Cover von "Multifarious Sacred Geographies " aus der Reihe Sacred Sites of South Asia Series.

How to Cite

Ambach, Malini: Multifarious Sacred Geographies: Kanchipuram Through Its Sanskrit Sthalamāhātmyas, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2026 (Sacred Sites of South Asia Series, Volume 2). https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1444

Identifiers

ISBN 978-3-96822-286-8 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-287-5 (Hardcover)

Published

04/02/2026

Authors

Malini Ambach

Multifarious Sacred Geographies

Kanchipuram Through Its Sanskrit Sthalamāhātmyas

Multifarious Sacred Geographies takes an in-depth look at the sacred geography of the South Indian temple city Kanchipuram. Kanchipuram's particularly diverse religious landscape, with over four hundred temples, is attested to in numerous Sanskrit and Tamil texts that glorify the city. Malini Ambach investigates for the first time three of these glorifying Sanskrit Sthalamāhātmyas in detail and comparatively with regard to their literary geographies of Kanchipuram. These texts link mythology with the local physical landscape and each coloured by a sectarian perspective, they describe the same sacred space, Kanchipuram, by constructing shared and contradictory notions of the temple city.

Malini Ambach completed her doctorate at Heidelberg University in 2025 in the field of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia. Her research focuses on Māhātmya-texts and Indian sacred geography.

Chapters

Table of Contents
Pages
PDF
Title
i-iv
Contents
v-vi
List of Figures
vii-viii
Acknowledgements
ix-x
Abbreviations
xi
Remarks on Transliteration and Translation
xii-xiv
1 Introduction
1-23
2 The Space: Kanchipuram
25-47
3 Textual Fundamentals: Kanchipuram’s Glorifying Texts
49-91
4 Śiva’s Places Introduce the City: the Śaiva Kāñcīmāhātmya
93-142
5 A Territory for the Goddess: the Kāmākṣīvilāsa
143-181
6 Through Vaiṣṇava Lens: the Vaiṣṇava Kāñcīmāhātmya
183-234
7 Comparative and Concluding Reflections
235-256
Appendix
257-272
References
273-286
Index
287-288

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