Table Of ContentRegional Communities of Devotion in
South Asia
This book explores the key motif of the religious other in devotional (bhakti) lit-
eratures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent and unmasks pro-
cesses of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of
different social and religious agents.
The book reconsiders and challenges inherited notions of the bhakta’s or dev-
otee’s other. Considering the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having
an inter- regional impact—as a force, discourse, network, mythology, ethic—the
book critically engages with extant scholarly narratives about what bhakti is and
traces when and how those narratives have been used. The sheer diversity of
South Asia’s devotional traditions renders them an especially rich resource for
examining social and religious fault lines, thereby furthering scholarly under-
standing of how communalism and sectarianism originate and develop on local
or regional levels, with wider geographic implications.
Bringing together studies from a subcontinent-w ide variety of linguistic, geo-
graphical, and historical frames for the first time, this book will be an important
contribution to the literature on bhakti and will be of interest to scholars of South
Asian Religions and Asian Religions.
Gil Ben- Herut is Associate Professor of South Asian Religions in the Depart-
ment of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, USA.
Jon Keune is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions in the Department of
Religious Studies at Michigan State University, USA.
Anne E. Monius is a Professor of South Asian Religions at Harvard Divinity
School, Massachusetts, USA.
Routledge South Asian Religion Series
5 Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia
Disease, Possession and Healing
Edited by Fabrizio M. Ferrari
6 Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia
Edited by Anne Murphy
7 Cross- disciplinary Perspectives on a Contested Buddhist Site
Bodhgaya Jataka
Edited by David Geary, Matthew R. Sayers and Abhishek Singh Amar
8 Yoga in Modern Hinduism
Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga
Knut A. Jacobsen
9 Women, Religion and the Body in South Asia
Living with Bengali Bauls
Kristin Hanssen
10 Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka
Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
Elizabeth J. Harris
11 Religion and Technology in India
Spaces, Practices and Authorities
Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold
12 The Baghdadi Jews in India
Maintaining Communities, Negotiating Identities, and Creating Super-
Diversity
Edited by Shalva Weil
13 Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia
Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers
Edited by Gil Ben-H erut, Jon Keune, and Anne E. Monius
Regional Communities of
Devotion in South Asia
Insiders, Outsiders, and Interlopers
Edited by Gil Ben-H erut, Jon Keune,
and Anne E. Monius
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Gil Ben-H erut, Jon Keune, and
Anne E. Monius; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Gil Ben-H erut, Jon Keune, and Anne E. Monius to be
identified as the authors of the editorial matter, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-1-138-49583-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-02338-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
We dedicate this book to the memory of Anne Monius, who unexpectedly
passed away when it was being printed. Her inspiring spirit and intellectual
rigor permeates these pages, as it does in our and so many other scholars’
lives. Her intellectual leadership, unfailing smile, and readily available
advice will be dearly missed.
Contents
Notes on contributors ix
Introduction 1
GIL BEN- HERUT, JON KEUNE, AND ANNE E. MONIUS
1 From foolish ascetics to enemies of Śiva: the fate of Jains as
religious others in Tamil Śaiva literature 12
ANNE E. MONIUS
2 Kālī dances into the cremation grounds of the Tamil land 31
ELAINE CRADDOCK
3 Arguing with Vaiṣṇavas, annihilating Jains: two religious
others in early Kannada Śivabhakti hagiographies 54
GIL BEN- HERUT
4 Bhakti Inc., Kerala: alienated selves and assimilated others 73
RICH FREEMAN
5 The challenge of the swappable other: a framework for
interpreting otherness in bhakti texts 101
JON KEUNE
6 The political field of bhakti at the emergence of Marathi
literature in premodern India 122
CHRISTIAN LEE NOVETzKE
7 The Datta saṃpradāya and its others 137
JEREMY G. MORSE
viii Contents
8 Lost in the lake: Tulsīdās and his others 160
PHILIP LUTGENDORF
9 Are there atheists in potholes? Mīmāṃsakas debate the path
of bhakti 177
ANAND VENKATKRISHNAN
Index 192
Contributors
Gil Ben-H erut is Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department,
University of South Florida. His research interests include premodern reli-
gious literature in the Kannada language, South Asian bhakti traditions, and
the vernacularization of Sanskrit poetics and courtly poetry. Dr Ben-H erut’s
book, Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Hari-
hara’s Ragaḷegaḷu, is the first study in English of the earliest Śaiva hagiogra-
phies in the Kannada-s peaking region, and it argues for a reconsideration of
the nature and development of devotionalism associated today with the
Vīraśaivas. Ben-H erut is currently co-t ranslating selections from this hagio-
graphical collection for a separate publication.
Elaine Craddock is Professor of Religion and affiliated faculty in Feminist
Studies at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Her research inter-
ests include the worship of Hindu goddesses, Śaiva bhakti in Tamil Nadu,
and gender and sexuality in religion. Her publications include Śiva’s Demon
Devotee: Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār.
Rich Freeman (Department of History, Duke University) is a cultural anthro-
pologist with a background in classical Indology whose fieldwork, historical,
and literary projects focus on Kerala and greater South India. Recent publica-
tions include “Śaktism, Polity, and Society in Medieval Malabar” in Goddess
Traditions in Tantric Hinduism (Routledge, 2015). His work at the intersec-
tion of high- caste, literary, and religious history with folk culture, ritual, and
spirit possession, converges in a work- in-progress on the development of
Hinduism in premodern Kerala.
Jon Keune is Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at Michigan State Univer-
sity. His main research area is Maharashtra, where he considers questions of
social history and historiography between 1,500 and the present. He is writing a
book that takes a multidisciplinary approach to the tangled question of how
bhakti traditions criticized and accommodated caste, observing the Vārkarī tra-
dition and stories of transgressive commensality as case studies. He also has
comparative interests in central Europe and East Asia, and he is working on a
new project on contemporary transnational connections of Ambedkar Buddhists
