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Since Joanne Waghorne was permitted use of the Palace Records for the first time, The Raja's Magic Clothes includes significant new material for scholars.
Many Hindus today are urban middle-class people with religious values similar to those of their professional counterparts in America and Europe. Just as modern professionals continue to build new churches, synagogues, and now mosques, Hindus are erecting temples to their gods wherever their work and their lives take them. Despite the perceived exoticism of Hindu worship, the daily life-style of these avid temple patrons differs little from their suburban neighbors. Joanne Waghorne leads her readers on a journey through this new middle-class Hindu diaspora, focusing on their efforts to build and support places of worship. She seeks to trace the changing religious sensibilities of the middle c...
This book discusses Asia’s rapid pace of urbanization, with a particular focus on new spaces created by and for everyday religiosity. The essays in this volume – covering topics from the global metropolises of Singapore, Bangalore, Seoul, Beijing, and Hong Kong to the regional centers of Gwalior, Pune, Jahazpur, and sites like Wudang Mountain – examine in detail the spaces created by new or changing religious organizations that range in scope from neighborhood-based to consciously global. The definition of “spatial aspects” includes direct place-making projects such as the construction of new religious buildings – temples, halls and other meeting sites, as well as less tangible r...
This book examines spirituality in Singapore, showing how important the city state is for understanding contemporary global configurations of urban space, religion, and spirituality. Joanne Punzo Waghorne highlights how the formal religious spaces-temples, churches, and mosques-have been confined to allotted sites on the map of Singapore, whereas various “spiritual” organizations, particularly of Hindu origins and headed by a guru, still continue to operate as “societies” classified by the government with other “clubs.” These unconventional religiosities are not confined but ironically make their own places, meeting in ostensive secular venues: high-rise flats, malls, businesses,...
Provides an accessible introduction to the Vedic religious world by focusing on the role of divine and human imagination in sacred texts.
This volume addresses issues of tremendous topical relevance: the transmission of Hinduism to the United States, Gandhi's religious politics and secularism, analysis of 'Vande Mataram' and its immensely rich history, popular patriotism in Hindi cinema, and much more.
Gurus of Modern Yoga explores the contributions that individual gurus have made to the formation of the practices and discourses of yoga in today's world.
Book Review
Pejoratively referred to as "idols" in the Hebrew Bible and in western tradition, the cult image occupied a central place in the cultures of the ancient Near East. In Mesopotamia, a ritual (mis pi) was used to "give birth" to the god represented by the cult image. In this volume, three separate essays examine the topic within different ancient Near Eastern cultures, and a fourth provides a modern analogy as counterpoint.
Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple women's initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.