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Pada yathra and the Kataragama deity
In most world religions, pilgrimage is given relatively low status in the hierarchy of religious practices. But in one ancient Sri Lankan tradition, the practice of pada yatra demonstrably embodies metaphysical truths while serving as a working framework for the exploration of subtle levels of religious practice that have long escaped the attention of non-participant observers.

Far from being a merely outward practice suitable only for laity or the exceptionally naive religious specialist, pilgrimage in the Kataragama pada yatra tradition is a comprehensive exercise of body, mind and spirit.

Despite its great antiquity, stature and symbolic importance in Sri Lanka's multi-ethnic society, the tradition of annual Kataragama pada yatra has never been the object of modern scholarly study. This is partly because it takes place in remote districts in the North and East and partly because pada yatra survives as a rural village 'little tradition', beneath the purview of older scholarship. Studies of Kataragama to date have tended to underplay the religious dimension of Kataragama, focusing instead upon emerging social trends and regarding the Kataragama festival less as a religious tradition than as a release-valve for social tensions in post-Independence Sri Lanka. This study, however, surveys Sri Lanka's longest and perhaps oldest pilgrimage tradition from the religious perspective as articulated by the tradition's practitioners themselves and assumes that a religious tradition is best understood within its own frame of reference.

Among the ancient living traditions that survive in Sri Lanka's rich cultural environment, few are as well-known or as poorly-understood as that of the Kataragama pada yatra. Starting from the island's far north and ending after two months and several hundred kilometers later at the Kataragama shrine in the island's remote south-eastern jungle, the Kataragama pada yatra tradition has played a major role in propagating and perpetuating traditions of Kataragama throughout Sri Lanka and South India. Predating the arrival of all four of Sri Lanka's major religions, it is essentially a tradition inherited from the island's indigenous forest-dwellers, the Wanniya-læto or Veddas, as the Kataragama shrine's Sinhalese kapurala priest-custodians themselves readily concede.

Prior to 1950 when a motorable road was extended up to Kataragama from Tissamaharama, the only way pilgrims could reach Kataragama was on foot or by bullock cart. Kataragama is now easily reachable by regular bus service from Colombo and other districts including the Eastern Province where the pada yatra tradition continues to flourish. Easy access has entailed a drastic change in the makeup of the pilgrims who visit Kataragama for the festival season; while a few thousand still walk through Yala National Park to the east of Kataragama, now hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankan visitors come as pilgrims and even as casual tourists.

This has inevitably eroded the consensus among pilgrims which gave Kataragama its air of sanctity and mystery, replacing it with a carnival-like atmosphere. And while the more devout pilgrims may regret the process of progressive secularization that continues to affect Kataragama, they also tend to explain these changes as being the will of the Kataragama god who, after so many centuries, remains alive and well and mysterious as ever in his ways of relating to humanity.

Because of the sheer length of the Kataragama pada yatra, since ancient times those who walk the distance (much of it through uninhabited jungle even today) tend to be dedicated religious specialists. The great majority of pada yatra swamis and bawas remain anonymous, but among them have been more than a few great saints and sages beginning, it is said, with Skanda-Murukan himself who is the first among pada yatra pilgrims according to the tradition.

Almost no records survive written in the pilgrims' own words. This study is based on the researcher's participation in the pada yatra from Jaffna to Kataragama in 1972 and a further ten times since 1988. Especially invaluable has been detailed instruction from the renowned German sannyasin-disciple of Nallur, Yogaswami.

After meeting Yogaswami in 1947, 'German Swami' (as he was known) walked from Jaffna to Kataragama annually from 1948 to 1972 when this researcher as an undergraduate had the exceptional opportunity to join the pada yatra from Celvaccanniti Murukan kovil (Jaffna district) in his company. Although Swami Gauribala never published the results of his life-long study of sacred geography, his observations provided the basis for Paul Wirz's Kataragama die heiligste Staette Ceylons (1954), still the most comprehensive account of Kataragama's religious traditions.

The present study may be regarded as a continuation of German Swami's 'Mu research' (as he termed it) applied to the theory and practice of Kataragama pada yathras of which German Swami was widely acknowledged as an accomplished expert. His distinctly antiquarian approach, developed through decades of fieldwork and patient study of diverse literary and oral traditions, informs the content and methological approach of the present study. German Swami deplored the approach of Western-trained researchers who insist on imposing modern values and assumptions upon oriental traditions whose raison d'etre lies entirely outside the scope of their research. In his view, the sincere researcher should seek to reproduce the findings of oriental traditions by replicating their methods whenever possible rather than to apply alien methods and assumptions. The present study therefore is derived from this researcher's efforts to duplicate the findings of German Swami and other practitioners before him.

Sacred geography and the cult of Skanda-Murukan
The Kataragama pada yatra was Swami Gauribala's practical introduction to cosmography or sacred geography. Sri Lanka preserves a wealth of folklore said to originate from remote prehistoric and puranic sources, including notably the Ramayana, which still survives in the form of local place legends. Swami Gauribala's approach involved analyzing the relationship between sacred places and their associated legends.

The cult of Murukan or Skanda, like the god himself, has a complex, composite history. Western-trained scholars are quick to point out the composite nature of the god as an amalgam of two distinct yet structurally analogous deities, Dravidian and Sanskritic respectively. But among indigenous religious specialists there is no question that the diverse body of lore in Tamil, Sanskrit, Sinhala and other languages describes a single vigorous and complex deity familiar to both northern and southern traditions since antiquity.

Qualitative space and chronological time
Whereas Semitic and other nomadic peoples tend to think historically in terms of time and genealogy, people of long sedentary heritage and markedly cultic outlook think in terms of space. India thinks in terms of qualitative or mythical space in which each place has not only its own outward characteristics but also its own significance for those beings who inhabit that space. Hence, in the traditional world view of India, spatial differences are also qualitative differences. In qualitative space, not all places are equal and the directions of space also have non-spatial qualities.

Aaru patai veetu, or The six camps
In the context of Tamil Nadu, sacred geography is invariably associated with the Aaru Patai Veetukal, Murukan 's six 'camps' or sacred sites associated with particular episodes in His divine career that are scattered across the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu, effectively homologizing the landscape of Tamil Nadu with the career of Murukan. In fact, there are only five patai veetukal; the number six should be understood not as a statistical tally but rather a significant number in numerology and sacred geometry, a sister science of sacred geography. The number six signifies, among other things, the six 'rays' of the three-dimensional cross, i.e. the six cardinal directions of space. This structural relation of the number six to three-dimensional space is directly related to the genesis of Skanda from six rays of light that coalesce and integrate in the Sanatkumara or Perpetual Youth personified.

In this aspect as Shanmukha 'the six-faced,' Skanda-Murukan is the Lord of space. It is precisely this aspect of Skanda-Murukan that is celebrated at Kataragama, where no icon is worshipped but only a small casket said to contain the shadkona yantra or six-pointed magical diagram etched upon a metal plate.

At Kataragama this principle also finds embodiment in the ezhumalai or seven hills, where the highest and 'best' peak, Katira Malai ('mountain of light') or Vedahitikanda ('the peak where he was'), is homologized to the number seven signifying reversal, return, integration and completion or perfection in childlike innocence and simplicity, which is the specific objective of kaumara sadhana or praxis for aspirants in the tradition of Skanda-Murukan .

This holographic quality of Kataragama, where the whole may be seen within any given part, permeates Kataragama not only on the levels of myth and ritual but even on the physical level of geography. Mention may be made here that in ancient times when sacred geography played an important role in the identification of powerful sites, a configuration of seven hills was considered to be the ideal location for the capital of a kingdom. Notable examples include Athens, Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem as well as Kataragama, the capital of a virtual kingdom.
- Spiritual Life

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