Religious Cultures in Early Modern India: New Perspectives

Description

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 published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Introduction: religious cultures in an imperial landscape Notes Bibliography 1. The debate within: a Sufi critique of religious law, tasawwuf and politics in Mughal India Shaikh ‘Abd al-Rahmān Chishtī’s Mir’āt al-Asrār The ‘religion’ (mazhab) of the Sufi The debate on religious law and tasawwuf The Naqshbandī view of tasawwuf Chishtī and the Mughal rulers Towards a redefinition of tradition Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 2. The four sampradāys: ordering the religious past in Mughal North India In search of the four sampradāys Inward directed or outward? Problems of dating Questions in conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 3. Theology and statecraft Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Abbreviations Unpublished texts Published texts Secondary sources 4. Advaita Vedānta in early modern history Introduction A survey of works, authors and trends Literary trends Currents of thought Networks Banaras and the south Advaita Vedānta and social institutions Social history of Advaita Vedānta? Excursus – four Advaitin authors and the personal contact between them: Nrsimhāśrama, Appayya Dīksita, Bhattoji Dīksita and Rangoji Bhatta N(?)A: Nrsimha and Appayya N(?)B: Nrsimha and Bhattoji A(?)B: Appayya and Bhattoji N(?)R and BR: Nrsimha, Bhattoji and Rangoji Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 5. The Brahmin double: the Brahminical construction of anti-Brahminism and anti-caste sentiment in the religious cultures of precolonial Maharashtra The theatre of caste politics Caste, cultural power and the vernacular turn The conservative radical Love, caste and culture at the end of empire The play of caste in public culture Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 6. Speaking from Siva’s temple: Banaras scholar households and the Brahman ‘ecumene’ of Mughal India Introduction Families in motion: Maratha Brahman migrations to Banaras The scholar household and the Brahman ‘ecumene’ in Banaras Geographies of Brahman identity Speaking from Siva’s temple: the locale of the assemblies Speaking from Siva’s temple: the assemblies and their judgements Conclusions Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography 7. A tale of two temples: Mathurā’s Keśavadeva and Orcchā’s Caturbhujadeva Introduction The Mathurā site prior to Mughal rule Mathurā and court politics under Akbar Orcchā–Mughal relations and the building of the Caturbhuja The Caturbhuja temple, finished and eulogized under Vīr Singh The building of Vīr Singh’s Keśavarāya temple in Mathurā Mythologizing Vīr Singh in Sanskrit Destruction of the Bundelā temples Conclusions Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Dictionary abbreviations Primary sources Primary sources in translation from Persian Secondary sources 8. Replicating Vaisnava worlds: organizing devotional space through the architectonics of the mandala Religious nostalgia and memory Krsna’s world of timeless Vraja Krsna’s world replicated in Gaura’s Navadvīpa Accommodating apparent disjunctions of representation Constructing ritual time and space Replicating Vrndāvana in the new age Rereading the mechanics of the Kheturī festival Notes Bibliography Index