On Sheldon Pollock’s The Language of the Gods in the World of Men

This essay presents the viral culture of videos, memes, and websites deploying the tropes of parody and satire as a newly emerging discourse of social and cultural critique on the Indian web. It situates this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of a prior tradition of heterodoxy in India as well as the globally proliferating memetic culture. The essay argues that the speech is distinguished by a logic of repetition with difference both in its parodic/satiric text as well as through its medium that allows the text to repeat at new sites creating new meanings.

Contagious memes, viral videos and subversive parody: The grammar of contention on the Indian web

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha—an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent—Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past but also its present.

Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia

This thesis analyses the late-Vedic goddess Śrī and her non-personified precedent śrī ‘splendour, glory, excellence, fortune’. Śrī has not before been studied in the light of the Avestan royal sple ...

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Rajyasri : Royal Splendour in the Vedas and the Epics

How can we conceptualise multingual literary culture and how can we research it? Drawing upon a 3-year AHRC funded project, this essay focuses on the materiality of the marchive, on the spaces and locations in which literature was produced and performed, and on the oral-performative practices and agents that made texts circulate to audiences in ways not bound by the script in which the texts appear to us.Not only are the models of composite culture and language specificity questioned as aresult, but the sites of literary production move from the court to a series of intersections, and areas that were peripheral move into view and connect with others.

How to do multilingual literary history? Lessons from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century north India

Introduction Part 1: Indian Epics in Film 1. Bending the Bharata: Two Uncommon Cinematic Adaptations Philip Lutgendorf 2. Family, Feminism, and Film in Remaking the Ramayana Vidyut Aklujkar Part 2. Casting Classical Sanskrit Drama 3. Sakuntala: The Look and the Image in Literature, Theatre, and Cinema Gayatri Chatterjee 4. Mrcchakatikam to Utsav: Recreation of a Sanskrit Classic by Girish Karnad Vidyut Aklujkar Part 3. Saints on the Screen 5. Bhakti Songs Recast: Gulzar's Meera Movie Heidi Pauwels Part 4. Genre and Themes from Indo-Islamic Culture 6. Religious Culture and Folklore in the Urdu Historical Drama Anarkali, Revisited by Indian Cinema Alain Desoulieres 7. From Ghazal to Film Music: The Case of Mirza Ghalib Naseem Hines Part 5. Classics from Colonial Literature 8. Remembering, Repeating, and Working through Devdas Corey K. Creekmur 9. The Political Aesthetic of Nation and Gender in Rituparno Ghosh's Chokher Bali Mandakranta Bose Part 6. Agenda-Driven Literature 10. Lyrically Speaking: Hindi Film Songs and the Progressive Aesthetic Ali Mir 11. Dharmputra and the Partition of India Cecilia Cossio. Conclusion

Indian Literature and Popular Cinema : Recasting Classics

This paper investigates the way in which bhakti was used by upwardly mobile Rajputs in their struggle to come to terms with their role as local powerbrokers for the centralizing imperial regime. I will present the case study of the Bundelās in the mid-sixteenth century. I will study their complex relationships with the newly established Mughals and their expressions of devotion, particularly in connection with the newly (re)established pilgrimage center of Braj. The paper documents a shift from an older form of religion to bhakti under Madhukar Shāh (r. 1552-92). This change may well have functioned as a bid for local legitimacy, an assertion of regional independence vis a vis the Mughal empire, and was directed against its imperial rhetoric. However, this study also shows that although Madhukar promotes bhakti for his own purpose, the bhakti saint-advisor of the king explicitly resists such socio-political functionality of the religious insights he has to offer. Cette contribution se situe au milieu du XVIeme siecle, une periode qui vit le regime imperial des Moghol recemment instaure se centralisant. Elle explore la bhakti comme vecteur de l'ascension sociale des Rajput qui n'accepterent de sitot de jouer le role de conseillers locals du pouvoir imperial. L'examen des Bundelās vise a devoiler leurs relations complexes avec les Moghol et leur discours devotionnel, particulierement celui relatif au centre de pelerinage de Braj recemment (r)etabli. La contribution temoigne d une part que sous le regne de Madhukar Shāh (1552-'92) une forme plus ancienne de religion se transforma en bhakti, ce qui souleve des interrogations sur la construction de la legitimite des ces seigneurs locals qui revendiquerent l'independance regionale vis-a-vis l empire Moghol. D'autre part elle demontre que bienque Madhukar favorisât la bhakti pour ses fins propres, le saint-adviseur resista nettement de reduire bhakti a un role socio-economique.

The Saint, the Warlord, and the Emperor: Discourses of Braj Bhakti and Bundelā Loyalty

The Goddess as Role Model

INTRODUCTION PART 1. GETTING A LOVE MARRIAGE ARRANGED 1. Falling in love: Sita in the Flower Garden and Radha in the Forest 2. Arranging a love marriage: Sitas Self-Choice and RukmiAe?s Elopement 3. Wedding Promises: Sitas Wedding and Radhas Mock Wedding PART 2. THE CHALLENGES OF MARRIED LIFE 4. In Good Days and Bad Days: Sita and Radha Leave Purdah to Follow their Men 5. The Threat of the Other Woman: Free-spirited ??rpaAeakh? and Sophisticated Kubj? 6. Sexual Harassment: Sita Abducted and Radha Accosted at the Well

Heidi Pauwels

Papers

Indian Literature and Popular Cinema : Recasting Classics

The Saint, the Warlord, and the Emperor: Discourses of Braj Bhakti and Bundelā Loyalty

The Goddess as Role Model

The goddess as role model : Sītā and Rādhā in scripture and on the screen

Who Are the Enemies of the Bhaktas? Testimony about "Saktas" and "Others" from Kabir, the Ramanandis, Tulsidas, and Hariram Vyas