Religion and the emergence of print in colonial India
Arumuga Navalar’s publishing project
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8961577 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard S Wei (0000-0002-4366-7759, Victoria University of Wellington, corresponding author), Richard S Weiss (Victoria University of Wellington) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 473-500 |
| Publication date | 2016-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019464616662138 |
| OpenAlex | W2549134041 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
This article offers one of the first scholarly analyses of the impact of print on religion in India in the middle of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the publishing project of Arumuga Navalar, one of the most important authors and editors of Tamil Shaiva works. I examine the details of some of Navalar’s key publications, especially his 1852 prose rendition of the Tamil Shaiva classic Periya Puranam. This work was part of Navalar’s effort to make Shaiva canonical texts, traditionally composed in verse, more widely accessible. He employed prose and print to defend established Shaiva caste and ritual practices; to respond to Christian critiques of Hinduism; and to marginalise Shaiva voices that questioned caste or engaged in ritual innovation. I argue that in nineteenth-century South India, print served as an effective tool to disseminate messages of established religious interests
Archaeology · Art · Caste · Colonialism · Dissemination · Hinduism · Indian literature · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Print culture · Publishing · Social science · Sociology · Tamil · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Study and Philosophy of Religion
The Language of Disenchantment
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India
The Smile of Murugan
The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
Hatred in Print
Love, Violence, and the Aesthetics of Disgust
Poems to Siva
Arumuga Navalar, Saivite sermons, and the delimitation of religion, c. 1850
Arumuka Navalar
From the Meḥ fil to the printed word
The Reformation and the Book
Luther in the Tropics
Nandanar
Literary Surveillance in the British Raj
The Hindu Moses
The Political Construction of Defensive Nationalism
Print, Religion, and Canon in Colonial India
Technology and Religious Change
Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |