dham
धाम dhamAn 'abode' or seat of the divine; a major pilgrimage centre, as in the Char Dham.
Where this term appears
- The Char Dham Temples
One in the deep south, on an island, where a king built a bridge to rescue his wife. These are the Char Dham , the four abodes.
- Jagannath Puri and the Ratha Yatra Temples
A quiet close Puri is one of the four Char Dham , the cardinal pilgrimage seats of India, and it can be read alongside the others in our account of the Char Dham.
- The Kumbh Mela Temples
It is the same gesture that draws pilgrims to the great routes described in The Char Dham and to the shrines described in What is a Hindu Temple, made here on the largest scale the world allows.
- The Twelve Jyotirlingas Temples
The best-known is Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand, where the ancient name of the locale is argued to match the cremation-ground setting of the legend.
- What is Tirtha? Pilgrimage in Hindu Life Temples
In India: A Sacred Geography (2012) she separates the tirtha , the crossing-place, from the dham , the "dwelling" of the gods.
- Where was Dvārakā? The search for Krishna's drowned city Journal
It is the western seat of the Char Dham , the four cardinal pilgrimages that bound the subcontinent into a single sacred geography.