riding on the backs of women’s heads, but also hanging in and around shops to bless and welcome the potential customer. Similarly, images of Ganesha appear in small personal shrines, on advertisement boards, and on shopping bags throughout the market. For example, in an area near shops selling vegetables and chickens a tile affixed to a stall post depicts Ganesha, the central deity at both the large temple in White Town and the smaller temple located inside the flower market.
A small tile installed on a stall frame depicts Ganesha and was recently draped with white and pink flowers, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
The tile, garlanded with white chrysanthemums and a few dark pink blossoms tied with white thread, illustrates another variation of scale: The same deity, the same gesture of garlanding with flowers threaded in cheerful color combinations but in a significantly smaller size than both the New Year display and the market temple.
Both the professional garland weavers and the people tying flowers in their homes use the natural colors of seasonal flowers and patterns that similarly emphasize brightness, liveliness, and freshness for human and divine enjoyment. Puja Sahney (2016) has analyzed ritual aesthetics and small mandirs (temples) maintained in Hindu homes in the United States, including the high value placed on purity. Sahney explains that the purity of auspicious objects is “negotiated through color and shine” [viii].
Detail of garland colors: creamy yellow chrysanthemums, dark green leaves, local pink roses, and white tuberose, Pondicherry 2020. Photo by author.
The Pondicherry garlands used to decorate temples reflect a similar preference for the colors described in Sahney’s analysis, including the brightness of pink and red, the cleanliness of white, and the pleasing golden shade of yellow as auspicious color choices [ix].
Women selling strings of flowers; some meant for religious use and others for women’s hair, Pondicherry 2019. Photo by author.
Beyond the garland and wholesale flower stalls and past the garlanded tile, there is an opening in the aisles. There women sit and sell strings of flowers. Some designs are appropriate for a woman’s hair. Other strings should only be used for religious purposes. Some designs can be used for either gods or humans. The woman pictured with a blue striped sari wears pinkish-orange flowers in her hair, but the (personal) blossoms that she wears are not available among the (social) flowers that she sells. The flowers in her hair typically wilt in less than a day and are some of the most delicate to handle. Her coiled garlands noticeably match with the flowers and pink and yellow pattern brought into the flower market temple by the priest earlier in the morning. The women seated across from her, appearing lower in the photograph, are also selling similar strings of the popular flowers, reminding us that customers, whether devotees, priests, or other consumers, navigate a variety of choices in seller, material, scale, and price point. In this market, a garland is selected from among many garlands.
Hamby and Young’s Art on a String, a study of strings of seed-beads by Aboriginal Australian women in Arnhem Land and the Central Desert areas of Australia, provides us vocabulary for analyzing garlands as art objects, including season, color, proportion, balance, eclecticism, as well as the pleasure of “intellectual senses” [x]. The artists making necklaces for sale to tourists also mention crafting beadwork for themselves to hang as curtains or wall art. In Pondicherry, we find similar dual identities of strung flowers—some for sale, others for personal use (for examples, see Image 11). The beads, the flower garlands, mandirs in diasporas, and Krishna’s dress all express pleasure and adornment. The seasonal nature of flower culture also necessitates a certain amount of eclecticism. Seasons determine flowers’ availability, quality, quantity, and thus demand, design, and price. In addition to growing seasons, flowers are also treated differently according to human seasons such as holidays, religious observances, and the milestones of a human life, like marriages and funerals.
By threading and draping them together, smaller units of flowers can be gathered into larger forms such as heavy arches and striped backdrops. The sensational form of the one single garland comes to life when the garland maker initiates his repetitive and distinctive swirling motion that tightly twists each row into the next. While the marketplace where the garlands are made is primarily a place of commerce, it is not oppositional to the temple. Rather, the marketplace, the temple, and the temple within the market each play an important role in the interpretation of flower culture in general and garlanding practices in particular. Various threads of sensory engagements include the flower colors, fragrances, textures of plants and grasses, the wetness carried by cupped petals of a garland dipped in a water bucket, and the clamor of the market and festive temple grounds. The characteristics and contexts of flower garlands all accumulate into a sense of community aesthetics and the sensational forms from which a devotee might draw to interpret and participate in forms of material religion.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the hospitality of the flower merchants in Goubert Market and D. Venkatesan, Executive Officer at Arulmigu Manakula Vinayagar Temple, Pondicherry. I also thank Urmila Mohan, Aaron Butts, and two anonymous reviewers for sharing their insights and comments on earlier drafts of this work.
Endnotes
[i] Retrieved from https://www.thejugaadproject.pub/about-us.
[ii] Meyer and Verrips 2008: 27. See also Meyer 2011: 160.
[iii] Meyer and Verrips 2008: 28.
[iv] Sankaran 2015: 450; Mohan 2015:139.
[v] Mohan 2015: 143.
[vi] Mohan 2015:143.
[vii] Dehejia 2009: 24.
[viii] Sahney 2016: 333.
[ix] Sahney 2016: 327-328, 335. See also Bruland 2013: 430.
[x] Hamby and Young 2001: 10.
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