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Devotion To A Goddess In Contemporary India
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Download or read book Meeting God written by and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huyler provides an introduction to the scope of Hindu beliefs and practices, accompanied by his arresting photographs documenting the spirituality of common men and women in India. 200 color illustrations.
Book Synopsis Given to the Goddess by : Lucinda Ramberg
Download or read book Given to the Goddess written by Lucinda Ramberg and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony. Marriage to the goddess, as well as the rites that the dedication ceremony authorizes jogatis to perform, have long been seen as illegitimate and criminalized. Kinship with the goddess is productive for the families who dedicate their children, Ramberg argues, and yet it cannot conform to modern conceptions of gender, family, or religion. This nonconformity, she suggests, speaks to the limitations of modern categories, as well as to the possibilities of relations—between and among humans and deities—that exceed such categories.
Book Synopsis The Goddess and the Nation by : Sumathi Ramaswamy
Download or read book The Goddess and the Nation written by Sumathi Ramaswamy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making the case for a new kind of visual history, The Goddess and the Nation charts the pictorial life and career of Bharat Mata, “Mother India,” the Indian nation imagined as mother/goddess, embodiment of national territory, and unifying symbol for the country’s diverse communities. Soon after Mother India’s emergence in the late nineteenth century, artists, both famous and amateur, began to picture her in various media, incorporating the map of India into her visual persona. The images they produced enabled patriotic men and women in a heterogeneous population to collectively visualize India, affectively identify with it, and even become willing to surrender their lives for it. Filled with illustrations, including 100 in color, The Goddess and the Nation draws on visual studies, gender studies, and the history of cartography to offer a rigorous analysis of Mother India’s appearance in painting, print, poster art, and pictures from the late nineteenth century to the present. By exploring the mutual entanglement of the scientifically mapped image of India and a (Hindu) mother/goddess, Sumathi Ramaswamy reveals Mother India as a figure who relies on the British colonial mapped image of her dominion to distinguish her from the other goddesses of India, and to guarantee her novel status as embodiment, sign, and symbol of national territory. Providing an exemplary critique of ideologies of gender and the science of cartography, Ramaswamy demonstrates that images do not merely reflect history; they actively make it. In The Goddess and the Nation, she teaches us about pictorial ways of learning the form of the nation, of how to live with it—and ultimately to die for it.
Book Synopsis Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism by : Urmila Mohan
Download or read book Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism written by Urmila Mohan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism, Urmila Mohan explores the materiality and visuality of cloth and clothing as devotional media in contemporary Hinduism. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the global missionizing group “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (ISKCON), she studies translocal spaces of worship, service, education, and daily life in the group’s headquarters in Mayapur and other parts of India. Focusing on the actions and values of deity dressmaking, devotee clothing and paraphernalia, Mohan shows how activities, such as embroidery and chanting, can be understood as techniques of spirituality, reverence, allegiance—and she proposes the new term “efficacious intimacy” to help understand these complex processes. The monograph brings theoretical advances in Anglo-European material culture and material religion studies into a conversation with South Asian anthropology, sociology, art history, and religion. Ultimately, it demonstrates how embodied interactions as well as representations shape ISKCON’s practitioners as devout subjects, while connecting them with the divine and the wider community.
Book Synopsis Contemporary Hinduism by : P. Pratap Kumar
Download or read book Contemporary Hinduism written by P. Pratap Kumar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most overviews of Hindu belief and practice follow a history from the ancient Vedas to today. Such approaches privilege Brahmanical traditions and create a sense of Hinduism as a homogenous system and culture, and one which is largely unchanging and based solely on sacred texts. In reality, modern Hindu faith and culture present an extraordinary range of dynamic beliefs and practices. 'Contemporary Hinduism' aims to capture the full breadth of the Hindu worldview as practised today, both in the sub-continent and the diaspora. Global and regional faith, ritualised and everyday practice, Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical belief, and ascetic and devotional traditions are all discussed. Throughout, the discussion is illustrated with detailed case material and images, whilst key terms are highlighted and explained in a glossary. 'Contemporary Hinduism' presents students with a lively and engaging survey of Hinduism, offering an introduction to the oldest and one of the most complex of world religions.
Book Synopsis Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India by : Fabrizio M. Ferrari
Download or read book Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India written by Fabrizio M. Ferrari and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines notions of health and illness in North Indian devotional culture, with particular attention paid to the worship of the goddess Sitala, the Cold Lady. Consistently portrayed in colonial and postcolonial literature as the ambiguous 'smallpox goddess', Sitala is here discussed as a protector of children and women, a portrayal that emerges from textual sources as well as material culture. The eradication of smallpox did not pose a threat to Sitala and her worship. She continues to be an extremely popular goddess. Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India critically examines the rise and affirmation of the 'smallpox myth' in India and beyond, and explains how Indian narratives, ritual texts and devotional songs have celebrated Sitala as a loving mother who protects her children from the effects, and the fear, of poxes, fevers and infantile disorders but also all sorts of new threats (such as global pandemics, addictions and environmental catastrophes). The book explores a wide range of ritual and devotional practices, including scheduled festivals, songs, vows, pageants, austerities, possession, animal sacrifices and various forms of offering. Built on extensive fieldwork and a close textual analysis of sources in Sanskrit and vernacular languages (Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali) as well as on a rich bibliography on the struggle against smallpox in colonial and post-colonial India, the book reflects on the ambiguous nature of Sitala as a phenomenon largely dependent on the enduring fascination with the exotic, and the horrific, that has pervaded public renditions of Indian culture in indigenous fiction, colonial reports, medical literature and now global culture. To aid study, the volume includes images, web links, appendixes and a filmography.
Book Synopsis Devotional Visualities by : Karen Pechilis
Download or read book Devotional Visualities written by Karen Pechilis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Book Synopsis Domestic Goddesses by : Henrike Donner
Download or read book Domestic Goddesses written by Henrike Donner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on extensive fieldwork in Calcutta, this book provides the first ethnography of how middle-class women in India understand and experience economic change through transformations of family life. It explores their ideas, practices and experiences of marriage, childbirth, reproductive change and their children's education, and addresses the impact that globalization is having on the new middle classes in Asia more generally from a domestic perspective. By focusing on maternity, the book explores subjective understandings of the way intimate relationships and the family are affected by India's liberalization policies and the neo-liberal ideologies that accompany through an analysis of often competing ideologies and multiple practices. And by drawing attention to women's agency as wives, mothers and grandmothers within these new frameworks, Domestic Goddesses discusses the experiences of different age groups affected by these changes. Through a careful analysis of women's narratives, the domestic sphere is shown to represent the key site for the remaking of Indian middle-class citizens in a global world.
Book Synopsis The Divine Consort by : John Stratton Hawley
Download or read book The Divine Consort written by John Stratton Hawley and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers presented at a conference held June 1978 at Harvard University, sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Book Synopsis Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia by : Michel Boivin
Download or read book Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia written by Michel Boivin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Muslim shrine is at the crossroad of many processes involving society and culture. It is the place where a saint – often a Sufi - is buried, and it works as a main social factor, with the power of integrating or rejecting people and groups, and as a mirror reflecting the intricacies of a society. The book discusses the role of popular Islam in structuring individual and collective identities in contemporary South Asia. It identifies similarities and differences between the worship of saints and the pattern of religious attendance to tombs and mausoleums in South Asian Sufism and Shi`ism. Inspired by new advances in the field of ritual and pilgrimage studies, the book demonstrates that religious gatherings are spaces of negotiation and redefinitions of religious identity and of the notion of sainthood. Drawing from a large corpus of vernacular and colonial sources, as well as the register of popular literature and ethnographic observation, the authors describe how religious identities are co-constructed through the management of rituals, and are constantly renegotiated through discourses and religious practices. By enabling students, researchers and academics to critically understand the complexity of religious places within the world of popular and devotional Islam, this geographical re-mapping of Muslim religious gatherings in contemporary South Asia contributes to a new understanding of South Asian and Islamic Studies.
Book Synopsis Images of Indian Goddesses by : Madhu Bazaz Wangu
Download or read book Images of Indian Goddesses written by Madhu Bazaz Wangu and published by Abhinav Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goddess Images Are Omnipresent Within The Cultural Fabric Of India, Yet Most Indians Are Unaware Of Uplifting Meanings These Images Convey. In The Book, Images Of Indian Goddesses,. Dr. Madhu Bazaz Wangu Explains The Emergence Of Indian Goddesses Within The Changing Social, Political And Cultural Environment From The Prehistoric To The Present Times And Explains Their Metaphysical Meanings. Why Are Hindu Goddesses Paradoxical In Nature? Why Are They Portrayed As Erotic And Maternal Simultaneously? Why Do They Have Multiple Arms? Why Do Some Of Them Have Their Own Vehicle (Vahana) And Some Do Not? Why Are Such Images Portrayed On The Popular Calendar- Posters? The Book Answers Such Questions And Helps The Reader Understand Their Meanings. The Goddesses Discussed Range From The Devoted Sita To The Sinister Kali; From The Warrior Durga To The Auspicious Shri Lakshmi; From The Erotic Radha To The Serene Sarasvati And Many Others. Dr. Wangu Firmly Feels That If Experienced Hindu Goddesses Have A Potential For Stimulating The Onlooker'S Innermost Self. Experiencing Goddess Imagery Uplifts This Worldly Life And Ponders The Nature Of The Other -Worldly Existence. Furthermore, The Book Argues That The Goddesses Are Stimulating And Empowering Models Not Only For Indian Women But For All. Images Of Indian Goddesses Helps A Common Person Understand And Appreciate The Bewildering Number Of Female Images Expressed In India'S Sacred Art. The Book Is Not Only Absorbing And Inspiring, It Also Offers A Visual Treasury Of Goddess Art Images. Its Text Is Food For The Mind And The Illustrations Are A Feast For The Eyes.
Download or read book Nine Lives written by William Dalrymple and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-06-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death. Nine people, nine lives; each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. William Dalrymple delves deep into the heart of a nation torn between the relentless onslaught of modernity and the ancient traditions that endure to this day. LONGLISTED FOR THE BBC SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE
Book Synopsis Purifying the Earthly Body of God by : Lance E. Nelson
Download or read book Purifying the Earthly Body of God written by Lance E. Nelson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between religion and environment in Hinduism.
Book Synopsis Reciting the Goddess by : Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz
Download or read book Reciting the Goddess written by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reciting the Goddess presents the first critical study of the Svasthanivratakatha (SVK), a sixteenth-century Hindu narrative textual tradition. The extensive SVK manuscript tradition offers a rare opportunity to observe the making of a specific, distinct Hindu religious tradition. Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz argues that the SVK serves as a lens through which we can observe the creation of modern 'Hinduism' in the Himalayas, as the text both mirrored and informed key moments in the self-conscious creation of Nepal as the 'world's only Hindu kingdom' in the late medieval and early modern period. Birkenholtz mines the literary historiography that is contained within the SVK text itself, chronicling the text's literary and narrative development as well as the development of the Svasthani goddess tradition. She outlines the process whereby the SVK gradually transformed into a Purana text, and became a critical source for Nepali Hindu belief and identity. She also examines the elusive character of the goddess Svasthani whose identity is tied to the pan-Hindu goddess tradition, and the representation of women in the SVK and the ways in which the text influenced local and regional debates on the ideal of Hindu womanhood. Reciting the Goddess presents Nepal's celebrated SVK as a micro-level illustration of the powerful ways in which people, place, and literature intersect to produce new ideas and concepts of identity and place, even in a historically non-literate culture.
Book Synopsis Contemporary Indian Dance by : K. Katrak
Download or read book Contemporary Indian Dance written by K. Katrak and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through discussion of a dazzling array of artists in India and the diaspora, this book delineates a new language of dance on the global stage. Myriad movement vocabularies intersect the dancers' creative landscape, while cutting-edge creative choreography parodies gender and cultural stereotypes, and represents social issues.
Book Synopsis When the World Becomes Female by : Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger
Download or read book When the World Becomes Female written by Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A carefully crafted ethnography on the South Indian festival of the village goddess Gangamma in the pilgrimage town of Tirupati” (Choice). During the goddess Gangamma’s festival in the town of Tirupati, lower-caste men take guises of the goddess, and the streets are filled with men wearing saris, braids, and female jewelry. By contrast, women participate by intensifying the rituals they perform for Gangamma throughout the year, such as cooking and offering food. Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger argues that within the festival ultimate reality is imagined as female and women identify with the goddess, whose power they share. Vivid accounts by male and female participants offer new insights into Gangamma’s traditions and the nature of Hindu village goddesses. “Flueckiger’s rich and colorful descriptions of the stories, festivals, and worshipers connected with the goddess Gangamma evoke a world that previously had been accessible to very few living outside southern India. This work makes available to readers a close-up view of an extremely fascinating aspect of living Hinduism.” —David L. Haberman, Indiana University “Carefully crafted. . . . Through these rituals, stories and lives, the author reveals new ways of comprehending gender both at the cosmological and human level.” —Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University
Book Synopsis Devotional Sovereignty by : Caleb Simmons
Download or read book Devotional Sovereignty written by Caleb Simmons and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India investigates the shifting conceptualization of sovereignty in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore during the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782-1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799-1868). Tipu Sultan was a Muslim king famous for resisting British dominance until his death; Krishnaraja III was a Hindu king who succumbed to British political and administrative control. Despite their differences, the courts of both kings dealt with the changing political landscape by turning to the religious and mythical past to construct a royal identity for their kings. Caleb Simmons explores the ways in which these two kings and their courts modified and adapted pre-modern Indian notions of sovereignty and kingship in reaction to British intervention. The religious past provided an idiom through which the Mysore courts could articulate their rulers' claims to kingship in the region, attributing their rule to divine election and employing religious vocabulary in a variety of courtly genres and media. Through critical inquiry into the transitional early colonial period, this study sheds new light on pre-modern and modern India, with implications for our understanding of contemporary politics. It offers a revisionist history of the accepted narrative in which Tipu Sultan is viewed as a radical Muslim reformer and Krishnaraja III as a powerless British puppet. Simmons paints a picture of both rulers in which they work within and from the same understanding of kingship, utilizing devotion to Hindu gods, goddesses, and gurus to perform the duties of the king.
