Author: Leah Elizabeth Comeau
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350122904
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World contributes new methods for the study and interpretation of material religion found within literary landscapes. The poets of Hindu devotion are known for their intimate celebration of deities, and while verses over a thousand years old are still treasured, translated, and performed, little attention has been paid to the evocative sensorial worlds referenced by these literary compositions. This book offers a material interpretation of an understudied poem that defined an entire genre of South Asian literature -Tirukkovaiyar-the 9th-century Tamil poem dedicated to Shiva. The poetry of Tamil South India invites travel across real and imagined geography, naming royal patrons, ancient temple towns, and natural landscapes. Leah Elizabeth Comeau locates the materiality of devotion to Shiva in a world unique to the South Indian vernacular and yet captivating to audiences across time, place, and tradition.
Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World
Author: Leah Elizabeth Comeau
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350122904
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World contributes new methods for the study and interpretation of material religion found within literary landscapes. The poets of Hindu devotion are known for their intimate celebration of deities, and while verses over a thousand years old are still treasured, translated, and performed, little attention has been paid to the evocative sensorial worlds referenced by these literary compositions. This book offers a material interpretation of an understudied poem that defined an entire genre of South Asian literature -Tirukkovaiyar-the 9th-century Tamil poem dedicated to Shiva. The poetry of Tamil South India invites travel across real and imagined geography, naming royal patrons, ancient temple towns, and natural landscapes. Leah Elizabeth Comeau locates the materiality of devotion to Shiva in a world unique to the South Indian vernacular and yet captivating to audiences across time, place, and tradition.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350122904
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World contributes new methods for the study and interpretation of material religion found within literary landscapes. The poets of Hindu devotion are known for their intimate celebration of deities, and while verses over a thousand years old are still treasured, translated, and performed, little attention has been paid to the evocative sensorial worlds referenced by these literary compositions. This book offers a material interpretation of an understudied poem that defined an entire genre of South Asian literature -Tirukkovaiyar-the 9th-century Tamil poem dedicated to Shiva. The poetry of Tamil South India invites travel across real and imagined geography, naming royal patrons, ancient temple towns, and natural landscapes. Leah Elizabeth Comeau locates the materiality of devotion to Shiva in a world unique to the South Indian vernacular and yet captivating to audiences across time, place, and tradition.
Devotional Visualities
Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350214191
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350214191
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
This book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers. This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage. Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
Body, History, Myth
Author: Anna Lise Seastrand
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069125799X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
"The first major scholarly history of the important South Indian mural tradition in the early modern period, and a reconception of their role in negotiating the relationship between art and devotion"--
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069125799X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
"The first major scholarly history of the important South Indian mural tradition in the early modern period, and a reconception of their role in negotiating the relationship between art and devotion"--
Christianity and Belonging in Shimla, North India
Author: Jonathan Miles-Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350050199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
This book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; the key to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement. This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350050199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
This book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; the key to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement. This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.
Textual Amulets from Antiquity to Early Modern Times
Author: Christoffer Theis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350254541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Comparing amulets over time and space, this volume focuses on the function of written words on these fascinating artefacts. Ranging from Roman Egypt to the Middle Ages and the Modern period, this book provides an overview on these artefacts in the Mediterranean world and beyond, including Europe, Iran, and Turkey. A deep analysis of the textuality of amulets provides comparative information on themes and structures of the religious traditions examined. A strong emphasis is placed on the material features of the amulets and their connections to ritual purposes. The textual content, as well as other characteristics, is examined systematically, in order to establish patterns of influence and diffusion. The question of production, which includes the relationships that linked professional magicians, artists and craftsmen to their clientele, is also discussed, as well as the sacred and cultural economies involved.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350254541
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Comparing amulets over time and space, this volume focuses on the function of written words on these fascinating artefacts. Ranging from Roman Egypt to the Middle Ages and the Modern period, this book provides an overview on these artefacts in the Mediterranean world and beyond, including Europe, Iran, and Turkey. A deep analysis of the textuality of amulets provides comparative information on themes and structures of the religious traditions examined. A strong emphasis is placed on the material features of the amulets and their connections to ritual purposes. The textual content, as well as other characteristics, is examined systematically, in order to establish patterns of influence and diffusion. The question of production, which includes the relationships that linked professional magicians, artists and craftsmen to their clientele, is also discussed, as well as the sacred and cultural economies involved.
Sensational Piety
Author: Murtala Ibrahim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350282316
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Grounded in anthropological comparison and the concept of materiality, this book offers an in-depth ethnographic study of the similarities and differences among various forms of religious practices in a Pentecostal Church (Christ Embassy) and an Islamic group (NASFAT) in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Scholarship in this area tends to focus on inter-religious contestations and conflicts; however, this book proposes that another dynamic is unfolding between Christians and Muslims that is characterised by conviviality, interfaith joint action programmes, mutual influences and even the exchange of religious forms. The comparative approach reveals that, notwithstanding the seemingly opposed worldviews and divergences between Muslims and Christians, they all face similar challenges and apply similar techniques for meeting the challenges posed by the precarious Nigerian urban environment. It is through practices – especially those conducted in (semi-) public settings – that people from different religious persuasions define, encroach on and feel the weight of each other's presence.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350282316
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Grounded in anthropological comparison and the concept of materiality, this book offers an in-depth ethnographic study of the similarities and differences among various forms of religious practices in a Pentecostal Church (Christ Embassy) and an Islamic group (NASFAT) in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Scholarship in this area tends to focus on inter-religious contestations and conflicts; however, this book proposes that another dynamic is unfolding between Christians and Muslims that is characterised by conviviality, interfaith joint action programmes, mutual influences and even the exchange of religious forms. The comparative approach reveals that, notwithstanding the seemingly opposed worldviews and divergences between Muslims and Christians, they all face similar challenges and apply similar techniques for meeting the challenges posed by the precarious Nigerian urban environment. It is through practices – especially those conducted in (semi-) public settings – that people from different religious persuasions define, encroach on and feel the weight of each other's presence.
Buddhism and Waste
Author: Trine Brox
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350195553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
In what ways do Buddhists recognize, define, and sort waste from non-waste? What happens to Buddhist-related waste? How do new practices of Buddhist consumption result in new forms of waste and consequently new ways of dealing with waste? This book explores these questions in a close examination of a religion that is often portrayed as anti-materialist and non-economic. It provides insight into the complexity of Buddhist consumption, conceptions of waste, and waste care. Examples include scripture that has been torn and cannot be read, or an amulet that has disintegrated, as well as garbage left behind on a pilgrimage, or the offerings of food and prayer scarves that create ecological contamination. Chapters cover mass-production and over-consumption, the wastefulness of consumerism, the by-products of Buddhist practices like rituals and festivals, and the impact of increased Buddhist consumption on religious practices and social relations. The book also looks at waste in terms of what is discarded, exploring issues of when and why particular objects and practices are sorted and handled as sacred and disposable. Contributors address how sacred materiality is destined to wear and decay, as well as ideas about redistribution, regeneration or recycling, and the idea of waste as afterlife.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350195553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
In what ways do Buddhists recognize, define, and sort waste from non-waste? What happens to Buddhist-related waste? How do new practices of Buddhist consumption result in new forms of waste and consequently new ways of dealing with waste? This book explores these questions in a close examination of a religion that is often portrayed as anti-materialist and non-economic. It provides insight into the complexity of Buddhist consumption, conceptions of waste, and waste care. Examples include scripture that has been torn and cannot be read, or an amulet that has disintegrated, as well as garbage left behind on a pilgrimage, or the offerings of food and prayer scarves that create ecological contamination. Chapters cover mass-production and over-consumption, the wastefulness of consumerism, the by-products of Buddhist practices like rituals and festivals, and the impact of increased Buddhist consumption on religious practices and social relations. The book also looks at waste in terms of what is discarded, exploring issues of when and why particular objects and practices are sorted and handled as sacred and disposable. Contributors address how sacred materiality is destined to wear and decay, as well as ideas about redistribution, regeneration or recycling, and the idea of waste as afterlife.
Materializing the Bible
Author: James S. Bielo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350065056
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anthropologist James Bielo explores a diverse range of practices and places that “materialize the Bible,” including gardens, theme parks, shrines, museums, memorials, exhibitions, theatrical productions, and other forms of replication. Integrating ethnographic, archival, and mass media data, case studies focus primarily on U.S. Christianity from the late 19th-century to the present. Composed as 20 short chapters that may be read in any order, the book is divided into three sections. Section I, “Variations on Replication,” analyzes examples that recontextualize elements from the (actual or imagined) biblical past. Section II, “The Power of Nature,” turns to the natural world associated with Christian scripture and how it is mobilized as a privileged media. Section III, “Choreographing Experience,” examines lived interactions with the affordances of materializing the Bible. Bielo argues that materializing the Bible works as an authorizing practice to intensify intimacies with scripture and circulate potent ideologies. Performed through the sensory experience of bodies, physical technologies, and infrastructures of place, Bielo illustrates how this phenomenon is always, ultimately, about expressions of power.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350065056
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anthropologist James Bielo explores a diverse range of practices and places that “materialize the Bible,” including gardens, theme parks, shrines, museums, memorials, exhibitions, theatrical productions, and other forms of replication. Integrating ethnographic, archival, and mass media data, case studies focus primarily on U.S. Christianity from the late 19th-century to the present. Composed as 20 short chapters that may be read in any order, the book is divided into three sections. Section I, “Variations on Replication,” analyzes examples that recontextualize elements from the (actual or imagined) biblical past. Section II, “The Power of Nature,” turns to the natural world associated with Christian scripture and how it is mobilized as a privileged media. Section III, “Choreographing Experience,” examines lived interactions with the affordances of materializing the Bible. Bielo argues that materializing the Bible works as an authorizing practice to intensify intimacies with scripture and circulate potent ideologies. Performed through the sensory experience of bodies, physical technologies, and infrastructures of place, Bielo illustrates how this phenomenon is always, ultimately, about expressions of power.
Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism
Author: Karen O'Brien-Kop
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350230014
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
This book revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called 'yoga' in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O'Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st – 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history. Buddhist traditions were just as concerned as Hindu traditions with meditative disciplines of yoga. By exploring the intertextuality of the Patanjalayogasastra with texts such as Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya and Asanga's Yogacarabhumisastra, this book highlights and clarifies many ideologically Buddhist concepts and practices in Patanjala yoga. Karen O'Brien-Kop demonstrates that 'classical yoga' was co-constructed systemically by both Hindu and Buddhist thinkers who were drawing on the same conceptual metaphors of the period. This analysis demystifies early yoga-meditation as a timeless 'classical' practice and locates it in a specific material context of agrarian and urban economies.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350230014
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
This book revisits the early systemic formation of meditation practices called 'yoga' in South Asia by employing metaphor theory. Karen O'Brien-Kop also develops an alternative way of analysing the reception history of yoga that aims to decentre the Eurocentric and imperialist enterprises of the nineteenth-century to reframe the cultural period of the 1st – 5th centuries CE using categorical markers from South Asian intellectual history. Buddhist traditions were just as concerned as Hindu traditions with meditative disciplines of yoga. By exploring the intertextuality of the Patanjalayogasastra with texts such as Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosabhasya and Asanga's Yogacarabhumisastra, this book highlights and clarifies many ideologically Buddhist concepts and practices in Patanjala yoga. Karen O'Brien-Kop demonstrates that 'classical yoga' was co-constructed systemically by both Hindu and Buddhist thinkers who were drawing on the same conceptual metaphors of the period. This analysis demystifies early yoga-meditation as a timeless 'classical' practice and locates it in a specific material context of agrarian and urban economies.
Climate Change and the Art of Devotion
Author: Sugata Ray
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574538X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray shows how this place-centered theology emerged in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. Using the frame of geoaesthetics, he compares early modern conceptions of the environment and current assumptions about nature and culture. A groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of eco–art history, the book examines architecture, paintings, photography, and prints created in Braj alongside theological treatises and devotional poetry to foreground seepages between the natural ecosystem and cultural production. The paintings of deified rivers, temples that emulate fragrant groves, and talismanic bleeding rocks that Ray discusses will captivate readers interested in environmental humanities and South Asian art history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/climate-change-and-the-art-of-devotion
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574538X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray shows how this place-centered theology emerged in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. Using the frame of geoaesthetics, he compares early modern conceptions of the environment and current assumptions about nature and culture. A groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of eco–art history, the book examines architecture, paintings, photography, and prints created in Braj alongside theological treatises and devotional poetry to foreground seepages between the natural ecosystem and cultural production. The paintings of deified rivers, temples that emulate fragrant groves, and talismanic bleeding rocks that Ray discusses will captivate readers interested in environmental humanities and South Asian art history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/climate-change-and-the-art-of-devotion