Vijayanagara Voices

Vijayanagara Voices PDF Author: William J. Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317001931
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The Vijayanagara Empire flourished in South India between 1336 and 1565. Conveying the depth and creativity of Hindu religious and literary expression during that time, Vijayanagara Voices explores some of the contributions made by poets, singer-saints, and philosophers. Through translations and discussions of their lives and times, Jackson presents the voices of these cultural figures and reflects on the concerns of their era, looking especially into the vivid images in their works and their legends. He examines how these images convey both spiritual insights and physical experiences with memorable candour. The studies also raise intriguing questions about the empire's origins and its response to Muslim invaders, its 'Hinduness', and reasons for its ultimate decline. Vijayanagara Voices is a book about patterns in history, literature and life in South India. By examining the culture's archetypal displays, by understanding the culture in its own terms, and by comparing associated images and ideas from other cultures, this book offers unique insights into a rich and influential period in Indian history.

Vijayanagara Voices

Vijayanagara Voices PDF Author: William J. Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317001931
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Vijayanagara Empire flourished in South India between 1336 and 1565. Conveying the depth and creativity of Hindu religious and literary expression during that time, Vijayanagara Voices explores some of the contributions made by poets, singer-saints, and philosophers. Through translations and discussions of their lives and times, Jackson presents the voices of these cultural figures and reflects on the concerns of their era, looking especially into the vivid images in their works and their legends. He examines how these images convey both spiritual insights and physical experiences with memorable candour. The studies also raise intriguing questions about the empire's origins and its response to Muslim invaders, its 'Hinduness', and reasons for its ultimate decline. Vijayanagara Voices is a book about patterns in history, literature and life in South India. By examining the culture's archetypal displays, by understanding the culture in its own terms, and by comparing associated images and ideas from other cultures, this book offers unique insights into a rich and influential period in Indian history.

Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad PDF Author: Achyut Yagnik
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 8184754736
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Founded in 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah on the banks of the river Sabarmati, Ahmedabad is today India's seventh largest city and also one of the subcontinent's few medieval cities which continues to be prosperous and important. Soon after it was established, the royal city of Ahmedabad became the commercial and cultural capital of Gujarat. When the Mughal Empire annexed Gujarat in 1572, Ahmedabad lost its political pre-eminence, but continued to flourish as a great trading centre connecting the silk route with the spice route. Briefly under the Marathas in the eighteenth century, Ahmedabad experienced a dimming of its fortunes, but with the beginning of British control from the early nineteenth century the city reasserted its mercantile ethos, even as it began questioning age-old social hierarchies. The opening of the first textile mill in 1861 was a turning point and by the end of the century Ahmedabad was known as the Manchester of the East. When Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915, looking for a place where he could establish 'an institution for the whole of India', it was Ahmedabad he chose. With the setting up of his Sabarmati Ashram, the great manufacturing centre also became a centre for new awakening. It became the political hub of India, radiating the message of freedom struggle based on truth and non-violence. After Independence, it emerged as one of the fastest-growing cities of India and in the 1960s Ahmedabadis pioneered institutions of higher education and research in new fields such as space sciences, management, design and architecture. Yet, through the centuries, Ahmedabad's prosperity has been punctuated by natural disasters and social discord, from famines and earthquakes to caste and religious violence. Ahmedabadis have tried to respond to these, trying to meld economic progress with a new culture of social harmony. Coinciding with the 600th anniversary of the founding of Ahmedabad, this broad brush history highlights socio-economic patterns that emphasize Indo-Islamic and Indo-European synthesis and continuity, bringing the focus back to the pluralistic heritage of this medieval city. Evocative profiles of Ahmedabadi merchants, industrialists, poets and saints along with descriptions and illustrations of the city's art and architecture bring alive the city and its citizens.

India’s Past, Its Learnings, Its Pedagogies

India’s Past, Its Learnings, Its Pedagogies PDF Author: R S Krishna
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The very acrimonious debates on history textbooks have mostly been dominated by scholars, historians, civil society activists and politicians. Where are the teachers in this debate, vested with the onerous responsibility of transpiring learnings in history to the students? The author R S Krishna tries to ‘recover’ the teacher’s voice through an critical observation of select teachers, their classroom practices, the ideas that inform their understanding of our past and the way history textbooks are mediated by teachers. In this Krishna also brings in his own teaching experience and his evolution as a history teacher. Combining observations, experience and readings from educational sociology, Krishna establishes how history as we know it emerges largely through narratives where not recapitulation of ‘facts’ but competing nationalisms, politics and knowledge prisms are more defining. Here Krishna is particularly critical of the liberal-Marxist prisms that has had a major influence on textbook writing particularly of NCERT. At the same time attempts by the adherents seeking to establish an Indic or a Hindu view of our past, particularly their ability to bring pedagogically appropriate textbooks, have so far been dismal. Framing his arguments within the context of ‘modernity’ which he sees as ‘universal', having an egalitarian premise, the author emphasizes a need for a new methodologically informed textbooks that are more holistic, comparative and dialogic which helps to ‘reimagine’ India’s past and its future quests. The author avers whatever be textbooks scholarly merit, it should be pedagogically substantive and crucially for its meaningful understanding by students, a teacher’s command of the discipline and some familiarity of debates that frame history's knowledge status is key.

Women in the Hindu Tradition

Women in the Hindu Tradition PDF Author: Mandakranta Bose
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135192596
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book accounts for the origin and evolution of the nature and roles of women within the Hindu belief system. It explains how the idea of the goddess has been derived from Hindu philosophical ideas and texts of codes of conduct and how particular models of conduct for mortal women have been created. Hindu religious culture correlates philosophical speculation and social imperatives to situate femininity on a continuum from divine to mortal existence. This creates in the Hindu consciousness multiple - often contradictory - images of women, both as wielders and subjects of authority. The conception and evolution of the major Hindu goddesses, placed against the judgments passed by texts of Hindu sacred law on women’s nature and duties, illuminate the Hindu discourse on gender, the complexity of which is compounded by the distinctive spirituality of female ascetic poets. Drawing on a wide range of Sanskrit texts, the author explains how the idea of the goddess has been derived from Hindu philosophical ideas and also from the social roles of women as reflected in, and prescribed by, texts of codes of conduct. She examines the idea of female divinity which gave rise to models of conduct for mortal women. Instead of a one-way order of ideological derivation, the author argues that there is constant traffic between both ways the notional and the actual feminine. This book brings together for the first time a wide range of material and offers fresh stimulating interpretations of women in the Hindu Tradition.

Devotional Visualities

Devotional Visualities PDF Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350214191
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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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.

In the Presence of Sai Baba

In the Presence of Sai Baba PDF Author: Smriti Srinivas
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047433009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has “roots” in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas. This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities ---themselves a product of modernity---and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.

Soul and Sword

Soul and Sword PDF Author: Hindol Sengupta
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
ISBN: 9357083693
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Political Hinduism was once considered a sort of fringe ideology, shadowy and even misunderstood. Its ideas and narratives seemed, in popular discourse, to lack analytical rigour and were easily dismissed. But history shows that political Hinduism as an intellectual idea was a pioneering theme in India’s nationhood. In fact, it precedes the Indian republic and has been one of the most resilient political theories of India, which survived many bans, boycotts and decades out of power to become, in the twenty-first century, the predominant political force of India. The adherents of political Hinduism are as determined as its detractors—one complains about facing relentless prejudice; the other throws accusations of promoting continuous religious strife. One believes that India cannot be saved without decimating political Hinduism; the other is sanguine that only political Hinduism can save the future of India. Soul and Sword traces the journey of political Hinduism from events that are critical to its self-narration, that is, early Indian resistance to invasions, to intellectual definitions by nineteenth-century littérateurs and more contemporary electoral politics. It tries to understand the context and historical sources used to construct and promote political Hinduism’s world view. From award-winning writer Hindol Sengupta, Soul and Sword is absolutely critical reading to understand India’s present and future.

Women in the Hindu World

Women in the Hindu World PDF Author: Mandakranta Bose
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Women in the Hindu World explores the role of womanhood in Hindu religious culture and how the faith influences women’s social experiences. Women in the Hindu World encourages readers to develop and nurture their own understanding of the life of a woman as a Hindu. The seven chapters proceed both historically and thematically, exploring abstract philosophical concepts about women, as well as concrete worldly conditions of the lives they lead, from the earliest stages of Hindu society to the present, marking through time the evolving religious roles and social status of women. Hindu women have consistently found in their faith resources for claiming selfhood both within their faith and in society. Within the home, women are the keepers of the family’s religious rites. Outside the home, they worship through poetry, painting, dance, and music. Like their peers around the world, modern Hindu women have fought and worked together to claim decisive roles in shaping their own lives, while maintaining their faith and culture. Women in the Hindu World explores and explains the place of women in Hinduism, and the impact of Hinduism on women’s roles in society. EXPERT ANALYSIS: Author Mandakranta Bose is Professor Emerita and former Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where she also has taught courses in religious and gender studies. SUPPLEMENTAL STUDY: Women in the Hindu World provides a breadth of educational knowledge as a supplement to both academic coursework and the independent study of Hinduism. With the integration of discussion questions, suggested further reading, and images throughout, Women in the Hindu World offers an accessible introduction to exploring the connection between womanhood and Hinduism. EXPLORE THE SERIES: The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Publishing Series offers authoritative yet accessible introductions to a wide range of subjects in Hindu Studies. Each book in the series aims to present its subject matter in a form that is engaging and readily comprehensible to persons of all backgrounds – academic or otherwise – without compromising scholarly rigour. The series thus bridges the divide between academic and popular writing by preserving and utilising the best elements of both. Women in the Hindu World joins other engaging texts in the series, including The Hindu Temple and Its Sacred Landscape and The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation and Study Guide.

Textual Criticism and Sacred Texts

Textual Criticism and Sacred Texts PDF Author: Signe Cohen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 166690161X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Textual criticism is vital to scholars of ancient sacred texts, whether they are studying the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Qur’an, or the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism. This book compares and contrasts the methodologies in different subfields and proposes a common ground for future textual scholarship.

The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara

The Aravidu Dynasty of Vijayanagara PDF Author: Henry Heras
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hampī (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 760

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Book Description