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Abstract
Narmada Parikrama is one of the most unique river-based pilgrimage traditions in India. It is usually described as a devotional journey between sacred places located along the Narmada. This paper tries to understand Narmada Parikrama as a route-based cultural practice through which the Narmada valley is remembered, respected and experienced as a sacred landscape. It draws on textual traditions related to the Narmada, including the Mahabharata, Kurma Purana, Skanda Purana/Reva-khanda and Narmada Mahatmya literature, along with secondary writings on sacred geography, pilgrimage, cultural landscapes, ritual ecology and riverine memory. The paper develops the idea of “circumambulatory river knowledge” to explain how the Narmada is known not only through texts or maps, but also through walking, halting, crossing, remembering, narrating and repeatedly staying in relation with the river. Twelve towns of Madhya Pradesh- Amarkantak, Dindori, Mandla, Jabalpur, Bhedaghat, Narmadapuram, Budni, Nemawar, Omkareshwar, Maheshwar, Mandleshwar and Dharampuri serve as interpretive nodes within this river corridor. The paper argues that Narmada Parikrama is best read as a living cultural-landscape tradition where sacred narratives, bodily movement, oral memory and place-based experience come together. Such a reading can help future research on sacred river corridors, pilgrimage heritage and route-based cultural landscapes.