Title Religious reading and everyday lives in devotional Hinduism / Emilia Bachrach

Published New York : Oxford University Press, [2022] ©2022

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Description 1 online resource Series AAR religion in translation AAR religion in translation. Contents Cover -- Series -- Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration and Translation -- Introduction: An Ethnography of Reading -- 1. Dialogical Reading: The Pushtimarg's Performative Canon -- 2. Commentarial Reading: Historicizing Hagiography and Making Modern Readers -- 3. Public Reading: Debating Text, Temple, and Religious Authority -- 4. Community Reading: Learning Affective Piety -- 5. Women's Reading: Navigating Family, Gender, and Devotion -- Conclusion: Religious Reading and Everyday Lives -- Appendix: Select Translations of Key Texts -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index Summary "This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in relationship to 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 continue to be 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 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, the book 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"--Publisher's description Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed on January 19, 2024) Subject Devotional literature, Hindi -- History and criticism Devotional literature, Gujarati -- History and criticism Hindu literature -- History and criticism Hinduism -- Sacred books Hindu saints. Puṣṭimārga. Hinduism -- Sacred books. Hindu literature Hindu saints Hinduism Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Sacred works. Form Electronic book ISBN 0197648606 9780197648629 0197648622 9780197648612 0197648614 9780197648605

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