Sacred Groves

In Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens, Louise Westling explores how the complex, difficult roles of women in southern culture shaped the literary worlds of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor. Tracing the cultural heritage of the South, Westling shows how southern women reacted to the violent, false world created by their men--a world in which women came to be shrouded as icons of purity in atonement for the sins of men. Exposing the actual conditions of women's lives, creating assertive protagonists who resist or revise conventional roles, and exploring rich matriarchal traditions and connections to symbolic landscapes Welty, McCullers, and O'Connor created a body of fiction that enriches and complements the patriarchal version of southern life presented in the works of William Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Styron.

In recent years, India's "sacred groves," small forests or stands of trees set aside for a deity's exclusive use, have attracted the attention of NGOs, botanists, specialists in traditional medicine, and anthropologists. Environmentalists disillusioned by the failures of massive state-sponsored solutions to ecological problems have hailed them as an exemplary form of traditional community resource management. For in spite of pressures to utilize their trees for fodder, housing, and firewood, the religious taboos surrounding sacred groves have led to the conservation of pockets of abundant flora in areas otherwise denuded by deforestation. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over seven years, Eliza F. Kent offers a compelling examination of the religious and social context in which sacred groves take on meaning for the villagers who maintain them, and shows how they have become objects of fascination and hope for Indian environmentalists. Sacred Groves and Local Gods traces a journey through Tamil Nadu, exploring how the localized meanings attached to forested shrines are changing under the impact of globalization and economic liberalization. Confounding simplistic representations of sacred groves as sites of a primitive form of nature worship, the book shows how local practices and beliefs regarding sacred groves are at once more imaginative, dynamic, and pragmatic than previously thought. Kent argues that rather than being ancient in origin, as has been asserted by other scholars, the religious beliefs, practices, and iconography found in sacred groves suggest origins in the politically de-centered eighteenth century, when the Tamil country was effectively ruled by local chieftains. She analyzes two projects undertaken by environmentalists that seek to harness the traditions surrounding sacred groves in the service of forest restoration and environmental education.

: Sacred groves are untouched plots of land that are secluded by the people inhabiting near them, primarily for religious purposes. The popular conception of a grove is a collection of exceptionally well-formed trees set in a place of outstanding natural beauty. These patches of land can be of varying sizes and shapes. It is believed that arborolatry is one of the earliest forms of worship in this world. It occupies an important place in folklore. There are innumerable examples of oral literature encircling around trees. Examples of reverence of trees in Indian mythology are multiple. We know about many proverbs and riddles that discuss the dreadful side of forests. In many of the Hindu rituals, we find marriage songs completely dedicated to herbs such as tulasi, etc. Tree worship also constitutes a major portion of the social folk customs of the people. By studying the role trees and plants play in a particular society, their significance is known. In addition, information about the socio-cultural and religion lives of the people of that particular community can also be studied.

In western scholarship, Africa’s so-called sacred forests are often treated as the remains of primeval forests, ethnographic curiosities, or cultural relics from a static precolonial past. Their continuing importance in African societies, however, shows that this “relic theory” is inadequate for understanding current social and ecological dynamics. African Sacred Groves challenges dominant views of these landscape features by redefining the subject matter beyond the compelling yet uninformative term “sacred.” The term “ethnoforests” incorporates the environmental, social-political, and symbolic aspects of these forests without giving undue primacy to their religious values. This interdisciplinary book by an international group of scholars and conservation practitioners provides a methodological framework for understanding these forests by examining their ecological characteristics, delineating how they relate to social dynamics and historical contexts, exploring their ideological aspects, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as sites for community-based resource management and the conservation of cultural and biological diversity.

Sacred Groves, Cultural Ecosystems and Conservation addresses the increasing contemporary relevance of ecosystems being depleted at an alarming rate worldwide. The purpose of this collection of essays is to bring together different perspectives on sacred groves in the context of the cultural and spiritual dimensions of biodiversity conservation. In offering an experience of sacred natural sites in varied cultural contexts of Africa and Asia, it raises a common concern for natural resource management. Based on the long-term research of the contributing authors, the nine chapters reflect a continuous process of redefining sacred spaces within an interdisciplinary framework grounded on existing literature and ethnographic field research. The highlight of the discourse is the complex interactions and negotiations between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’; which brings center-stage the subject of sacred status that communities have given to nature. This book will be of interest to researchers and general audience alike interested and concerned with earth ecosystems and the spiritual world, creating a space for critical enquiry and future hopes in the face of threatening habitat loss.

Sacred Groves and their medicinal, commercial values known through the indigenious community and some of the medicinally valuable literature. In the conservation aspect we conducted awareness program for the local peoples, students of schools and colleges, teachers, pujari, traditional healers and land owners. Few groves were planted with water holding capable rich species and Oxygen producing species. These species were protected by local peoples and pujari of the concern grove.