Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism

Emilia Bachrach (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

264 Seiten

2023
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-764859-9 (ISBN)

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Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Vārtā Sāhitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg's early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early-modern north India, these texts have continued to be immensely popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat-the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today.

Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of "reading" inform and are informed by both intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.

Emilia Bachrach is Assistant Professor of Religion and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Oberlin College. Her research focuses on how people's interpretations of religious texts inform and are informed by intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and by changing class, regional, and gender identities in contemporary western India. She also works with oral and written texts in early modern and modern languages, including Braj Bhasha, Gujarati, and Hindi.

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration and Translation

Introduction: An Ethnography of Reading

1. Dialogical Reading: The Pushtimarg's Performative Canon

2. Commentarial Reading: Historicizing Hagiography and Making Modern Readers

3. Public Reading: Debating Text, Temple, and Religious Authority

4. Community Reading: Learning Affective Piety

5. Women's Reading: Navigating Family, Gender, and Devotion

Conclusion: Religious Reading and Everyday Lives

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	21.10.2022
Reihe/Serie	AAR RELIGION IN TRANSLATION
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	242 x 162 mm
Gewicht	517 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Hinduismus
ISBN-10	0-19-764859-2 / 0197648592
ISBN-13	978-0-19-764859-9 / 9780197648599
Zustand	Neuware