Its Forms and Its Great Examples

The number of circuits and the manner of walking are prescribed variously by object and occasion, and the more arduous forms carry more merit. Some devotees perform the circling by full-body prostration, measuring the entire path with their prostrate length, rising to stand where their hands reached and prostrating again, a practice used on the longest and most sacred circuits. Others complete the circuit barefoot over many miles.

Among the most celebrated is the Girivalan, the circling of the sacred hill of Arunachala at Tiruvannamalai, a walk of some fourteen kilometres around the mountain identified with Shiva as a pillar of fire, undertaken by great crowds on full-moon nights. The circling of the Himalayan Mount Kailash, sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and the Bon tradition alike, is another of the world's great circumambulatory pilgrimages. Within the home and temple, the small daily circling of the shrine keeps the same gesture at the scale of ordinary devotion.