Abstract
Drawing upon inscriptional, art historical, as well as largely unstudied and unpublished textual evidence, this paper examines the conceptualization of religious diversity in the Medieval Deccan prior to the Islamic invasions. What our archive suggests, somewhat counterintuitively, is that from the perspective of the state and other disciplinary institutions, religious difference was conceived of in primarily juridical as opposed to doxographical terms; it was a matter of law rather than belief. In other words, in practice, the social performance of the religious identities of particular communities proved inseparable from the delineation of the highly specific legal rights and obligations to which those communities were entitled to adhere. Succinctly, medieval India’s religious diversity was inextricable from the widespread acceptance of a rather capaciously imagined emic form of legal pluralism. The early medieval Dharmaśāstric commentarial tradition locates the textual foundation of this approach to legal pluralism in a discrete and consistent canon of textual resources. As the present work demonstrates, by the eighth century—from the perspective of the Brahmanical legalists themselves—it is this internally coherent body of dharma knowledge that emerges as the key conceptual resource that makes a place within the wider social ecologies of the medieval Deccan for the Tantric knowledge systems and those who practice them.
Highlights
Edited by Timothy Lubin, Jayanth Krishnan and Donald R
Drawing upon inscriptional, art historical, as well as largely unstudied and unpublished textual evidence, this paper examines the conceptualization of religious diversity in the Medieval
As the present work demonstrates, by the eighth century—from the perspective of the Brahmanical legalists themselves—it is this internally coherent body of dharma knowledge that emerges as the key conceptual resource that makes a place within the wider social ecologies of the medieval Deccan for the Tantric knowledge systems and those who practice them
Summary
The only surviving temple belonging to the rājaguru of the Kalyān.i Cāl.ukya Emperor. In accordance with the social function he is executing in a particular context, our Śākta-Śaiva pontiff, Tatpurus.aśiva is addressed as king (śrıballav-arasa)[11] and his chief disciple, Sūks.maśiva, is depicted as the empowered official ruling over the villages (śrımatpeggade/śrımatheggade) The appropriation of such offices is rendered all the more extraordinary when one takes into account that, in complete violation of the expected norms of both Brahminical śāstra and the Śaiva Tantras themselves, both of which limit the holding of the office of rājaguru to the Brahmins of exceptional pedigree, all of teachers in this line self-identify as bhāl.aras We must turn from an obscure village in Raichur district to Basavakalyān.a, one of the most famous imperial centers on the subcontinent, and from the fascinating but difficult register of regionalized Hal.e Kannad.a to the more familiar environs of śāstric Sanskrit textuality as embodied in the Dharmaśāstra literature
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