A fascinating report about the celebration of Nābhādās’ “birth anniversary” in Jammu:
Deputy Chief Minister, Tara Chand impressed upon the people to strengthen the bonds of brotherhood and amity among various sections of the society.
He was addressing a function organised in connection with the 438th Birth Anniversary of Goswami Guru Nabhadas at Dogra Hall here.
Reminding the services rendered by Goswami ji for eradication of social evils and upliftment of weaker sections of the society, Tara Chand said that Guru Nabhadas lived a simple, pious and dedicated life right from his younger age and studied various important languages of the globe to understand the mission of various religions and the teachings preached to human beings from time to time.
Speaking about the interests of Scheduled Caste Community, Deputy Chief Minister said that government has always been securing the interests of weaker section and in this connection, government has already decided to continue Inter-District recruitment of SC candidates. (link)
Sorry for the lack of updates on this site. My dissertation is now complete, distributed, defended, and deposited. It’s also available online. Enjoy!
Here’s the abstract:
This dissertation explores the Bhaktamāl and its subsequent tradition. Nābhādās’ late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century collection of hagiographies praises the qualities of hundreds of devotees and thereby sets the boundaries of a devotional community that far exceeds the sectarian context in which its author wrote. By closely considering the Bhaktamāl, its commentaries, manuscripts, and print editions, this thesis traces crucial aspects of the development of modern Hinduism from the early seventeenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. Priyādās completed the first major commentary on the Bhaktamāl in 1712, approximately a century after Nābhādās composed his garland. Priyādās presents a conception of the Vaishnava community that differs significantly from Nābhādās’. After Priyādās, the Bhaktamāl tradition continued to develop through a thriving manuscript culture, and the Bhaktamāl became a popular text. During the nineteenth century, the Bhaktamāl shaped British understandings of Indian society and played a central role in traditionalist articulations of modern Hinduism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the concerted efforts of “Sītārāmśaraṇ” Bhagvān Prasād “Rūpkalā” and George Abraham Grierson helped to create a sense of fixity within the Bhaktamāl tradition. Since the time of its composition, the Bhaktamāl has remained a prominent locus of dispute over the boundaries and logic of the broad-based devotional community that we now know as Hinduism.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated this site, but I’ve been making steady progress on my dissertation. I recently completed a draft and plan to spend the next couple months revising it. I also intend to share some more materials here soon, so feel free to subscribe or check back soon.
Last November, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Diego, I presented the following paper. I also presented it on Monday at the South Asia Graduate Student Forum at Columbia University. The paper is entitled “Garlanding Hinduism: Nābhādās’s Bhaktamāl in the Colonial Context.” Here’s a description:
The Bhaktamāl played a key role in the emergence of modern Hinduism. From the time of its composition in the early seventeenth century, Nābhādās’s collection of hagiographies has served as a site for debate and discussion over the boundaries of an inclusive community united through loving devotion. A key moment in the transmission and reception of this text came during the first decade of the twentieth century when two scholars, Sītārāmśaraṇ Bhagavān Prasād ‘Rūpkalā’ and George Abraham Grierson turned their attention to the Bhaktamāl and composed modern commentaries on it. This presentation will consider these commentaries and, in so doing, hopefully shed some light on the emergence of a broadly defined Vaishnava and Hindu community
And here’s a PDF of the paper.
I’ve decided to reorganize Bhaktamal.org as a blog. This change should make it easier to keep up with new content and make it easier for me to make casual additions.I expect to write more here once I actually start writing in earnest, probably in the new year.
This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration to Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory [2007] [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory is available online at: http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/
Through the Bhaktamāl and its most influential commentary, therefore, we witness a debate over the boundaries of a religious community. In support of their positions, Nābhādās and Priyādās advance different visions of the logic of devotion and its objects and articulate different understandings of the relationship between historical devotees and a past which transcends historical time. The tension I explore in this essay, between Nābhādās and Priyādās can, in hindsight, be viewed as a debate over the boundaries and composition of what would later come to be called Hinduism. In the colonial context of the nineteenth century, this debate would become more prominent and well defined, but many of the ingredients were already present during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this essay, I do not have space to trace the Bhaktamāl’s long tradition into the nineteenth century, but this brief analysis of the Bhaktamāl and its earliest known commentary may contribute to a better understanding of the religious subjectivities of the traditionalist advocates of modern Hinduism.
Narendra Jhā’s Bhaktamāl: Paṭhānuśīlan evam Vivecan is a thorough account and critical edition of Nābhādās’s Bhaktamāl. Jhā’s detailed study, published in 1978, still provides the best general overview of the Bhaktamāl, engaging closely with the previous literature and carefully weighing the evidence. In addition to treating basic but nonetheless difficult questions of author and date, Jhā positions the Bhaktamāl within Hindi literature and devotional Hinduism. He surveys this text’s extensive commentarial tradition, and he provides a detailed account of Bhaktamāl manuscripts in India. Jhā’s volume culminates in a critical edition of the Nābhādās’s work that attempts to reconstruct the original form of this important but understudied text.
There have not been many book-length studies of the Bhaktamāl, and none of these are in English. Jhā has provided an important service to all subsequent Bhaktamāl scholars by carefully and definitively considering prior debates about the most fundamental elements of the Bhaktamāl and resolving them as far as the evidence allows.
Jhā, Narendra. Bhaktamāl, Pāthānuśīlana evam Vivecan. Patna: Anupam Prakāśan, 1978.
Cross-posted at 113thstreet.net
Yesterday evening the India International Centre hosted a musical performance of Tukaram’s abhangs followed by a screening of Sant Tukaram, a 1936 Marathi film. In 1937, this film became the first Indian film to win an award at the Venice Film Festival. It is a simple yet powerful depiction of the the life of the early seventeenth-century Marathi poet-saint Tukaram.
Dilip Chitre introduced the film by contextualizing it in terms of the social and political situation of 1930s India. This Tukaram is clearly modeled on Mahatma Gandhi. Tukaram has devoted himself to the praise of Pandurang, his chosen deity, even at the expense of his own well-being and the prosperity of his wife and children. Despite, or because of, his piety and simplicity, Tukaram finds himself beset by enemies. A powerful Brahmin in particular persecutes Tukaram and attempts to take credit for his compositions.
Tukaram does not resist persecution. Instead, he submits to the punishments imposed on him by the mighty. The schemes of the persecutors, however, all fail. The mighty, including the great Marathi leader Shivaji, are eventually conquered by Tukaram’s devotion to God, and Pandurang intervenes to protect his followers from harm. As in Gandhian thought, Truth and piety trump worldly power and deceit.
By modeling this Tukaram so clearly on Gandhi, the historical/literary figure of Tukaram comes to be seen as a precedent for Gandhi. Tukaram’s hagiography becomes indistinguishable from Gandhi’s. Hagiographical tropes are notoriously portable. Encounters with the powerful serve to demonstrate the superiority and humility of the saint and to illustrate the contingent nature of political dominance.
In the waning days of the Raj, such a message would have seemed particularly relevant.
Cross posted from 113th Street.
A basic mistake regarding orientalism is the expectation that orientalists will be consistently haughty and disdainful of the ‘Orient’ they describe. The consistency of orientalism lies in its conviction that ‘Orientals’ are better off being ruled by Europeans. Orientalists portray the ‘East’ as static, tyranical, and obscure, but they oftentimes express this discursively established pattern in apparently objective or even sympathetic terms.
There can be no doubt that F.S. Growse’s Mathurá: A District Memoir is a work of orientalist scholarship. Growse was a colonial administrator, and this volume is a work in service of empire. He can be critical of the actual administration of empire, particularly his own transfer out of Mathurá, but he does not seem to doubt in the slightest that Indians are better off under English tutelage.
That said, Growse is not some comic book imperial villain. He shows great curiosity in the culture he finds himself surrounded by and is generally sympathetic in his portrayal of this culture. At times he seems haughty or dismissive, but he usually takes care to note the beauty and truth of particular Hindu doctrines.
Growse is neither ill-informed about nor disdainful of Indian culture, but his sympathy, intelligence, and curiosity do not prevent him from advocating and personally participating in European domination of distant societies.
Cross posted from 113th Street.
Next month, the Indian government will launch the New Linguistic Survey of India, which seeks to update and expand the work directed a century ago by George Abraham Grierson:
What are the objectives of the [New Linguistic Survey of India]? It will primarily profile the Indian linguistic space by describing each language and speech variety, its structure, socio-cultural role and demographics. The survey will make possible a reasonable lexicon and grammatical sketch for each language. It will also record the interactions between various linguistic communities, which involves tracking bilingualism and multilingualism. There will also be a massive audio-visual documentation of speech varieties. Linguistic maps, charts, graphs and atlases of languages will be created. (Outlook)
Cross posted from 113th Street.
