Women Saints and Mystics in Medieval India

Women Saints and Mystics in Medieval India PDF Author: John Paul
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781542433433
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
Bhakti to God is found in every religion and is considered to be a way to attain God realization. From ancient times onwards Bhakti is considered as a way of God- realization along with good actions and knowledge. The life and work of women saint and mystics was shrouded in mystery unlike that of men saint. This is partly due to the fact that none of them established Guru Parampara , where there disciples might have preserved the composition of the saints. There were few exceptions like Lal Ded, Mira bai, who constituted a minor following. Even lesser number of women saints received recognition for their spiritual greatness during their lifetime. They were scolded by their contemporaries as mad and shameless. Akka Devi were greatly revered in south India. infact Akka Devi was the leading member of a council of saints.Akka Mahadevi was a medieval Kannada poet, mystic and saint in the 12th century Karnataka and was a prominent figure of the Veerashaiva Bhakti movement. Her greatest contribution to Kannada Bhakti literature was her Vachanas which were in the form of didactic poetry meaning which were informative and educative having moral instruction as the ulterior motive. She is said to have been the first woman in Kannada literature to write Vachanas.The Historical facts passed on from generation to generation that a legendary personality one who is named as Lal Ded lived in 14th century was a great, acknowledged and renounced women saint and mystic from Kashmir. History bears witness to the fact that Lal Ded was a controversial figure right from the beginning, because everyone has different interpretations regarding different aspects of her personality. Contribution of Lal Ded to transcendental mysticism which was unique as it cut across all the barriers of time and space and particular religious structure, caste and creed. Therefore leading up to the universalism in religion.Mirabai was a great saint and devotee of Sri Krishna. Despite facing criticism and hostility from her own family, she lived an exemplary saintly life and composed many devotional bhajans. Historical information about the life of Mirabai is a matter of some scholarly debate.

Women Saints and Mystics in Medieval India

Women Saints and Mystics in Medieval India PDF Author: John Paul
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781542433433
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bhakti to God is found in every religion and is considered to be a way to attain God realization. From ancient times onwards Bhakti is considered as a way of God- realization along with good actions and knowledge. The life and work of women saint and mystics was shrouded in mystery unlike that of men saint. This is partly due to the fact that none of them established Guru Parampara , where there disciples might have preserved the composition of the saints. There were few exceptions like Lal Ded, Mira bai, who constituted a minor following. Even lesser number of women saints received recognition for their spiritual greatness during their lifetime. They were scolded by their contemporaries as mad and shameless. Akka Devi were greatly revered in south India. infact Akka Devi was the leading member of a council of saints.Akka Mahadevi was a medieval Kannada poet, mystic and saint in the 12th century Karnataka and was a prominent figure of the Veerashaiva Bhakti movement. Her greatest contribution to Kannada Bhakti literature was her Vachanas which were in the form of didactic poetry meaning which were informative and educative having moral instruction as the ulterior motive. She is said to have been the first woman in Kannada literature to write Vachanas.The Historical facts passed on from generation to generation that a legendary personality one who is named as Lal Ded lived in 14th century was a great, acknowledged and renounced women saint and mystic from Kashmir. History bears witness to the fact that Lal Ded was a controversial figure right from the beginning, because everyone has different interpretations regarding different aspects of her personality. Contribution of Lal Ded to transcendental mysticism which was unique as it cut across all the barriers of time and space and particular religious structure, caste and creed. Therefore leading up to the universalism in religion.Mirabai was a great saint and devotee of Sri Krishna. Despite facing criticism and hostility from her own family, she lived an exemplary saintly life and composed many devotional bhajans. Historical information about the life of Mirabai is a matter of some scholarly debate.

Mysticism in India

Mysticism in India PDF Author: Ramchandra Dattatraya Ranade
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873956697
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Mysticism in India is a complete and informative description of the teachings, works, and lives of the great poet-saints of Maharashtra written by a scholar and professor who was also a mystic. Jnaneshwar, Namadev, Tukaram, Eknath, Ramdas, and the other saints discussed belonged to the great devotional religious movement that spread through medieval India. With the exception of Ramdas, they all belonged to the tradition of the Varkaris, the most popular sect in contemporary Maharashtra. Their compositions exemplify the universality of their faith and practice, and are recognized as literary treasures. Ranade was primarily interested in the poet-saints as mystics--teachers of the perennial philosophy--whose experiences have general metaphysical and religious implications. At the heart of his classic is a comprehensive, objective presentation of the thought of these saints, augmented by a deep appreciation of their value and relevance to present-day scholars and seekers. Mysticism in India is the only major study in English of medieval Indian religious literature. The book's enduring value has been enhanced by the addition of a foreword by a scholar currently working in Marathi literature, and a preface by a present-day poet-saint of Maharashtra.

Gender and Medieval Mysticism from India to Europe

Gender and Medieval Mysticism from India to Europe PDF Author: Alexandra Verini
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000928608
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book opens up a dialogue between pre-modern women identified as mystics in diverse locations from South Asia to Europe. It considers how women from the disparate religious traditions of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity expressed devotion in parallel ways. The argument is that women’s mysticism demands to be compared not because of any essential "female" experience of the divine but because the parallel positions of marginalization that pre-modern women experienced led them to deploy intimate encounters with the divine to speak publicly and claim authority. The topics covered range from the Sufi devotional tradition of Sidis (Indians of African ancestry) to the Bhakti poet Mīrābaī and the nuns of Barking Abbey. Collectively the chapters show how mysticism allowed premodern women to speak and act by unsettling traditional gender roles and expectations for religious behavior. At the same time as uncovering connections, the juxtaposition of women from different traditions serves to highlight distinctive features. The book draws on a range of disciplinary expertise and will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval religion and theology as well as history and literary studies.

Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India

Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India PDF Author: Kelly Pemberton
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611172322
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Insightful field research into the complexity of women's roles in a subset of Islamic culture. Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India combines historical data with years of ethnographic fieldwork to investigate women's participation in the culture of Sufi shrines in India and the manner in which this participation both complicates and sustains traditional conceptions of Islamic womanhood. Kelly Pemberton grounds her firsthand research into India's Sufi shrines and saints by setting her observations against the historical backdrop of colonial-era discourses by British civil servants, Orientalist scholars, and Muslim reformists and the assumptive portrayals of women's activities in the milieu of Sufi orders and shrines inherent in these accounts. These early narratives, Pemberton holds, are driven by social, economic, intellectual, and political undercurrents of self-interest that shaped Western understanding of Indian Muslims and, in particular, of women's participation in the institutions of Sufism. Pemberton's research offers a corrective by assessing the contemporary circumstances under which a woman may be recognized as a spiritual authority or guide—despite official denial of such status—and by examining the discrepancies between the commonly held belief that women cannot perform in the public setting of shrines and her own observations of women doing precisely that. She demonstrates that the existence of multiple models of master and disciple relationships have opened avenues for women to be recognized as spiritual authorities in their own right. Specifically Pemberton explores the work of performance, recitation, and ritual mediation carried out by women connected with Sufi orders through kinship and spiritual ties, and she maps shifting ideas about women's involvement in public ritual events in a variety of contexts, circumstances, and genres of performance. She also highlights the private petitioning of saints, the Prophet, and God performed by poor women of low social standing in Bihar Sharif. These women are often perceived as being exceptionally close to God yet are compelled to operate outside the public sphere of major shrines. Throughout this groundbreaking study, Pemberton sets observed practices of lived religious experiences against the boundaries established by prescriptive behavioral models of Islam to illustrate how the varied reasons given for why women cannot become spiritual masters conflict with the need in Sufi circles for them to do exactly that. Thus this work also invites further inquiry into the ambiguities to be found in Islam's foundational framework for belief and practice.

Brotherhood of Saints

Brotherhood of Saints PDF Author: Melanie Rigney
Publisher: Franciscan Media
ISBN: 1632533065
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
In this page-a-day book, Melanie Rigney gives us a panoply of widely known and more obscure saints who show the way to be better disciples of Christ. They offer compelling examples of how to meet the challenges of daily life, be strengthened in your faith, and become the man God created you to be. While no such book would be complete without entries on Peter, Paul, the Francises, Anthony of Padua, Augustine and the other Doctors of the Church, Ignatius of Loyola, Benedict, John, John Paul, and so on, it will also include many of the men canonized in the past fifty years, including Oscar Romero, Louis Martin, Francisco Marto, José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero, Junipero Serra, and the martyrs of Otranto, Natal, Korea, and the Spanish Civil War.

Revolution of the Mystics

Revolution of the Mystics PDF Author: Jan Peter Schouten
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
ISBN: 9788120812383
Category : Hindu sociology
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
One of the most fascinating episode in the religious history of Southern India is the rise of the Virasaiva movement. These heroic followers of Siva-also called Lingayatas-are characterized by a unique combination of intense devotion and social reformation. The movement arose in the twelfth century under the charismatic leadership of Basava. Men and women from every backgroud, highcaste as well as untouchable, joined the experimental community of the Virasaivas. They has their own sacred literature in the form of short poems in the vernacular language of the region: Kannada.

Subaltern Saints in India

Subaltern Saints in India PDF Author: Meenakshi Jha
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
ISBN: 8120842995
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The present era of complexity, anxiety and moral turpitude is in need of spiritual solace and God's grace more than ever before. The established frameworks of religion have not entirely been successful in streamlining the rapport between the maker and the creation. The emergence and progression of bhakti saints is a significant power in this direction. Living exemplary, realised lives on their own terms mostly in opposition to the given frame of life, the bhakti saints heralded a new possibility of the egalitarian order without any bigotry or dogmatism. The book undertakes a probe into the specific contributions made by two hitherto neglected sections of the Indian society, namely women and Sudras. The precepts and lives of these subaltern saints reiterate the possibility of personal salvation and social regeneration, having transformative potential for breaking the barriers of iniquitous, hierarchical structures.

The Graceful Guru

The Graceful Guru PDF Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195145372
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A distinctive aspect of Hindu devotion is the veneration of a human guru, who is not only an exemplar and a teacher but is also understood to be an embodiment of the divine. Historically, the role of guru in the public domain has been exclusive to men. The new visibility of female gurus in India and the U.S. today, and indeed across the globe, has inspired this first-ever scholarly study of the origins, variety, and worldwide popularity of Hindu female gurus. In the Introduction, Karen Pechilis examines the historical emergence of Hindu female gurus with reference to the Hindu philosophy of the self, women spiritual exemplars as wives and saints, Tantric worship of the Goddess, and the internationalization of gurus in the U.S. in the twentieth century. Nine essays profile specific female gurus, presenting biographies of these remarkable women while highlighting overarching issues and themes concerning women's status as religious leaders; these themes are nuanced in the afterword to the volume. The essays explore how Hindu female gurus embody grace in both senses--as a feminine ideal and an attribute of the divine-and argue that their status as leaders is grounded in their negotiation of these two types of grace. This book provides biographical profiles of the following female gurus plus sensitive scholarly analysis of their spiritual paths: Ammachi, Anandamayi Ma, Gauri Ma, Gurumayi, Jayashri Ma, Karunamayi Ma, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, Mother Meera, Shree Maa and Sita Devi.

The Anthropology of Catholicism

The Anthropology of Catholicism PDF Author: Kristin Norget
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520963369
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Aimed at a wide audience of readers, The Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism’s long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, the book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. This reader provides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, demonstrating how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.

Mysticism in Medieval India

Mysticism in Medieval India PDF Author: Shankar Gopal Tulpule
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Devotional literature, Hindi
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description