Religion

The chapters in this volume resulted from an international conference held at the University of Texas at Austin on April 3–6, 2003. The conference explored the period between roughly the 4th century bce and the 5th century ce, a period that saw unparalleled developments within the Indian subcontinent, developments that defined classical Indian culture and society. The conference was dubbed Between the Empires, because the heart of the period falls between the decline of the first major Indian empire, that of the Mauryas (whose last king died in the early 2nd century bce), and the rise of the Gupta Empire (beginning in the 4th century ce). The aim of the conference was to bring together scholars pursuing advanced research relating to this period and to provide them the opportunity to interact with each other over a two- or three-day period. The participants included archeologists, art historians, numismatists, historians, experts in literature, law, and linguistics, philosophers, and historians of religion.

Kabir, the fifteenth‐century weaver‐poet of Varanasi, is still one of the most revered and popular saint‐singers of North India. He belonged to a family of Muslim julahas (weavers of low‐caste status), is believed to have been a disciple of the Hindu guru Ramanand, and often sang of inner experience using language of the subtle yogic body. Yet he cannot be classified as Hindu, Muslim, or yogi. Fiercely independent, he has become an icon of speaking truth to power. In a blunt and uncompromising style, he exhorted his listeners to shed their delusions, pretensions, and orthodoxies in favor of a direct experience of truth. He satirized hypocrisy, greed, and violence—especially among the religious. Belonging to a social group widely considered low and unclean, he criticized caste ideology and declared the equality of all human beings. Kabir was an oral poet whose works were written down by others. His oral traditions have flourished for more than 500 years, producing a rich array of musical forms, folk and classical, in countless local dialects and regional styles. Thousands of poems are popularly attributed to Kabir, but only a few written collections have survived over the centuries. The Bījak is the sacred book of the Kabir Panth, or sect devoted to Kabir's teachings. This book presents about half of the Bījak; the translators have selected those poems which seem most representative and which work best in translation. The Bījak includes three main sections called Ramainī, Śabda, and Sākhī, and a fourth section containing miscellaneous folksong forms. Most of the Kabir material has been popularized through the song form known as śabda (or pada), and through the aphoristic two‐line sākhī (or doha) that serves throughout north India as a vehicle for popular wisdom. These two forms have been emphasized in this translation; a group of ramainīs have also been included. An introduction by Hess precedes the translations; scholarly notes and three appendices, including an essay on Kabir's ulatbamsi or “upside‐down language,” are also by Hess.

This work closely examines the architectural and sculptural “texts” of the Vaikuntha Perumal Temple built for Vishnu/Krishna at Kanchipuram in the 8th century. The keys to unlock the meaning of these “texts” are in a poem written about the temple by Tirumangai Alvar shortly after it was built. Sacred texts and liturgical practices are also analyzed to understand the vision this Vishnu‐house was intended to embody for sophisticated Bhagavatas of the time. The three‐story temple, conceived as a mandala, houses figures representing various aspects or formations of the supreme Vishnu, and it is covered with some fifty-six panels of figures representing scenes from sacred texts, primarily the Bhagavata Purana. Not only are the stories illustrated by the panels important but also their physical placement, which takes into account metaphysical and cosmological implications of where they are situated on the building and their positions relative to one another. Pancharatra doctrine informs and is illustrated by the panels, opening up complex and subtle relations between the stories and teachings represented. The sculptural program also portrays the spiritual progress of the builder, the emperor Nandivarman Pallavamalla. His life and career are illustrated on the interior of the surrounding walls.

In 1839, a group of Hindu elite gathered in Calcutta to share and propagate their faith in a non-idolatrous form of worship. The group, known as the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā, met weekly to worship and hear discourses from members on ways to promote a rational and morally responsible mode of worship. They called upon ancient sources of Hindu spirituality to guide them in developing a modern form of theism they referred to as “Vedanta”.This book situates the theology and moral vision set forth in these hitherto unknown discourses against the backdrop of religious and social change in early colonial Calcutta. In doing so, it demonstrates how the theology of the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā legitimated the worldly interests of Calcutta's emergent bourgeoisie. This “bourgeois Vedanta” sanctioned material prosperity while providing members with a means of spiritual fulfillment. The book includes the first ever complete, annotated translation of Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā, the earliest extant record of the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā. The translation is supplemented with an analysis of the text demonstrating that its twenty-one unsigned discourses were composed by such major figures in 19th-century Bengal as Debendranath Tagore, Inullvaracandra Vidyasagara, Inullvaracandra Gupta, and Aksayakumara Datta. The book explores a decisive moment in the construction of modern Vedanta, and comments on the concerns this Vedantic movement raised for contemporary Christian observers. It demonstrates the decisive role played by the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā in both reviving and reformulating the teachings of Rammohan Roy, the founder of Vedantic reform in colonial India. It also suggests that the earliest members of the Sabhā are best viewed as “Brhamos without Rammohan”. Only later would they look to Rammohan as their founding father.

Based on three years of anthropological fieldwork in the Indian state of Rajasthan, this book explores the manner that semi-nomadic performers known as Bhats understand and also subvert caste hierarchies. A number of scholars have recently contended that caste is invented and thus a fiction of a kind. Focus in these studies, however, is typically placed on the way that caste is imagined according to the agendas and desires of elite Westerners such as colonial officials. By contrast, this book argues that Bhats themselves understand the imaginative dimensions of caste relations. It focuses on the way that Bhats (literally, “Bards”) now entertain a variety of contemporary sponsors — village patrons, foreign and domestic tourists, urban elites, government officials, development experts, and Hindu nationalists — with ballads, epics, and puppet plays detailing the exploits of Rajasthan’s long-dead kings and heroes. As the book delves deeper into the complexities and contradictions of Bhat art, identity, and political resistance, the complexities and contradictions of modern India are likewise revealed.

This book sets out to explore the doctrinal dimension of classical Hinduism (eighth century BCE to circa 1000 CE.), and is organized in terms of its key concepts: brahman, karma, karma-yoga, etc. which are discussed in their logical connection as well as in the context of a period of Hinduism which is chronologically connected with those that precede and succeed it. In textual terms, this covers the period from the Upanishads down to the late Purānas, and all that comes between them: the Smrtis (law books), the Itihāsas (epics), the Purānas (ancient lore), the Āgamas (liturgical manuals) and Darśanas (philosophical literature), etc. The purpose of the book is to synchronically and systematically present the governing concepts of classical Hinduism and their operation during the delimited period of classical Hinduism. Three features of the book to enable readers to use it to full advantage: (1) the first chapter constitutes the text of an oral presentation made at the Smithsonian Institution, designed to present classical Hindu thought in a concise and accessible manner. It forms a useful introduction to the conceptual framework of Hinduism, as the key ideas have deliberately been presented in a simple and direct manner. Their complexities and nuances are uncovered under the specific chapters that follow. (2) The rest of the book may be viewed as a magnification of the first chapter. (3) Among the essentials of classical Hindu thought, special and detailed consideration has been accorded to the concept of varna.

Explores the way personhood is constructed in public ritual performance. The performances are pandav lilas, ritual dramatizations of India's great epic, Mahabharata. They take place in the former Hindu kingdom of Garhwal, located in the central Himalayas of North India. The book begins by summarizing the theoretical literature on personhood (or ”selfhood”) and performance and providing a brief summary of the epic. Next, it describes one particular performance in detail and then goes on to discuss questions of caste, gender, and locality – all in the context of an overarching discussion of the performative construction of the self. The last few chapters describe a fascinating valley in the Western part of Garhwal, where the villains of the Mahabharata are worshiped as local, divine kings. The major conclusion reached by the book is that public ritual performances are one of the chief arenas where ”persons” are constructed – in Garhwal as well as in other cultures.

From a verbal root meaning “to hold” or “uphold,” dharma is taken to have been the main term by which Buddhism and Hinduism came, over about five centuries, to describe their distinctive visions of the good and well‐rewarded life. From about 300 BCE to about 200 CE, Buddhist and Brahmanical authors used it to clarify and classify their mutual and contending values in relation to dramatically changing historical conditions. Before this, the term had no such centrality, and after it, each tradition came to define normative dharma separately as the term's interreligious dimension lost interest. This book about dharma in history thus attempts to get at the concepts and practices associated with the term mainly during this window, which opens on dharma's vitality as it played, and was played, across political, religious, legal, literary, ethical, and philosophical domains and discourses about what “holds” life together. It examines what dharma meant in eleven texts, including text clusters like the Aśokan edicts and the canonical Buddhist Three Baskets, that can be said to have made dharma their central concern. These eleven “dharma texts,” nine “major” (including those just mentioned, the dharmasūtras, the Sanskrit epics, The Laws of Manu, and the Buddhacarita), and two “minor” (the Yuga Purāṇa and a set of Buddhist prophesies of the end of the Buddhist dharma), are explored for their treatments of dharma as experienced “over time” during this period of dynamic change. Each chapter brings out ways in which dharma is interpreted temporally: from grand cosmic chronometries of yugas and kalpas to narratives about divine plans, implications of itihāsa or “history,” war, and peace, gendered nuances of genealogical time, royal biography (even autobiography with Aśoka), guidelines for the royal life including daily routines, householder regimens including daily obligations and life‐stages, and monastic regimens including meditation.

From Chennai (Madras), India to London and Washington D.C., contemporary urban middle-class Hindus invest earnings, often derived from the global economy, into the construction or renovation of temples. South Indians often lead such efforts to re-establish authentic temples that nonetheless become sites for innovative communities, new visions of the Gods, and distinctive middle-class religious sensibilities. Although a part of the much-discussed resurgence of Hinduism, Gods and their ritual worship — not nationalistic ideology — center these enterprises. This book aims to go beyond the more common analytical starting points of identity, multiculturalism, transnationalism, or globalism to understand contemporary Hinduism. In both conversation and contention with current theory, the book highlights the Gods, their shrines, and the middle-class people who re-establish them. Using surveys of modern temples in Chennai, London, and Washington D.C. patronized by South Indians, it focuses on the ubiquity of certain Gods and Goddesses — but not all — their portrayal, the architecture of their new “homes”, and their place in the modern urban commercial and social landscapes. Arguing that this migration of Gods in tandem with people is not new, the book traces current temple architecture to Indian merchants who constructed new temples within a decade of the founding of Madras by the East India Trading Company in the initial era of the current world economic system. In the process, it questions the interrelationships between ritual worship/religious edifices, the rise of the modern world economy, and the ascendancy of the great middle class in this new era of globalization.

In academic no less than popular thought, India is frequently represented as the quintessential land of religion. Disenchanting India qualifies this representation through an analysis of the contemporary Indian rationalist organisations (those that affirm the values and attitudes of atheism, humanism or free-thinking).To understand the genesis of organised rationalism in India the book addresses the rationalists’ emphasis on maintaining links to atheism and materialism in ancient India and outlines their strong ties to the intellectual currents of modern European history. At the heart of Disenchanting India lies an ethnography of the organisation “Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti” (Organisation for the Eradication of Superstition) based in Maharashtra. This account describes the organization’s efforts to promote a scientific temper and combat the beliefs and practices it regards as superstitious. It also includes an analysis of rationalism in the day to day lives of its members and in relation to the organization’s controversial position within Indian society.The book outlines the distinguishing characteristics of this organisation through a depiction of the rationalists’ specific “mode of unbelief” in comparison to “modes of religiosity”. Alongside a critical engagement with the work of Max Weber and Charles Taylor, the theoretical discussion of modes of unbelief further provides an original basis for comparative studies of similar movements in a trans-cultural perspective. Finally, Disenchanting India can be situated within the contemporary debates about the nature of rationalism in Indian intellectual life and cultural politics. It thereby engages with debates that are as crucial for Anthropology and Religious Studies as they are for Post-colonial Studies, Sociology and History.