Search Results

A full translation of Venkatesha's Sanskrit stotra in praise of Vishnu Devanayaka as Krishna, the Gopalavimshati, with detailed thematic afterword and notes. The afterword situates Venkatesha's Sanskrit praise‐poem to Krishna in the broader history of Vishnu/Krishna devotion in Tamil South India, where Krishna as such rarely stands alone as an object of praise. In the poetry of the Alvars and Acaryas, particularly in the poems of Antal, there are several sometimes quite vivid references to Krishna, as god‐child and as god‐lover, but always within the larger context of Vishnu and his ten incarnations (avataras). Venkatesha, however, in the Gopalavimshati and in his mahakavyam, the Yadhavabhyudayam, has written quite concretely about Krishna, as Gopala, the Cowherder god loved by the gopis, the cowherd girls; as the prankster child‐god, the Butter‐Thief; as divine Lover, the god of love and the god in love (kami); and also, as the inconceivable godhead, Brahman itself, the ground of being, formless and in essence unknowable, that takes the form of a playful, vulnerable human being. This chapter revisits themes of ecstatic beholding of the body of god, the devotional relish of the big in the little, and passionate religious love (bhakti and kama).

Narratives of the miraculous or otherwise special origin of icons betray anxiety about the authenticity of icons. This chapter investigates the Shvetambara narratives of a sandalwood icon of Mahavira, the twenty‐fourth and final Jina of this period, that was carved during his lifetime. Because it portrayed the Lord while he was still alive—and in fact before he renounced the world and was still a prince, not yet a monk—it is known as the Living Lord (jivantasvami) icon. The existence of both narratives and actual Living Lord icons from the mid‐first millennium CE indicates that we are dealing with a regional icon tradition, one that lasted in western India into the medieval period. Since the icons all derive their legitimacy (and, in many cases, their iconography) from a single icon, and so all are copies of the single original icon, this is analyzed as an example of a “replication cult.” The iconography of the Living Lord icons—standing with unbent body and arms at side, and wearing a crown and royal robes—bears strong resemblances to the contemporaneous iconography in western India of Vishnu, Surya, and some Buddha icons. Further, the fact that the Jains, Buddhists, and Pancharatra (P_ñcar_tra) Vaishnavas all developed sets of twenty‐four deities further indicates the ways these traditions interacted. The Living Lord replication cult is an example of one of the several ways that the Jains expanded their pantheon beyond the standard icons of the twenty‐four Jinas. Other examples are the Digambara cult of Gommateshvara (Gommate_vara) B_hubali, the Shvetambara cult of Simandhara Svami, and the worship of either anthropomorphic or footprint icons of deceased monks. A central character in the narrative of the lifetime icon of Mahavira was King Udayana. This same king figures prominently in a Buddhist narrative of a lifetime icon of the Buddha Shakyamuni. The Buddhist narrative duplicates itself, and involves also the story of King Prasenajit and another lifetime icon of the Buddha. Analysis of narratives of lifetime icons in these two religions leads to a comparative analysis involving Christian defenses of icons through narratives of lifetime icons of Christ and Mary: the Mandylion, the Veronica handkerchief relic, the Turin shroud, and the tradition of icons of Christ and Mary painted by Luke. Narratives from the Hindu, Greek, and Semitic traditions of the “self‐born” (called svayambhu in Hinduism) icons also fit within this interpretive frame of narratives that counter anxiety about icons.

After a brief survey of the history of vernacular bhakti literature in South India, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists and the Tamil “cosmopolitan vernacular,” this chapter attempts to assess the riches of Vedåntadeóika's Tamil writing by looking at a long prabandham, the Meyviratamåúmiyam (“The Splendor of the City of True Vows”), a narrative account of the creator god Brahmå's building of the shrine at Kåñcâ and his grand sacrificial ritual performed for the sake of a vision of “Kaïïaú,” Vishnu‐Krishna, the Lord Varadaråja Perumåö at Kåñcâpuram. Chapter also includes analysis of Vedåntadeóika's maïipravåöa auto‐commentary on this poem (the Attikiri Måhåtmyam), which sheds light on the intimate relationship between poetry and commentary in the work of Vedåntadeóika. In this and in the following chapter, the study attempts to locate Deóika's poetics of devotion by using traditional Dravidian categories of feeling: the puõam, or “external,” “public” realm of heroic discourse, and the akam, or “interior,” “private” realm of love.

Creative but careful use of these traditional categories reveals in a way no other mode of analysis can the richness of Vedåntadeóika's devotional vocabulary in Tamil — a richness that also pervades his work in other genres and other languages. A close thematic and philological reading and poetic translation of the Meyviratamåúmiyam reveals this poem as dominated by motifs of the puõam genre, one that emphasizes the royal, “external”/heroic/public, historical, and “majestic” aspects of this form of Vishnu. Vishnu not as lover, but as King.

This chapter focuses on a few stanzas of two long Tamil prabandhams — the Mummaïikkêvai and the Navamaïimålai — that use elements of classical Tamil akam love poetry as they have been appropriated by the Çôvårs — especially by Nammåôvår — to evoke Deóika's experience of Devanåyaka Svåmi, the form of Vishnu at a sacred place where he is said to have spent 30 years of his life, Tiruvahândrapuram. Whereas Vedåntadeóika's praises of Varadaråja at Kåñcâ stress Vishnu's overall puõuam nature as awesome majestic king with his queens, at Tiruvahândrapuram, Devanåyaka (The “Lord of Gods”), no less “awesome,” is the intimate, “interior,” love mode of akam dominates. The devotional attitude in these Tamil verses is mirrored in Deóika's Sanskrit and Pråkrit poems to this same form of Vishnu. And while the Sanskrit and Prakrit hymns to Devanåyaka consciously make use of their own conventions of erotic love to convey his love of this form of God, his Tamil verses suitably mine what had become with the work of the Çôvårs, a ‘Tamil’ poetics of passionate, intimate religious love. The thematic close reading of stanzas from these two Tamil poems includes discussions of various female personae from the Tamil akam poetry, love and separation, divine absence and presence, Vishnu's beautiful body and the temple icon, the “eros of place,” love and bathing imagery (niråìal) in Vedåntadeóika and the female Çôvår Çïìåö and, most significantly, the theology of beauty (“beauty that saves”) that emerges from these poems.

A doctrine of trinity known as trimūrti (‘The Three Forms’) in Sanskrit provides for the coexistence, as part of a single visionary conception, of the three gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. This trinity, a philosophical concept in modern Hinduism, is a convenient doctrine for relating God to the universe that undergoes the processes of manifestation, maintenance, and dissolution. Hindu metaphysical categories can give rise to several trinities. There is a trinity of the three ‘male’ gods which function in relation to Goddess (Devī), rather than God, as the ultimate principle. Pairing Íśvara and Devī can produce another trinity. In other words, the categories of modern Hindu thought are capable of forming several trinities, which confirms Hinduism's penchant for expansion, classification, and even infinite or at least indefinite extension.

This chapter discusses the Hindu trinity. As early as Gupta times, a holy trinity of Hinduism, the Trimūrti or triple form, was evolved. This consisted of Brahmā the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Śiva the destroyer. The doctrine of the Trimūrti was occasionally popular in some circles, and is proclaimed in the fine hymn of Kālidāsa. According to S. Radhakrishnan: ‘The three, Brahmā, Vishnu, and Śiva, are not to be conceived as independent persons; they are the threefold manifestations of the one Supreme’.

The second chapter explores animal-friendly teachings and practices in Vedic, Hindu, and Jain religious traditions through sacred texts and teachings and through the lives of religious exemplars, including key topics such as the sacred power of the natural environment, ahimsa, reincarnation and karma, oneness, interspecies kinship, Vishnu's incarnations, and the historic Hindu tendency toward a diet devoid of flesh and eggs. This chapter also probes rich affiliations between Vedic/Hindu deities and nonhuman animals, including vehicles associated with gods and goddesses, Krishna's connection with cows, and the importance and power of serpents/snakes/nagas, the elephant-headed Ganesha, and the much-revered monkey Hanuman. Chapter 2 closes by demonstrating animal activism in Hindu religious traditions through the life and teachings of Gandhi, as well as the lives and work of two contemporary Hindu animal liberationists, Dharmesh Solanki and PETA's Anuradha Sawhney.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to explore music’s history in the Deccan region of western India. It focuses on two men—Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande and Vishnu Digambar Paluskar—who gave Indian classical music, as we understand and recognize it today, its distinct shape. They enable the telling of a capacious and critical history that situates music as a part of and participant in a historical transformation that throws larger questions into relief: questions about nationalism, secularism, and modern religiosity in the public sphere, and about gendered respectability and progressive histories. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter examines the debates and discussions at national music conferences and the two institutions of musical learning set up by Bhatkhande and Paluskar. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, music was taught in schools in addition to private homes. Musicians performed in public halls as well as in aristocratic drawing rooms. Bhatkhande had published his major works on music theory, and Paluskar’s two schools, in Lahore and Bombay, were well established. But even more than schools and texts a new format, the All-India Music Conference, would convert music into a subject worthy of national attention.

This chapter describes the Chandrachud Court of 1978–85. The Janata regime was pledged to restore the independence of the judiciary but had not committed itself to restoring the convention of promoting the seniormost associate judge to the chief justiceship. Chandrachud was CJI for seven and a half years, by far the longest tenure before or since, and spanned years of momentous change in the nation. Some were passive concerning Chandrachud’s nominations, while others were active in the sense that they found some of his nominees unacceptable and pressed Chandrachud to accept their own choices. His appointments include Anand Dev Koshal, Onteddu Chinnappa Reddy, Ananda Prakash Sen, Engalaguppe Seetharamiah Venkataramiah, Baharul Islam, Appajee Varadarajan, Amarendra Nath Sen, Vettath Balakrishna Eradi, Ram Briksha Misra, Dinshah Pirosha Madon, Sabyasachi Mukharji, Manharlal Pranlal Thakkar, Ranga Nath Misra, and Vazhakkulangarayil Khalid.

This chapter, on the impressive temple to Vishnu as Ventakesvara (Lord of the Venkata Hill) in Pittsburgh, describes what it took to transplant this major deity from the hills of Andhra Pradesh to Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. It concludes with some observations about the cardinal features of Hinduism as understood not just in Pittsburgh but in the American Hindu diaspora at large, and also notes the conviction that Hinduism is a tolerant religion.

If Brahmā is the otiose God, then Vishnu is the supreme, syncretic and living god. Of course, all the gods of the trinity, including Brahmā, have laid claim to supremacy; but the claim seems to have been most effective in the case of Vishnu, and perhaps a little less so in the case of Śiva. This chapter addresses the following question: How does Vishnu perform his role as a member of the trinity? Before trying to answer that question, the chapter describes about how Vishnu came into being, since that has had some bearing on it.

This chapter examines the pipal tree (Ashvattha), the most sacred of all trees in India. The more positive life-blessing attitudes associated with the pipal tree are explored here. This chapter opens with an account of the Somvati Amavasya Vrat, a ritual worship of pipal trees that are circled by groups of women for the welfare of themselves and others. Although pipal trees are worshiped every day of the year by many people throughout India, they are worshiped with special fanfare on a Somvati Amavasya, a day the new moon happens to fall on a Monday. Worship at a variety of pipal tree shrines is described in this chapter. Although this tree is identified with many forms of divinity, it is most commonly associated with Vasudeva or Vishnu. The chapter ends with an examination of Buddhist views of the pipal tree, focusing particular attention on the Bodhi Tree of Bodh Gaya.

Combining personal narrative, analytic insight, and poetics, in this chapter the author explores the parallels between the popular ninth century Tamil saint Āṇṭāḷ and the ritual of the kōlam in Tamil Nadu. The links between Āṇṭāḷ, her devotion to Vishnu, and the kōlam present a fragmented landscape of oral and written narrative, folk wisdom, and ideology. The author finds four similar themes between the story of Āṇṭāḷ and the ritual of making the kōlam: sacred time, waking up, forgiveness, and generosity. Āṇṭāḷ maintains a lively presence in the kōlam ritual even today. The author traces the possible origins of the kōlam in medieval Tamil texts.

Hegel treats Hinduism under the title “The Religion of Imagination” or, with another translation, “The Religion of Fantasy.” Hegel’s study of Hinduism came during the period when there was a rapidly growing interest in India, indeed, an Indomania, in the German-speaking world, which included figures such as Friedrich von Schlegel, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Novalis, Jean Paul, Goethe, Bettina von Arnim, Heinrich Heine, Christian Gottlob Heyne, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. An account is given of the rise of Indology in Great Britain, France, and the German States with a special eye towards the sources of Hegel’s information. The main analysis explores Hegel’s critical treatment of the Hindu gods, Brahmā, Vishnu, and Shiva, and the religious practices associated with them. Despite the fact that the Hindus have with these three gods a kind of trinity, Hegel argues that this is fundamentally different from the true speculative Trinity of Christian dogma.

Hegel examines instances of Indian Art, Religion, and Philosophy and avers that they are based on pantheistic, pictorial, representative understanding, and not adequately speculative or conceptual. To him, the Indian Absolute or Brahman (end or object of Art, Religion, and Philosophy) is abstract, universal, measureless, undifferentiated, with no concrete content, and expresses an empty, unconscious, unreflected unity. Indian art expresses the “fantastic symbolic”. Indian religion fuses nature with God—Hegel asks for a transition from the oneness of pure subjectivity within itself found in this religion of nature or fantasy to the objective religion of concrete freedom, where God is Spirit. The chapter surveys these key themes and argues that this uncharitable reading is consistent with the constant differentiation that Hegel seeks to achieve for his own system.

This final chapter asks the question, “What now?” Looking back over all that has been said and turning to the urgency of the moment, I propose that Vrindavan be designated a World Heritage Site and suggest a “theology of world heritage” to match. What does it mean when the realities we take for granted—land, water, air, nation, gender, social structures—crumble before our very eyes? Vrindavan, a haven of exalted virtuality yet pitched in one of the world’s most precarious environments, feels each of these tremors and is a powerful sign of our times.

This chapter examines the Skanda Purana, the longest of all the Puranas, and one of its books, the Kedara Khanda. The Kedara Khanda, the first book of the first section, the Maheshvara Khanda, of the Skanda Purana, seems to have an intellectual agenda: its stories deal with abstract themes, rather than a concrete person or a place. One such theme is that of the “undeserving devotee” or “accidental devotee” of the lingam. Of the dogmas that the Kedara Khanda shares with many other Shaiva Puranas is that Shiva subsumes Vishnu within him. The chapter also considers feminism and the deconstruction of Shiva in the Kedara Khanda.