[Buddha-l] RE: seeking the Pali and Sanskrit term for "holy/ religious/, sacred objects"

[Sally McAra]

Erik wrote:

/for what it's worth, in my experience Tibetans have always been obsessed by 
stones and buildings and land. So they're good in converting stones. If this 
is a general Buddhist thing is doubtfull, considering the amount of effort the 
Buddha himself put into building and statues. Even among Buddhist masters in 
India the percentage of (free) masons is remarkably low. The Buddha had 
dicovered that the easiest way to influence peoples minds is to talk to them. 
Maybe this is an art which has been neglected in Tibetan folklore.;)
For this reason I think that findign a common name for holy things is 
extremely difficult, because there is no common concept.
----/
Sally's reply: 
Thanks Erik for your thoughts, here are my responses....


If there is no direct equivalent term or "common concept" to the Tibetan one, that'd be interesting too.

But ancient India was full of "holy" objects (consecrated architecture, statues, paintings, stupas etc). 

And the concept of getting darshan from the statue of a god is there too as part of the ancient indic cultural setting.  So I still think it is possible that there is a term that distinguishes religious objects like consecrated statues from everyday things like cooking pots and so on, even if they didn't conceptualise it in the ways the Tibetans did when they got hold of it later. The material culture was there. And is.

Perhaps some more background to invite more discussion from the list... 


I am interested here in the fact that people built and still build elaborate and expensive monuments to their religion.... Despite the fact that I don't personally feel that keen on the practice, it is not my place to judge whether or not such things are helpful to people's minds.  

Perhaps the disinterest in this inquiry is because (a) I am female ... (joke, I hope! unless Joanna was right...) and/or 
(b) the participants in this list have what Gregory Schopen called "Protestant Presuppositions" and reject the idea of relics and other "sacred objects" having any benefit in spiritual practice and thus they simply don't merit discussion. 

Well, hmm,  I don't notice any real benefits from stupas & relics myself but many people I have interviewed talk about how seeing Buddhist art including stupas inspired them to find out about buddhism, inspired feelings of peace, and I've even heard, during my inquiries, stories from people feeling their meditation practice was given a "boost" by having a reliquary touched on their head, etc... 
I find all this rather intriguing perhaps *because* I'm skeptical... But I'm not out to knock such practices but rather to try & see it from the participants' point of view! 

So, does anyone out there have any suggestions as per my earlier query about this? There must be at least one sanskritist on the list????? I'm really just after a few clues to help my inquiry... 


cheers,
Sally
(it's a nice spring evening here in New Zealand, nice to see some flowers appearing. I'm off to cycle home. BTW, Any other southern hemisphereans on the list?)