Religious Reading And Everyday Lives In Devotional Hinduism

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.

This book touches the core of Hindu spirituality by presenting its devotional feel, which involves directly connecting to God through the surrender of everyday actions or a love affair with the Divine. It explores the spiritual choices that are available to practicing Hindus, how their beliefs affect their behavior, what they strive for in life, how they plan their evolution, how they progress, and who their role models are. Learn why saints keep requesting for more and more bhakti, why a single chant of the Lord's name is considered sufficient for liberation, how people adore Vishnu and his incarnations, Shiva and Durga, how our style of interaction with society can help us transcend nature, why our approach of selecting a major in college correlates with our spiritual realization, what happens when love becomes complete surrender, and lots more.

Krishna's Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative is a comprehensive study of premodern regional Mahabharata retellings. This book argues that Vaishnavas (devotees of the Hindu god Vishnu and his various forms) throughout South Asia turned this epic about an apocalyptic, bloody war into works of ardent bhakti or "devotion" focused on the beloved Hindu deity Krishna. Examining over forty retellings in eleven different regional South Asian languages composed over a period of nine hundred years, it focuses on two particular Mahabharatas: Villiputturar's fifteenth-century Tamil Paratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan's seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahahbharat.

"Against High-Caste Polygamy offers a complete, annotated translation of Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar's first book arguing against the practice of high-caste Kulin marriage in Bengal. The translation is based on the text of the first edition of Bahuvivaha rahita haoya uchita ki na etadvishayaka vichara, published from the Sanskrit Press in 1871 (Samvat 1928); henceforth simply Bahuvivaha. I have relied on the version of the text as found in the second volume of Gopal Haldar's Vidyasagar-rachanasamgraha, as well as on a digitized version of the 1871 first edition available online"--

Mirabai, an iconic sixteenth-century Indian poet-saint, is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Defying attempts to constrain and even kill her, she could not be silenced. Though verifiable facts regarding her life are few, her fame spread across social, linguistic, and religious boundaries, and stories about her multiplied across the subcontinent and the centuries. In Mirabai, Nancy M. Martin traces the story of this immensely popular Indian saint from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist developments to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence. This book examines Mirabai's place as both insider and outsider to the developing strands of devotional Hinduism and her role in contested terrain of debates around the education and independence of women and the crafting of Indian and Hindu identities. Mirabai offers a comprehensive and multi-layered portrait of this remarkable and still controversial woman, who continues to be a source of inspiration and catalyst for self-actualization for spiritual seekers, artists, activists, and so many others in India and around the world today.

The emergence of the Jewish Bible commentary in the tenth century marks a turning point in Jewish intellectual history, namely, the transition from ancient rabbinic culture to the Arabized Judaism of the medieval period. This book explores a formative moment in this cultural reorientation by analyzing one of the earliest Jewish Bible commentaries. Written in Arabic in tenth-century Jerusalem, Salmon ben Yeruhim's commentary on Lamentations reveals a nuanced negotiation between the rabbinic tradition and the intellectual resources of the Islamic world. Salmon was a prominent figure among the Karaites, a Jewish movement defined by its commitments to biblical scholarship and penitential practices. For him, Lamentations is "instruction for Israel"--spiritual guidance for the Jewish community in exile--and his task is to communicate that instruction. Jewish Piety in Islamic Jerusalem explores the medieval Arabic dimensions of Salmon's project, tracing his engagement with the nascent fields of Arabic literary theory, historiography, and homiletics. The central argument of the book is that Salmon articulates a Jewish pietistic message through emergent Arabic-Islamic genres, transforming them to reflect his own religious and exegetical commitments. In this way, Salmon applies Arabic learning to the Bible at the same time that his understanding of the biblical text expands the Arabic intellectual tradition. The book advances these claims through six analytical chapters and an annotated English translation of the homilies and excursuses of Salmon's commentary.

This book attempts to provide answers to questions such as: Who is a Hindu? • What is Hinduism? • Why do Hindus pray to different deities? • What is the power of prayer and mantras? • What do Hindus mean by karma, creation and reincarnation? • How is Hinduism connected to nature and science? In today’s world, when everyone is too busy to read and understand their religion, this book provides a basic, simple reference to understand the fundamental concept of Hinduism as what is Hinduism? This book has been written in a very simple, readable language to arouse the readers’ interest in spirituality, regardless of their age.

Hinduism means incorporating all forms of belief and worship without necessitating the selection or elimination of any. This book incorporates Literature from Ancient Sacred text of India considered as The Kernel of Hinduism. Jaico's 366 Readings Series is the first comprehensive collection of the spiritual literature of the whole world presented in accessible form. It is aimed at people who wish to broaden their spiritual outlook, and also at the much larger group who have little or no attachment to a religious community, but seek spiritual wisdom.