Religion

This book explores the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and religion in classical Indian literature and literary theory by focusing on one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts to emerge from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahābhārata. This text, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious, social, and political thought, is a foundational text of the Hindu tradition(s) and considered to be a major transmitter of dharma (moral, social, and religious duty), perhaps the single most important concept in the history of Indian religions. However, in spite of two centuries of Euro-American scholarship on the epic, basic questions concerning precisely how the epic is communicating its ideas about dharma and precisely what it is saying about it have not been satisfactorily answered. Disorienting Dharma brings to bear a variety of interpretive lenses (Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics) to answer these questions. One of the first book-length studies to explore the subject from the lens of Indian aesthetics, it argues that such a perspective yields startling new insights into the nature of the depiction of dharma in the epic through bringing to light one of the principle narrative tensions of the epic: the vexed relationship between dharma and suffering. In addition, it seeks to make the Mahābhārata interesting and accessible to a wider audience by demonstrating how reading the Mahābhārata, perhaps the most harrowing story in world literature, is a fascinating, troubling, disorienting, and ultimately transformative experience.

In the early 16th c., Bengali brahmin Kṛṣṇa Caitanya (1476–1533) inspired a community of Kṛṣṇa worshipers in Bengal, Orissa, and Vraja. This study examines the ways those devotees came to be unified through the intervention of a Sanskrit and Bengali hagiography, the Caitanya caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja. Devotees thought Caitanya to be god, Kṛṣṇa, and eventually saw in him an unusual form of divine androgyny, Kṛṣṇa fused with his consort Rādhā. His many Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographies depict scattered independent groups, each proposing a different theology and practice. Kṛṣṇadāsa’s hagiography sought to synthesize these disparate positions into a unified tradition by deploying a sophisticated rhetoric that would hierarchize theology, standardize ritual, and fix literary canon. This is a study of how Kṛṣṇadāsa, in the absence of any institutional authority, synthesized a uniquely Bengali Vaiṣṇava tradition. In the early 17th c., three devotees, led by brahmin Śrīnivāsa, carried the Caitanya caritāmṛta back to Bengal from Vraja. Within a decade of losing and then recovering the text, this trio placed copies in the hands of every Vaiṣṇava in Bengal and Orissa. The literary practices surrounding the circulation established the text as the final word by fixing a grammar of tradition, by which communities could continually replicate the original experience of Caitanya’s presence, by interpreting their own as a fractal history. So persuasive was this single document that today it has assumed iconic status, even taking its place on the altar alongside images of Kṛṣṇa and Caitanya.

The Strides of Vishnu explores a wide range of topics in Hindu culture and history. Hinduism has often set out to mediate between the practical needs of its many communities and a transcendent realm. Illuminating this connection, The Strides of Vishnu focuses not only on religious ideas but also on the various arts and sciences, as well as crafts, politics, technology, and medicine. The book emphasizes core themes that run through the major historical periods of Northern India, beginning with the Vedas and leading up to India's independence. Sophisticated sciences such as geometry, grammar, politics, law, architecture, and biology are discussed within a broad cultural framework. Special attention is devoted to historical, economic, and political developments, including urbanism and empire‐building. The Strides of Vishnu situates religious and philosophical ideas within such broad contexts so religion sheds its abstract and detached reputation. The message of classical and medieval religious masterpieces—including the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, plays of Kalidasa, and many others—comes to life within a broad world‐making agenda. But while the literary masterpieces reflected the work of the cultural elites, The Strides of Vishnu also devotes considerable attention to the work that did not make it into the great texts: women's rituals, magic, alchemy, medicine, and a variety of impressive crafts. The book discusses the stunning mythology of medieval India and provides the methods for interpreting it, along with the vast cosmologies and cosmographies of the Puranas. The Strides of Vishnu is an introductory book on Hindu culture, but while it highlights central religious themes, it explores these within broader historical and cultural contexts. It gives its readers a clear and highly textured overview of a vast and productive civilization.

This book examines how sacred meaning is created, reinforced, and maintained in Hardwar, an important Hindu pilgrimage site (tirtha). Hardwar’s religious identity is inextricably tied to the river Ganges, and the city’s sacred narratives (present and past) present its identity as fixed and unchanging—as for many Hindu pilgrimage sites. This perspective ignores mundane factors such as economic, social, or technological change, which have sharply affected Hardwar’s development in the past two centuries. Yet these two differing visions of Hardwar are both emphatically, simultaneously “real.” The work begins with a short introduction to orient the reader to Hardwar and to the author’s guiding principles. Chapters 2 and 3 then lay out these contrasting histories (sacred and secular), and Hardwar’s complex identity lies in the tension between these narratives. The book’s second part analyzes Hardwar as a contemporary Hindu pilgrimage center. Chapters 4 through 6 are devoted to differing resident elites—businessmen, pandas (hereditary pilgrim guides), and ascetics—and delineate their roles in managing Hardwar as a holy place. Chapter 7 focuses on Hardwar’s pilgrims and examines factors drawing them there. The interaction between these groups creates and maintains Hardwar’s religious environment, and these forces shaping Hardwar have strong parallels in other north Indian pilgrimage sites. The final chapter addresses this wider context by examining changes in contemporary Hindu pilgrimage, particularly how modern Hindus are reinterpreting traditional symbols to make them meaningful for their time.

This book seeks to understand the major mythological role models that mark the moral landscape of young Hindu women. Generally, the goddess Sita, faithful consort of the god Rama, is regarded as the most important positive role model for women. The case of Radha, Krishna's clandestine lover, seems to challenge some of these norms. The book investigates in how far that holds true today. The focus is on the ways the goddesses cope with love. The first part looks at their falling in love, the way their weddings are arranged, and the significance of the wedding ceremonies. The second part looks at their married life, where they are faced with challenges. They come out of purdah to follow their beloved in hardship, and face the threat from “the other woman” and “the other man.” The book takes the case of Sita as main point of reference, but contrasts with comparable episodes from the stories of Radha or Krishna's other consorts. The goddess as role model for the woman in love is just as relevant today as in the past, as is evident from the popularity of the televised mythological series Ramayan and Shri Krishna directed by Ramanand Sagar, and the many allusions to Sita and Radha in popular culture. The television series and popular recent and classical hit‐movies that use Sita and Radha tropes are analyzed through comparison with the ancient Sanskrit sources (Valmiki Ramayana and Bhagavata Purana) and medieval vernacular reworkings by devotional poets (Tulsidas, Surdas, Nanddas and Hariram Vyas).

This book is a portrayal of a flourishing Hindu temple in the town of Rush, New York, dedicated to the great south Indian goddess Rājarājeśwarī. Guided by an exuberant Sri Lankan guru known as Aiya, temple practitioners embrace yet definitively break with tradition. Known for its ritual precision and extravagance, the temple and its guru defy convention by training and encouraging non-brahmans and women to publicly perform priestly roles, and by teaching the secrets of Śrīvidyā, a highly exclusive Tantric tradition. Weaving together traditional South Asian tales, temple miracle accounts, and devotional testimonials, the book is organized into three parts reflecting various intersecting worldviews, traditions, and landscapes with which temple practices and participants contend. The book’s first part explores the temple’s emphasis on ritual performance and potency, and the resulting collisions between miraculous and mundane worldviews as experienced and understood by Aiya, temple participants, and the ethnographer-author. Part two explores how Aiya and his students deftly balance convention with non-convention, breaking rules of orthodoxy that make room for leadership and learning, and providing possibilities otherwise unavailable in traditional temple settings. Part three explores the diaspora condition as experienced within the Rush temple context. It chronicles the joys and challenges of negotiating domestic and foreign traditions, and the effects this has on human and divine participants, temple rituals, and the temple terrain itself. In sum, the book argues that in a setting where science illuminates the sacred, where traditional religious practices allow for breaking with the same, and where foreign terrain becomes home turf, the Goddess not only lives, she thrives.

A distinctive aspect of Hindu devotion is the veneration of a human guru, who is not only an exemplar and a teacher, but is often worshipped as an embodiment of the divine. In the past these gurus have almost always been men. Today, however, female gurus are a noticeable presence, especially in the United States. This book containing nine chapter looks at the phenomenon of the female guru both in its original Indian context, where Hindu women leaders have been unusual but not unknown, and as it has evolved on the American scene. Each chapter is devoted to a particular female guru, ranging from the 5th-century Tamil saint Karaikkal Ammaiyar to Gurumayi, who today presides over the worldwide movement of Siddha Yoga, headquartered in the Catskill resort town of South Fallsburg, New York.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to one of the most beloved and widely worshiped of Hindu deities: the “monkey-god” Hanuman. It details the historical expansion of Hanuman's religious status beyond his role as helper to Rama and Sita, the divine hero and heroine of the ancient Ramayana storytelling tradition. Additionally, it surveys contemporary popular literature and folklore through which Hanuman's mythological biography is celebrated, and describes a range of religious sites and practices that highlight different aspects of his persona. Emphasizing Hanuman's role as a “liminal” deity who combines animal, human, and divine qualities, and as a “middle-class” god within the Hindu pantheon, the book argues that such mediatory status has made Hanuman especially appealing to upwardly-mobile social groups as well as to Hindus of many sectarian persuasions.

Hindu God, Christian God, an exercise in comparative theology, proposes that theology today is an interreligious discipline and illustrates this with reference to Christianity and Hinduism. Thinkers in many religious traditions share similar theological questions and problems in their quest to understand their faith, and so too use comparable methods for seeking right answers. However, much traditions emphasize their uniqueness and the necessity of faith, their thinkers usually teach, and often such teachings are recorded and become available as books that can be read and understood, and even translated. Religions are partially intelligible to outsiders; reasoning inquirers, in beginning to understand various beliefs and practices, cross even the most firmly fixed religious boundaries. In the process, they learn from the new tradition and also see their own tradition anew, by a comparative reading process. The best theology is therefore not only interreligious but also comparative, well versed in how different traditions have dealt with the same concerns.

It is also dialogical, since authors must explain their ideas in ways that at least make sense to thinkers in the other traditions being discussed; they also need to be willing to learn from the critiques and responses of those other thinkers. Lastly, the discovery of common ground and shared concerns does not mean agreement; believers can still disagree and continue to hold views at odds with what others believe. Apologetics remains an issue.

Hindu God, Christian God argues these points by bringing into conversation Christian theological beliefs – exemplified by the writings of Richard Swinburne, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Karl Barth — and beliefs from some major Hindu traditions, including Nyaya [Logic], Vaisnavism [devotion to Visnu], and Saivism [devotion to Siva], as expressed in classic Sanskrit‐ and Tamil‐language texts. Issues discussed include Hindu and Christian views of God's nature; proofs for God's existence; the true religion; incarnation or divine embodiment; revelation as offering definitive knowledge of religious truth.

This work is an intensive study of certain facets of social and intellectual life in Bengal between 1872 and 1905, particularly Hindu revivalism. The period under discussion represents significant progress in the area of social and religious reform as well as a period which witnessed hostile attitudes towards such reforms. This is probably the first major work concerning the controversy that surrounded the Brahmo Marriage Bill of 1868–72 and the Consent Bill of 1890–92. The major source material for this book comprises contemporary Bengali literature, including essays, newspaper articles and correspondence, novels, short stories, drama and poetry. Though this study purports to be a history of intellectual life in Bengal and the broader intellectual trends and movements, it is largely an examination of certain developments centred in or around Calcutta.