Written by an anthropologist studying cities and sacred centres, this work examines the complexities of the pilgrimage centre (tirthakshetra) that is the city of Ujjain, located in the Malva region of Madhya Pradesh. The author focuses especially on Ujjain as the vital hub of this regional wheel of moving pilgrims and sacred business as usual. A city of temples, it is located on the river Shipra, famous both as a Kumbha Mela site and a Shakti Pitha, one of the four places where drops of Lakshmi’s nectar, churned from the milky ocean, fell. The city has eighty-four sacred Lingas, and its original plan was Linga-shaped. People of various religious sects frequent the city and its central Shaiva temple, dedicated to Mahakaleshvara (Great Lord of Time).

D.K. Samanta proffers a short history of Ujjain, which he says reached its zenith under the legendary king Vikramaditya. This pilgrim city (formerly Avantika or Ujjayini) flourished as it was on an important military and trade route from northern India to the Deccan. At times Samanta’s historicity seems questionable, as he maintains that ‘Ujjain existed in every yuga’ (14) and ‘Sri Krishna has been accepted by the historians as Hercules of Greek history’ (16). Also, the author provides no notes (though rare textual references) making it nearly impossible to clarify his historical sources. The short bibliography contains no works later than 1979. Samanta finally suggests that the various changes in Ujjain’s political leadership produced no overall change in rituals or pilgrim participation over time, except for some suppression during the era of Muslim overlordship (thirteenth to eighteenth centuries).

The Mahakaleshvara temple is explored from a variety of perspectives, including myths of origin, Brahmana specialists and pilgrim patrons, visitation patterns, worship rituals, nearby temples of many deities, ascetic akhadas, architecture, and the connections between local village trade and worship. Brahmanas attached to each temple by heredity support other temples’ continuing patronage since pilgrims tend to visit multiple shrines. Ujjain is a sacred-business centre, producing ritual items such as dhup, kumkum, sacred threads, and flowers, and it is a high-volume employment hub for priests with ritual and scriptural skills.

This book contains a wealth of detail about Ujjain, from varied angles, but there are also irrelevant details such as building, pathway, and even cupboard measurements. Unfortunately, the work is nearly completely descriptive as well and so is heavy reading for anyone who longs for focused analysis. The author might have provided us with analysis of particular features such as temple origin-myths, rituals, rights of temple pujaris and panditas, or geographical patterns of patronage. Ony the introduction and conclusion offer brief respite: A ‘culture area’ such as Malva is characterized as dynamic and heterogeneous, with overlapping boundaries and a centre, cutting across caste and tribal boundaries. A ‘tirthakshetra’ such as Ujjain, he argues, is a microcosm of the universe rather than being the ‘diametrically opposed’ (154), Western (secular?) idea of a ‘region,’ that is, an area with a shared language or culture. If such a diametric opposition exists, Samanta has certainly not explained it to the reader.

The regional networking of ascetic and sectarian members is a final point of interest, and Samanta tantalizingly mentions that the various householder sects and ascetic akhadas are in fact the ones who sustain the regional importance of Ujjain as a sacred centre.