South Asian Religions Research Articles

FROM LAW TO DHARMA: STATE LAW AND SACRED DUTY IN ANCIENT INDIA

AbstractThe legal treatises of ancient India, called Dharmaśāstras, are often read as records of the initial emergence of law from religion in South Asia. The Dharmaśāstras teach the dharma, or “sacred duty,” of different members of society. It is one of the dharmas of the king to adjudicate disputes that come before his courts, and it is widely accepted that a need to articulate the king's dharma led the composers of the Dharmaśāstras over time to fashion rules for state courts, a body of law called vyavahāra. Scholars such as Henry Sumner Maine and Max Weber saw in the Dharmaśāstras evidence of the disentanglement and rationalization of law, respectively. A close examination of our sources, however, shows that the law of royal courts emerged not within the Dharmaśāstra tradition, but within an adjacent and decidedly more secular tradition of statecraft. It was gradually absorbed into Dharmaśāstra texts, where it was reconfigured as sacred duty and its historical origins were obscured. This article argues that the early history of state law in India is best described, therefore, not as a transition from dharma to law, but as a transition from law to dharma.

Rethinking new womanhood: Practices of gender, class, culture and religion in South Asia

Addressing and building upon complex challenges regarding modern womanhood in the region, Rethinking new womanhood is a collection of essays by prominent feminist scholars and activists in South As...

The association of religious affiliation with cholesterol levels among South Asians: the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America study

BackgroundSouth Asians have disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease. Dyslipidemia, a contributing factor, may be influenced by lifestyle, which can vary by religious beliefs. Little is known about South Asian religions and associations with dyslipidemia.MethodsCross-sectional analyses of the MASALA study (n = 889). We examined the associations between religious affiliation and cholesterol levels using multivariate linear regression models. We determined whether smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, and dietary pattern mediated these associations.ResultsMean LDL was 112 ± 32 mg/dL, median HDL was 48 mg/dL (IQR:40–57), and median triglycerides was 118 mg/dL (IQR:88–157). Muslims had higher LDL and triglycerides, and lower HDL, while participants with no religious affiliation had lower LDL and higher HDL. The difference in HDL between Muslims and those with no religious affiliation was partly explained by alcohol consumption.ConclusionsReligion-specific tailoring of interventions designed to promote healthy lifestyle to reduce cholesterol among South Asians may be useful.

Transnational homespun, citizen-art and Hindu-Muslim Gandhi ashrams: A working note on, against, and toward spirituality

ABSTRACTThis essay grows out of ongoing conversations between Timothy Dobe, a scholar of South Asian religions and Gandhian studies, and Aaron Sinift, the ‘citizen-artist’ at the heart of the khadi and ashram-based, transnational ‘5 Year Plan.’ Sinift’s work engages Gandhian critiques of neo-liberal capitalism and explores gift economies through the project’s organized collaboration with Indian and non-Indian artists and weavers. Dobe explores the relationships of Sinift’s art and postcolonial and religious studies work on spirituality, especially regarding the need to attend to Islamic identity and traditions in both South Asia and America. His side of the conversation connects these present Gandhian art experiments with key historical contexts and comparative examples, including: Islamic nationalist fatwas in support of wearing khadi, Kabir’s Hindu-Muslim devotional poetry and contemporary subaltern studies work on Muslims, Dalits and weaving.

An Early Modern Account of the Views of the Mi\u015bras

In a doxography of views called the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra, a seventeenth century commentator and Advaitin, Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara, describes the doctrines of a group he calls the Miśras. Nīlakaṇṭha represents the doctrines of the Miśras as in most ways distinct from those of the canonical positions that usually appear in such doxographies, both āstika and nāstika. And indeed, some of the doctrines he describes resemble those of the Abrahamic faiths, concerning the creator, a permanent afterlife in heaven or hell, and the unique births of souls. Other doctriness are difficult to associate with any known South Asian religion, for example the emphasis placed on astrological determinism in the moral economy of the creation. As the Ṣaṭtantrīsāra is unpublished to date, a preliminary edition of those portions that concern the Miśras is presented here, together with a translation, notes, and some further discussion. Though the identification is not certain, it seems most likely that the views Nīlakaṇṭha describes in this text belonged to Vanamālī Miśra, a North Indian Mādhva who had lived in the Ganges-Yamuna doab in the mid to late seventeenth century. Even if that identification turns out to be correct, many questions remain.

Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism

AbstractIn Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism, Urmila Mohan explores the materiality and visuality of cloth and clothing as devotional media in contemporary Hinduism. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the global missionizing group “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (ISKCON), she studies translocal spaces of worship, service, education, and daily life in the group’s headquarters in Mayapur and other parts of India. Focusing on the actions and values of deity dressmaking, devotee clothing and paraphernalia, Mohan shows how activities, such as embroidery and chanting, can be understood as techniques of spirituality, reverence, allegiance—and she proposes the new term “efficacious intimacy” to help understand these complex processes. The monograph brings theoretical advances in Anglo-European material culture and material religion studies into a conversation with South Asian anthropology, sociology, art history, and religion. Ultimately, it demonstrates how embodied interactions as well as representations shape ISKCON’s practitioners as devout subjects, while connecting them with the divine and the wider community.

The Body–Mind Challenge: Theology and phenomenology in Bengal-Vaishnavisms

AbstractRecent studies of Asian religious traditions have critiqued Western philosophical understandings of mind–body dualism and furthered the productive notion of mind–body continuum. Based on intensive fieldwork among two kinds of devotional groups of Bengal—claimants to an orthodox Vaishnavism, who focus on participating in the erotic sports of the Hindu deity-consort Radha-Krishna in imagination and a quasi-tantric group, which claims to physically apprehend Radha-Krishna's erotic pleasures through direct sexual experience—I demonstrate that, although these devotional groups stress on combating theologies, with emphases respectively on the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’, in their narrations of religious experiences, however, both groups allude to rarefied phenomenological states of cognition and embodiment. So, while influenced by ideas of (mental) ‘purity’ and (bodily) ‘actuality’, respectively, practices of both groups rely on similar states of mind–body continuum. So I argue that the mind–body complex has intensely nuanced articulations in the discursive and experiential domains of these non-Western religious contexts. Through my analyses of the texts and embodiments of these opposed devotional groups, I show that theology gets both organically entangled with as well as challenged by phenomenological experiences. I further argue that explorations in the tenor of religious studies sharply enrich the anthropology of religiosities. Also, such engagements between theology and anthropology have been relatively lacking and need more emphasis in studies of contemporary South Asian religions.

Susan Verma Mishra and Himanshu Prabha Ray: The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: The Temple in Western India, 2nd century bce–8th century ce. (Archaeology and Religion in South Asia.) 283 pp. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 978 1 138 67920 7.

Susan Verma Mishra and Himanshu Prabha Ray: The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: The Temple in Western India, 2nd century bce–8th century ce. (Archaeology and Religion in South Asia.) 283 pp. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 978 1 138 67920 7. - Volume 81 Issue 2

“I Am Afraid of Telling You This, Lest You’d Be Scared Shitless!”: The Myth of Secrecy and the Study of the Esoteric Traditions of Bengal

As the verse chosen as a title for this article emblematically shows, esoteric movements have consistently used secrecy as a literary topos in their oral and written cultural expressions for a number of purposes. Scholars of South Asian religions, especially those in field of Tantric studies, have been scrutinizing for decades the need for secretive doctrines and a secret code-language (sandhyā bhāṣā), mostly interrogating textual sources and neglecting the contemporary experience and exegetical authority of living lineages. In this paper, I firstly address ethical and epistemological problems in the study of esoteric religious movements in order to propose innovative methodological strategies. Then, I offer numerous examples drawn from extensive field-work and in-depth literary study of contemporary esoteric lineages of West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh, in order to discuss the local discourse on secrecy. Finally, I review previously assumed notions on secrecy in South Asian religions, and I suggest to take into serious consideration local perspectives on the accessibility of esoteric knowledge, leading to a more nuanced idea of secrecy, constantly subjected to temporal and situational negotiations between silence and disclosure.

Sanitation and Religion in South Asia: What Accounts for Differences across Countries?

Exposure to open defecation has serious consequences for child mortality, health, and human capital development. South Asia has the highest rates of open defecation worldwide, and although the incidence declines as household income rises, differences across South Asian countries are not explained by differences in per capita income. The rate of open defecation in sub-national regions of Bangladesh, India and Nepal is highly correlated with the fraction of the population that identifies as Hindu, in part because certain rituals of purity and pollution discourage having latrines in close proximity to one’s home. Almost all open defecation occurs in rural areas, and this paper estimates how much the rate could be reduced if rural households in regions that have a higher fraction of Hindus, where open defecation is still common, altered their behaviour to reflect that of non-Hindu households in regions that are predominantly non-Hindu, where the rate of open defecation is much lower. Using nonparametric reweighting methods, this paper projects that rural open defecation in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal could be reduced to rates of between 6 and 8 per cent, compared to the prevailing level of 65 per cent.

Review: Refiguring the Body: Embodiment in South Asian Religions edited by Barbara A. Holdrege and Karen Pechilis

Review: <i>Refiguring the Body: Embodiment in South Asian Religions</i> edited by Barbara A. Holdrege and Karen Pechilis

&lt;i&gt;Dialogues in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain Traditions&lt;/i&gt; Edited by Brian Black and Laurie Patton

Routledge 2015, 2016. 265pp. Hb. £73.99, ISBN 13: 9781409440123. Pb. £22.99 (ISBN 13: 9781409440130). E-book £21.84, ISBN: 9781315576978.

Secular Democracies, Governance and Politics of Religion in South Asia

South Asian countries have a lot of commonalities exhibited through socio-political and economic situations. The cultural as well as political dynamics within the countries form more or less a similar pattern. These are closely related to colonial pasts, post-colonial histories, polyethnic population, political leadership and governance. These commonalities are also related to political instability, ethnic violence and a greater role of religion in the formation of secular democracies. Scholars have observed that in the post-colonial period, religion has played an important role in political formations in South Asian countries. This article looks at political situations, since the early 1950s, and traces the trajectory of religions’ association in formation of secular democracies in these countries. The article looks at available literature on South Asia and discusses two key ideas: how and why religion and politics are intertwined in South Asian countries, and ramifications of such association in the expansion of secular democracy. The article argues that religion has always been a potent force in South Asian countries and secularisation, in the Western sense, has never been achieved. Therefore, formations of secular democracy take different trajectories in South Asia.

Translating the ‘Other’: Early-Modern Muslim Understandings of Hinduism

AbstractThis essay examines the theme of inter-religious translation in the context of early modern India. More specifically, it considers the prominent 18th century Sufi master and scholar Mirzā Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān's (d.1781) translation of Hindu thought and practice as reflected in his Persian letters on this subject. Through a close reading of the content and context of his translation project, I show that while according the Hindu ‘other’ remarkable doctrinal hospitality, Jān-i Jānān's view of translation was firmly tethered to an imperial Muslim political theology committed to upholding the exceptionality of Muslim normative authority. Interrogating his negotiation of hospitality and exceptionality and the notions of time that undergirded that negotiation occupies much of this essay. I also explore ways in which Jān-i Jānān's translation of Hinduism might engage ongoing scholarly conversations regarding the rupture of colonial modernity in the discursive career of religion in South Asia. In the Euro-American study of religion, many scholars have shown the intimacy of modern secular power and the reconfiguration of religion as a universally translatable category. But what conceptual and historiographical gains might one derive by shifting the camera of analysis from the colonial reification of religion to the inter-religious translation efforts of a late 18th century thinker like Jān-i Jānān who wrote at the cusp of colonial modernity? This question hovers over the problem-space of this essay.

YOGA AND XENOPHILIA

The basic argument of this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia is that colonial attitudes toward South Asian religion and Hindus' attitudes toward Western intellectual discourse reveal an ambiguous mix of xenophilia and xenophobia. This articles focuses on yoga, whose macrohistory comprises a global case of xenophilia, beginning with Vivekananda's address at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago and still ongoing today. Before that watershed speech in 1893, however, indigenous scholars were translating Sanskrit texts into Bengali as part of an effort to articulate a unified vision of Hindu traditions that could be used to engage with the science, medicine, and other attractive aspects of British and Western culture. Comparing Bengali renderings of Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra, this essay concludes that one of them, the translation of paṇḍit Kālīvar Vedāntavāglīś, exposed elements of ambiguity in the original work that expanded the possibilities for the engagement of yoga with Western discourses, while at the same time legitimating the Sanskritic past as a resource for addressing new realities. In the process, Kālīvar's translation helped enable the globalization of yoga as we know it today. This article concludes by suggesting that microhistorical work on the activities of translators may aid in understanding the part that local knowledge can play in our global future.

Locating Religion in South Asia: Islamicate Definitions and Categories

The category of Islam as a religion—as defined within religious studies discourses—informs Islamic studies across disciplines, even as it appears in fields that may not have methodological, theoretical, or topical overlaps with the study of religion. By locating Islamicate, South Asian definitions of religion as analogous, related, and, in some cases, influences to Euro American definitions of religion, this article troubles the relationship between the study of religion, definitions of religion, and non-European, non Christian actors. This essay contributes to the growing body of literature asking how and when native definitions of categories of (or like) religion have been incorporated or ignored within the broadest definitions and specifically how Islamicate texts contribute to the history of the study of religion.

The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness. Edited by Diana Dimitrova

The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness. Edited by Diana Dimitrova

Brian Black and Laurie Patton (eds): Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions. (Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History.) xi, 265 pp. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. ISBN 978 1 4094 4012 3.

Brian Black and Laurie Patton (eds): Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions. (Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religion, Philosophy, Literature and History.) xi, 265 pp. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. ISBN 978 1 4094 4012 3. - Volume 79 Issue 3

Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions Edited by BrianBlack and LauriePatton. Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religions, Philosophy, Literature, and History, 4. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. xii + 265. Cloth, $119.95; paper, $39.95.

Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Traditions Edited by BrianBlack and LauriePatton. Dialogues in South Asian Traditions: Religions, Philosophy, Literature, and History, 4. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. xii + 265. Cloth, $119.95; paper, $39.95.

Introduction: Not Quite Divine—Co‐stars and Supporting Casts in South Asian Religions

Introduction: Not Quite Divine—Co‐stars and Supporting Casts in South Asian Religions