Abstract
Our essay is a thematic exploration of the malleability of idioms, imageries, and affectivities of Hindu bhakti across the borderlines of certain Indic worldviews. We highlight the theological motif of the feminine-feminised quest of the seeker (virahiṇī) for her divine beloved in some Hindu expressions shaped by the paradigmatic scriptural text Bhāgavata-purāṇa and in some Punjabi Sufi articulations of the transcendent God’s innermost presence to the pilgrim self. The leitmotif that the divine reality is the “intimate stranger” who cannot be humanly grasped and who is yet already present in the recesses of the virahiṇī’s self is expressed with distinctive inflections both in bhakti-based Vedānta and in some Indo-Muslim spiritual universes. This study is also an exploration of some of the common conceptual currencies of devotional subjectivities that cannot be straightforwardly cast into the monolithic moulds of “Hindu” or “Muslim” in pre-modern South Asia. Thus, we highlight the essentially contested nature of the categories of “Hinduism” and “Indian Islam” by indicating that they should be regarded as dynamic clusters of constellated concepts whose contours have been often reshaped through concrete socio-historical contestations, borrowings, and adaptations on the fissured lands of al-Hind.
Highlights
IntroductionThe scholarly literature on Hindu socio-religious systems, produced over the last four decades or so, has directed our attention to the sheer diversity of ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world that have developed within dense networks of Vedic texts, commentarial traditions, and guru-based lineages
The scholarly literature on Hindu socio-religious systems, produced over the last four decades or so, has directed our attention to the sheer diversity of ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world that have developed within dense networks of Vedic texts, commentarial traditions, and guru-based lineages.With respect to the study of Vedantic exegetical theology, in particular, academic discourses have moved away from monolithic essentializations such as “Hinduism = Advaita”—instead, recent work on Vedānta foregrounds multiple formations of bhakti-shaped Vedantic milieus and highlights the historical crisscrossings between devotional meditation, ritual practice, and Advaitic self-knowledge
We begin with a sketch of the key motivations that direct our comparative research before going on to discuss the theological theme of feminine-femininised longing in some lyrical lineaments of Punjabi Sufism and north Indian devotional milieus
Summary
The scholarly literature on Hindu socio-religious systems, produced over the last four decades or so, has directed our attention to the sheer diversity of ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world that have developed within dense networks of Vedic texts, commentarial traditions, and guru-based lineages. With respect to the study of Vedantic exegetical theology, in particular, academic discourses have moved away from monolithic essentializations such as “Hinduism = Advaita”—instead, recent work on Vedānta foregrounds multiple formations of bhakti-shaped Vedantic milieus and highlights the historical crisscrossings between devotional meditation, ritual practice, and Advaitic self-knowledge (jñāna). From this perspective, our essay is a contribution to this developing body of literature on Vedantic theological systems and seeks to explore a relatively understudied feature—the conscious cultivation of a feminine persona by the spiritual aspirant on the pathways of devotional love. Religions 2020, 11, 414 and sorrow) and that characterize the essence of the spiritual longing as an agonised questing after an intimate but ever-elusive beloved, much like the subjectivity of a woman racked with pain in separation (virahin.ı)
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