This article re-examines the famous muni hymn, Rgveda 10.136, arguing that its depiction of munis is anomalous in comparison to wider literary contexts. A close examination of all attestations of munis in the Rgveda and Atharvaveda suggests they were ascetics associated with drug concoctions and ritual formulas capable of both healing and causing harmful bodily and psychological conditions. They are also described as plagued with madness and closely linked to the god Rudra, who is well known for causing and curing illness. In Rgveda 10.136, however, their characteristics are interspersed with motifs from royal and soma rites, a poetic inversion of their depiction elsewhere.
Abstract This paper argues that the eighteenth-century intellectual landscape was no less dynamic or significant than that of earlier periods. It demonstrates that the eighteenth century constituted another critical phase in the structuring and restructuring of the intellectual tradition of the South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇavas, whose philosophical system is Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (qualified non-dualism). One of the defining theological features of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition is the soteriological doctrine of self-surrender (prapatti). This doctrine had been well established since the medieval period, most prominently by the fourteenth-century theologian Vedānta Deśika. His Manipravalam work, the Rahasyatrayasāram, is regarded by the contemporary Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition as the culmination of Śrīvaiṣṇava soteriology, and the issue of self-surrender is often considered settled after his time. However, the eighteenth-century Śrīvaiṣṇava scholar Gopāla Deśika, in his independent treatise Nikṣepacintāmaṇi, re-presented self-surrender as a contested doctrinal site. He identified unresolved issues inherited from Vedānta Deśika’s system, revealing ongoing divergences within his intellectual milieu. In particular, Gopāla Deśika foregrounded debates concerning the auxiliaries and types of self-surrender, which were not central concerns for Vedānta Deśika. His work thus illuminates both the reception of Vedānta Deśika’s soteriology and the significance of the eighteenth century as an active moment of intellectual debate within the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition.
In the new materialist's retelling of agency, the experiencing human-the narrator of material agency, no less-seems to fade to the margins as extraneous. Drawing on the nineteenth-century Sv & amacr;min & amacr;r & amacr;yan Hindu text, the Vacan & amacr;mrt, as a source of theory, I foreground the central role it grants to 'belief' (ni & sacute;cay) cultivated through mental practice in an experience of the m & umacr;rti as a form of God. Material agency is not to be understood as merely a metaphysical reality; we must attend to the ethical process by which such agency comes to be experienced-that is, its phenomenological emergence. I argue for retaining the mental as an analytically distinct site of ethical practice and rethink performativity as involving a relation of concurrence between the bodily and mental. Harnessing interpretative possibilities latent in Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter, I conclude by re-reading her vital materialism as predicated on belief. Under the theory of material agency that emerges, it is belief that bridges the gap between metaphysics and phenomenology, enabling one experience of agency over another.
The construction of idealised spaces, including manicured compounds and garden oases, is a feature among Hindu religious organisations in contemporary India. While often examined within urban studies, this article considers their connections between urban and rural India. I focus on reproductions of Vrindavan in and around Mumbai by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, from the Vrindavan Gardens of Chowpatty temple in South Bombay to the Govardhan Ecovillage in rural Thane district. These green spaces are promoted as counterpoints to urban malaise and referents to a religious imaginary of the ideal destination, Krishna's abode of Vrindavan. They not only reflect urban middle-class Indian religious trends but also expand what counts as urban religion. As urban religious and economic influence flow into a rural context, both are co-constituted and transformed. While tapping into contemporary globalising discourses of ecotourism and sustainable development, these projects also evoke earlier urban romanticisations of rural India that have shaped Gaud & imacr;ya Vaisnava traditions at several historical junctures. Though mediated through the professionalised language of philanthropic and environmentalist discourse, they embody Gaud & imacr;ya ideals of sacred space, creating a novel pilgrimage circuit in Western India tailored for urban audiences.
This article considers new forms of religious maximalism in South Asian religions through an analysis of the 2025 Kumbh Mela, an event which Prime Minister Modi claimed 1.4 billion pilgrims attended. I question the motivations behind not only such an incredible claim, but also the broader government impetus toward the ever-increasing expansion of the Kumbh Mel & amacr;. Using the theoretical lens of wonder, this article understands the Kumbh Mel & amacr; as an ephemeral 'pop-up' city and notes concerns about 'wondertrash' that encumber it. In what follows, I argue that the demand to maximise contemporary Hindu formations into ever grander and more expansive-and expensive-wonder-producing exhibits engenders both social and environmental impacts. I also show how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's initiative to grow the Kumbh Mel & amacr; can be read in terms of economic and political gain; the event is also about fostering deep connections between religion and politics, so that the domains are fully intertwined. In this view, the production of wonder coincides with the BJP's aim to inspire and cultivate a faith in a prosperous and Hindu future for India and to project a united India bound together in Hindu ritual performance. This article suggests that in the quest to produce maximalist expressions of exclusively Hindu religiosity, despite the government's largely successful management of a maximalist Mah & amacr; Kumbh Mel & amacr; at Prayagraj in 2025, such a magnanimous production of wonder does not come without costs.
This paper argues that the eighteenth-century intellectual landscape was no less dynamic or significant than that of earlier periods. It demonstrates that the eighteenth century constituted another critical phase in the structuring and restructuring of the intellectual tradition of the South Indian Srivaisnavas, whose philosophical system is Visistadvaita Vedanta (qualified non-dualism). One of the defining theological features of the Srivaisnava tradition is the soteriological doctrine of self-surrender (prapatti). This doctrine had been well established since the medieval period, most prominently by the fourteenth-century theologian Vedanta Desika. His Manipravalam work, the Rahasyatrayasaram, is regarded by the contemporary Srivaisnava tradition as the culmination of Srivaisnava soteriology, and the issue of self-surrender is often considered settled after his time. However, the eighteenth-century Srivaisnava scholar Gopala Desika, in his independent treatise Niksepacintamani, re-presented self-surrender as a contested doctrinal site. He identified unresolved issues inherited from Vedanta Desika's system, revealing ongoing divergences within his intellectual milieu. In particular, Gopala Desika foregrounded debates concerning the auxiliaries and types of self-surrender, which were not central concerns for Vedanta Desika. His work thus illuminates both the reception of Vedanta Desika's soteriology and the significance of the eighteenth century as an active moment of intellectual debate within the Srivaisnava tradition.
In this article I hope to contribute to scholarship on Greater Vaisnava Ved & amacr;nta by focusing on the principle of 'inconceivable difference and non-difference' (acintyabhed & amacr;bheda), one of the key concepts in Gaud & imacr;ya Ved & amacr;nta. To do so, I first provide the criteria for the concept of Greater Vaisnava Ved & amacr;nta, to clearly demarcate the concept. Then, in the second section of the article, I discuss how the concept of acintyabhed & amacr;bheda was coined by J & imacr;va Gosv & amacr;m & imacr;, paying attention both to its theological and its historical contexts. In so doing, I point out that J & imacr;va developed the principle primarily within the framework of causality and ontology, to provide a theological foundation for his newly developing tradition. In the final section of the paper, I discuss how this principle of inconceivable difference and non-difference was promoted and creatively applied by Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod in modern Bengal. By the time we reach the 19th century, the Gaud & imacr;ya tradition found itself in a very different intellectual environment and faced a series of fresh challenges. In this new context Bhaktivinod promoted J & imacr;va's principle as being central to Gaud & imacr;ya theology, and thereby granted it more prominence. Moreover, he applied the principle to the topics of ethics and aesthetics in a way that J & imacr;va did not. I conclude the article by arguing that adopting the concept of 'Greater Vaisnava Ved & amacr;nta' would fruitfully allow us to explore aspects of Ved & amacr;nta that have been neglected so far, such as its engagement with the Pur & amacr;nic and the Pa & ntilde;car & amacr;tric texts, vernacular writings, aesthetic discourse, and the ethical status of divine activities.
The fundamental issue this paper grapples with is the ascetic hero in Anandamath. Though the ascetic model during the nineteenth century may have gained acceptance and authority among nationalist ideologues as an indigenous ideal to counter imperial dominance, it is not far-fetched to note that this process led to the formulation and legitimisation of diverse entities, primarily that of the 'Hindu' ascetic. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to trace and analyse the ascetic 'ideal', typifying the Indian nationalistic discourse. As this paper claims the relation between the transformed ascetic model and the larger social world in nineteenth and twentieth century India, I argue that ascetic culture is a key area for political and religious thinking in modern India. Rather than configuring the ascetic as a pre-modern remainder, I confront it as the emergent zone where new possibilities and new identities were/are forged. Hence, I have tried to demonstrate not a history of the ascetic model, but a history made by the ascetic ideal. The narrative produced by Bankim Chandra is investigated in this paper not just as an 'illustration' of the ascetic model, nor as a history of the ascetic per se. Rather, an attempt has been made to show how the ascetic subject was an integral element of the nationalistic thought (still) in the making.
Pa & ntilde;c & amacr;nana Tarkaratna Bhatt & amacr;c & amacr;rya (1867-1940) has been mentioned in the context of revivalist movements in colonial India. Through an examination of his Sanskrit '& Sacute;& amacr;kta Ved & amacr;nta' writings, I try to locate him, instead, in the context of developments in Sanskrit intellectual culture between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. A serious engagement with Tarkaratna's negotiation of Ved & amacr;nta and & Sacute;r & imacr;vidy & amacr;, in addition to other Sanskrit disciplines, reveals a rich picture of both the man and the intellectual worlds he inhabited.This paper examines Tarkaratna's treatment of Ved & amacr;nta and & Sacute;r & imacr;vidy & amacr; through significant moves he makes in and through his reading practices. I demonstrate that these are grounded in his understanding of the role of the Goddess in the efficacy of religious practice. I look at three issues in particular: Tarkaratna's position on alternative interpretations of religious texts; his approach to & Sacute;ankara and to Ved & amacr;nta; and his reading of a particular quotation from the Veda. I also suggest that these point towards a more complicated engagement with Sanskrit intellectual culture than narratives of epistemic rupture in South Asian history might allow.
The present study investigates how j & omacr;gn & imacr;s, liminal deities revered as vital forces of power, fertility, and protection, and associated with natural elements like forests, hills, ponds, rivers, and waterfalls, play a crucial role in shaping ecological order in Kull & umacr;, Himachal Pradesh, governing human interaction with the environment. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic research carried out in five villages of the district, which are closely associated with j & omacr;gn & imacr;s and ecological conservation practices, the study examines how sacred cosmologies contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage, biodiversity, and environmental sustainability. It situates j & omacr;gn & imacr; worship within the broader discourse of deity worship, ecology, and indigenous conservation ethics. The study also notes how the enduring influence of j & omacr;gn & imacr;s exhibits the resilience of indigenous ecological traditions and highlights their potential to inform contemporary conservation paradigms, ensuring the sustained ecological equilibrium of the region.
Though written commentaries are repositories of intellectual scholarship, full assessment of their content requires consideration of some of the contexts in which they were embedded. Considering a section of a written commentary on Namm & amacr;lv & amacr;r's Tiruv & amacr;ymoli, the & Amacr;r & amacr;yirappati, that is deemed enigmatic by current scholarship, this paper proposes that it was designed to serve a didactic function. Examining the overlapping contexts of religious reading, commentary composition, and pedagogical practices, it demonstrates that the written section in question is designed for parallel reading between certain authoritative & Sacute;r & imacr;vaisnava texts that was facilitated by the oral commentary of a teacher. Written in the twelfth century at a time when & Sacute;r & imacr;vainnavism was a budding tradition, the first commentary on the & amacr;lv & amacr;r's poem by Tirukkurukai Pir & amacr;n Pill & amacr;n sought to consolidate its Sanskrit and Tamil heritages. As a case study of commentaries belonging to this larger socio-cultural context, this paper explores interpretive strategies and the functions of commentaries in pedagogy.
This paper intends to explore neglected sources for the study of the intellectual history of Ved & amacr;nta philosophies: the Brajbh & amacr;s & amacr; texts composed by King Jasvant Simh of Jodhpur (17th c.). I focus on his & Amacr;nandavil & amacr;sa, which is presented as a dialogue between the famous Advaita master & Sacute;ankara and the Individual Self. First, I explore the Sanskrit sources and authorities Jasvant refers to, illustrating how he draws upon and reformulates several Advaita texts by & Sacute;ankara as well as those by other authors. Second, I explore the vernacular dimensions of the text. Therefore, my analysis contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of vernacularisation in the field of philosophy in early modern North India.
This article presents a new approach to defining the & Amacr;ranyakas as a textual collection based on representations of textual engagement rather than through linguistic analysis. Noting that the & Amacr;ranyakas' diversity has diverted attention from the question of whether they can be regarded as a coherent collection, this essay firstly returns to fundamental questions of where and why challenges have arisen in the modern interpretation of the & Amacr;ranyakas and of what can be retrieved of the & Amacr;ranyakas' self-representation. By comparing modern approaches to those taken by the Grhyas & umacr;tras, secondly, it examines the way these representatives of another late-Vedic textual tradition negotiated the & Amacr;ranyakas' diversity through consistencies in practice, leading to a critical differentiation between typical Vedic study and the study of esoterica (rahasya). Thirdly, it turns to a close examination of the & Amacr;ranyakas' own representations of the restrictions placed on their recitation. This point to the intellectual coherence that textuality and the ritual construction of identity bring to the restrictions that most broadly define the & Amacr;ranyakas as a collection, and indicates that the anticipation and handling of texts, as recognised in their self-representations and teachings, can contribute significantly to the & Amacr;ranyakas' scholarly interpretation.
