Journey through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna

A lively account of the Ban Yatra, a circular pilgrimage that takes place in the northern Indian land of Braj, this anthropological chronicle offers an appealing mixture of personal anecdotes, religious theory, Indian history, and tales of the gods. Basing his work on personal experience in the field, as well as a combination of primary sources in Sanskrit, Hindi, and Bengali-many untranslated and unstudied in Western languages-and a wide range of secondary literature, Haberman places the pilgrimage in its cultural and historical context, interweaving his account with re-tellings of the tales of Krishna around which the journey revolves. The first thorough study of this kind of cyclical Hindu pilgrimage, Journey through the Twelve Forests will interest any student of Southeast Asian culture and pilgrimage.