Scholarly worlds and popular texts
The Bhagavad Gðtå's vernacular communities in early modern India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5139983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Akshara Ravishankar (0009-0009-3066-5066, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 31-56 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contributions to Indian Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0069-9659 • E-ISSN: 0069-9667 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00699659241286568 |
| OpenAlex | W4404194994 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 35 |
The Bhagavad Gītā is often thought of as the popular religious text par excellence in modern Hinduism. A substantial amount of scholarship has argued that its modern status as the central text of Hinduism is grounded in its 19th-century colonial and nationalist receptions. However, recent work on late premodern Indian philosophy has raised the possibility of constructing alternative genealogies for modern religious textual practices, though the methodologies that may allow the characterisation of premodern texts as 'popular' canonical works remain uncertain. This article asks how we may further interrogate the idea of the Gītā's status as a classic or canonical text by looking at the ways in which this status was historically constructed, maintained and mediated in 18th-century North India. In order to reflect on the conditions that historicise the idea of the Gītā as scholarly, public or popular text in premodern and modern India, this article engages with two different approaches to the question of the Gītā's social worlds during that period. One, it analyses histories of production and circulation, and two, it examines the genres of some Gītā adaptations. It does so by drawing from manuscripts containing translations and adaptations of the Bhagavad Gītā from Sanskrit into Hindi that were copied and composed between the 16thand 18thcenturies
Art · Literature · Media studies · Social science · Sociology · Vernacular · Anthropology · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Study and Philosophy of Religion
Modern European intellectual history
"Publishing" and Publics in a World Without Print
After Timur Left
The Lost Age of Reason
Poetry of Kings
Gita Press and the making of Hindu India
Making it Vernacular in Agra
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
Eknāth in context
Advaita Vedānta in early modern history
The Tomars’ new emotional regime
Corrigibility, Allegory, Universality
The Early Modern in South Asia
Rhythms Lost and Found
The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary
Text, Commentary, Annotation
The Bhagavad Gītā as Cross-Cultural Process
The Quotidian Revolution
A Brief History of the Bhagavad Gita's Modern Canonization
Performance in a World of Paper
Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavadgita
Methods of Popular Religious Instruction in South India
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |