Religious cultures in early modern India : new perspectives / editors, Rosalind O'Hanlon, David Washbrook.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

O'Hanlon, Rosalind.

Washbrook, D. A.

Class of 1932 Fund.

Series:

South Asian history and culture ; 7.

South Asian history and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion and culture--India.

Religion and culture.

Religion.

History.

India.

Religion and sociology--India.

Religion and sociology.

India--Religious life and customs.

India--Religion--History.

Physical Description:

v, 210 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2012.

Summary:

Religious authority and political power have existed in complex relationships throughout India's history. The centuries of the 'early modern' in South Asia saw particularly dynamic developments in this relationship. Regional as well as imperial states of the period expanded their religious patronage, while new sectarian centres of doctrinal and spiritual authority emerged beyond the confines of the state. Royal and merchant patronage stimulated the growth of new classes of mobile intellectuals deeply committed to the reappraisal of many aspects of religious law and doctrine. Supra-regional institutions and networks of many other kinds - sect-based religious maths, pilgrimage centres and their guardians, sants and sufi orders - flourished, offering greater mobility to wider communities of the pious. This was also a period of growing vigour in the development of vernacular religious literatures of different kinds, and often of new genres blending elements of older devotional, juridical and historical literatures. Oral and manuscript literatures too gained more rapid circulation, although the meaning and canonical status of texts frequently changed as they circulated more widely and reached larger lay audiences.

Through explorations of these developments, the essays in this collection make a distinctive contribution to a critical formative period in the making of India's modern religious cultures.

This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The debate within: a Sufi critique of religious law, tasawwuf and politics in Mughal India / Muzaffar Alam Alam, Muzaffar 6

2 The four sampradays: ordering the religious past in Mughal North India / John Stratton Hawley Hawley, John Stratton 28

3 Theology and statecraft / Monika Horstmann Horstmann, Monika 52

4 Advaita Vedanta in early modern history / Christopher Minkowski Minkowski, Christopher 73

5 The Brahmin double: the Brahminical construction of anti-Brahminism and anti-caste sentiment in the religious cultures of precolonial Maharashtra / Christian Lee Novetzke Novetzke, Christian Lee 100

6 Speaking from Siva's temple: Banaras scholar households and the Brahman 'ecumene' of Mughal India / Rosalind O'Hanlon O'Hanlon, Rosalind 121

7 A tale of two temples: Mathura's Kesavadeva and Orccha's Caturbhujadeva / Heidi Pauwels Pauwels, Heidi 146

8 Replicating Vaisnava worlds: organizing devotional space through the architectonics of the mandala / Tony K. Stewart Stewart, Tony K. 168.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 286-303) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1932 Fund.

ISBN:

0415602327

9788189643188

8189643185

OCLC:

762544059

Publisher Number:

99947631008