Saints and Hagiography in Hinduism

Abstract

The terms “saint” (derived from Latin) and “hagiography” (derived from Greek) are used, respectively, to describe a wide spectrum of revered Hindu figures and accounts of their lives from ancient to contemporary periods. The sources gathered here, however, generally focus on Hindu saints and their hagiographies from the medieval and modern periods. This is in part to contain an already vast topic, and also because there is a scholarly emphasis on the topics of sainthood and hagiography after the so-called vernacular turn, beginning at the start of the second millennium. “Saint” may refer to any number of designations in Indian languages: guru or acharya (a spiritual “guide” or “preceptor”) or sant (a “virtuous” person), to name only a few. Likewise, “hagiography” may gloss a range of South Asian narrative genres (from charitra, recounted “deeds” or “conduct,” to purana, or “legend”), which need not focus exclusively on a recording of saintly lives per se. Beyond narrative genres, lives of saintly figures are also celebrated in multiple other modes of representation, such as painting and film. While Hindu “saints” and “hagiography” capture a diversity of revered figures and representations of their lives, there are several important similarities across historical periods, religious communities, regions, and languages. First, a significant number of Hindu hagiographies seem to be composed in honor of figures remembered for their own compositions, often sung poetry in devotion to particular deities—Krishna, Shiva, Devi, and their innumerable localized forms. These narratives invite the reader/listener to experience intimacy between saint and the Divine vicariously and to elevate the reader/listener’s emotional state. Second, Hindu hagiographical representations are often linked not only to representing the awesome, mysterious, miraculous, wondrous, or imitable lives of the saintly, but also to calculated modes of memorialization. For instance, Hindu hagiographies memorialize a saintly figure in order to articulate community identity or a particular ideology. Likewise, many tellings of saintly lives are as didactic as they are devotional, not only teaching their readers/listeners to be devout, but also to behave in certain ways. With such qualities, hagiographies can also be polemic, articulating contested views of the past, the present, and the desired future. They may be used, for example, to contest authority over specific places, to defend or challenge inherited religious or political authority, or to normalize changing forms of ritual practice. Third, hagiographies, at once devotional and polemic, are also historical texts. Reading hagiography, then, can often be a complicated task of interpreting multiple layers of theology, social commentary, and historiography. From medieval accounts of poet-saints like the 6th-century Shiva devotee Karaikkal Ammaiyar to English-language comic book hagiographies of modern figures like Swami Vivekananda, the study of sainthood and hagiography in Hindu traditions provides ever-expanding areas of research across fields of religious studies, anthropology, literature, and history.