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Embodying the Vedas
Popularly Hinduism is believed to be the world’s oldest living religion. This claim is based on a continuous reverence to the oldest strata of religious authority within the Hindu traditions, the Vedic corpus, which began to be composed more than three thousand years ago, around 1750–1200 BCE. The Vedas have been considered by many as the philosophical cornerstone of the Brahmanical traditions (āstika); even previous to the colonial construction of the concept of “Hinduism.” However, what can be pieced together from the Vedic texts is very different from contemporary Hindu religious practices, beliefs, social norms and political realities. This book presents the results of a study o...
Of Gods and Books
India has been the homeland of diverse manuscript traditions that do not cease to impress scholars for their imposing size and complexity. Nevertheless, many topics concerning the study of Indian manuscript cultures still remain to receive systematic examination. Of Gods and Books pays attention to one of these topics - the use of manuscripts as ritualistic tools. Literary sources deal quite extensively with rituals principally focused on manuscripts, whose worship, donation and preservation are duly prescribed. Around these activities, a specific category of ritual gift is created, which finds attestations in pre-tantric, as well as in smārta and tantric, literature, and whose practice is also variously reflected in epigraphical documents. De Simini offers a first systematic study of the textual evidence on the topic of the worship and donation of knowledge. She gives account of possible implications for the relationships between religion and power. The book is indsipensible for a deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of manuscript transmission in medieval India, and beyond.
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint’s influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation ...
Hinglaj Devi
In this book, Jürgen Schaflechner examines the political and cultural influences at work at the most influential Hindu pilgrimage site in Pakistan, Hinglaj Devi. The unique character of this pilgrimage site and its modern importance not only for Hindus, but also for Muslims and Sindhi nationalists, brings to the fore the lives of Hindu minorities in the Islamic Republic.
Animals in Stone
This magnificently illustrated study of a vast amount of South Asian animal stone sculptures provides an art history covering almost four and a half thousand years, analyzing the art historical, archeological and cultural context of animals in society.
Animal Sacrifice, Religion and Law in South Asia
This book presents original research on the controversies surrounding animal sacrifice in South Asia through the lens of court cases. It focuses on the parties involved in these cases: on their discourses, motivations, and contrasting points of view. Through an examination of judicial files, court decisions and newspaper articles, and interviews with protagonists, the book explores how the question of animal sacrifice is dealt with through administrative, legislative, and judicial practice. It outlines how, although animal sacrifice has over the ages been contested by various religious reform movements, the practice has remained widespread at all levels of society, especially in certain regi...
Embodying Transnational Yoga
Embodying Transnational Yoga is a refreshingly original, multi-sited ethnography of transnational yoga that obliges us to look beyond postural practice (āsana) in modern yoga research. The book introduces readers to three alternative, understudied categories of transnational yoga practice which include food, music, and breathing. Studying these categories of embodied practice using interdisciplinary methods reveals transformative “engaged alchemies” that have been extensively deployed by contemporary disseminators of yoga. Readers will encounter how South Asian dietary regimens, musical practices, and breathing techniques have been adapted into contemporaneous worlds of yoga practice both within, but also beyond, the Indian Ocean rim. The book brings the field of Modern Yoga Studies into productive dialogue with the fields of Indian Ocean Studies, Embodiment Studies, Food Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Pollution Studies. It will also be a valuable resource for both scholarly work and for teaching in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, and South Asian Religions.
Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva
A monumental intellectual history of the pivotal figure of Hindu nationalism Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) was an intellectual, ideologue, and anticolonial nationalist leader in India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, one whose anti-Muslim writings exploited India’s tensions in pursuit of Hindu majority rule. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva is the first comprehensive intellectual history of one of the most contentious political thinkers of the twentieth century. Janaki Bakhle examines the full range of Savarkar’s voluminous writings in his native language of Marathi, from political and historical works to poetry, essays, and speeches. She reveals the ...
The Other Rāma
The Other Rāma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma ("Rāma with the Axe"), an avatára of Viṣṇu best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Kṣatriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as "genocide" by modern scholars. Compared to Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, the other human forms of Viṣṇu, Paraśurāma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Paraśurāma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reṇukā,...
Flexible India
Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India, Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power. Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art i...
