A Genealogy of Devotion - Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-19032-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 456 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 666 g

In this book, Patton Burchett offers a path-breaking genealogical study of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism that traces its understudied historical relationships with tantra, yoga, and Sufism. Beginning in India’s early medieval “Tantric Age” and reaching to the present day, Burchett focuses his analysis on the crucial shifts of the early modern period, when the rise of bhakti communities in North India transformed the religious landscape in ways that would profoundly affect the shape of modern-day Hinduism.

A Genealogy of Devotion illuminates the complex historical factors at play in the growth of bhakti in Sultanate and Mughal India through its pivotal interactions with Indic and Persianate traditions of asceticism, monasticism, politics, and literature. Shedding new light on the importance of Persian culture and popular Sufism in the history of devotional Hinduism, Burchett’s work explores the cultural encounters that reshaped early modern North Indian communities. Focusing on the Ramanandi bhakti community and the tantric Nath yogis, Burchett describes the emergence of a new and Sufi-inflected devotional sensibility—an ethical, emotional, and aesthetic disposition—that was often critical of tantric and yogic religiosity. Early modern North Indian devotional critiques of tantric religiosity, he shows, prefigured colonial-era Orientalist depictions of bhakti as “religion” and tantra as “magic.” Providing a broad historical view of bhakti, tantra, and yoga while simultaneously challenging dominant scholarly conceptions of them, A Genealogy of Devotion offers a bold new narrative of the history of religion in India.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burchett, Patton E.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Islam & Islamische Studien Islamische Gruppen: Sufis
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Hinduismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in the Historiography of Bhakti
Part I: From Medieval Tantra to Early Modern Bhakti
1. The Tantric Age: Tantra and Bhakti in Medieval India
2. Sultans, Saints, and Songs: Persianate Culture, Sufism, and Bhakti in Sultanate India
3. Akbar’s New World: Mughals and Rajputs in the Rise of Vaisnava Bhakti
Part II: Yogis, Poets, and a New Bhakti Sensibility in Mughal India
4. Between Bhakti and Sakti: Religious Sensibilities Among the Ramanandis of Galta
5. Nath Yogis and Ramanandi Bhaktas: Styles of Yoga and Asceticism in North India
6. Agradas and the Circulation of Mughal Bhakti: Formations of Bhakti Community
Part III: The Devotee Versus the Tantrika
7. Yogis and Tantra-Mantra in the Poetry of the Bhakti Saints
8. The Triumphs of Devotion: The Sufi Inflection of Early Modern Bhakti
Conclusion: Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic
Appendix: List of Manuscripts Containing Compositions by Agradas
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Patton Burchett is assistant professor of religious studies at the College of William and Mary.