Table Of ContentS
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The Place
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Devotion
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L siting and experiencing
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divinity in bengal-vaishnavism
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Sukanya Sarbadhikary
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The Place of Devotion
South aSia acroSS the diSciplineS
South Asia Across the Disciplines is a series devoted to publishing first books across a
wide range of South Asian studies, including art, history, philology or textual studies, phi-
losophy, religion, and the interpretive social sciences. Series authors all share the goal of
opening up new archives and suggesting new methods and approaches, while demonstrat-
ing that South Asian scholarship can be at once deep in expertise and broad in appeal.
Series Editor: Muzaffar Alam, Robert Goldman, and Gauri Viswanathan
Founding Editors: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the
University of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University
Press.
1. Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration, by Yigal
Bronner (Columbia)
2. The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab, by
Farina Mir (California)
3. Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, by
Andrew J. Nicholson (Columbia)
4. The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place, by
Carla Bellamy (California)
5. Secularizing Islamists? Jama‘at-e-Islami and Jama‘at-ud-Da‘wa in Urban Pakistan,
by Humeira Iqtidar (Chicago)
6. Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and
Southeast Asia, by Ronit Ricci (Chicago)
7. Conjugations: Marriage and Form in New Bollywood Cinema, by Sangita Gopal
(Chicago)
8. Unfinished Gestures: Devadāsīs, Memory, and Modernity in South India, by
Davesh Soneji (Chicago)
9. Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India, by Bhavani Ra-
man (Chicago)
10. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam, by A. Azfar
Moin (Columbia)
11. Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the
Indian Traditions, by Christian K. Wedemeyer (Columbia)
12. The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great
Saint Milarepa, by Andrew Quintman (Columbia)
13. Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri
Jihadists, by Cabeiri deBergh Robinson (California)
14. Receptacle of the Sacred: Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in
South Asia, by Jinah Kim (California)
15. Cut-Pieces: Celluloid Obscenity and Popular Cinema in Bangladesh, by Lotte Hoek
(Columbia)
16. From Text to Tradition: The Naisadhīyacarita and Literary Community in South
Asia, by Deven M. Patel (Columbia)
17. Democracy against Development: Lower Caste Politics and Political Modernity in
Postcolonial India, by Jeffrey Witsoe (Chicago)
18. Into the Twilight of Sanskrit Poetry: The Sena Salon of Bengal and Beyond, by
Jesse Ross Knutson (California)
19. Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu, by Laura Kun-
reuther (California)
20. Writing Resistance: The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature, by Laura
R. Brueck (Columbia)
21. Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India, by Amrita Pande
(Columbia)
22. I Too Have Some Dreams: N.M. Rashed and Modernism in Urdu Poetry, by
A. Sean Pue (California)
23. The Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism, by
Sukanya Sarbadhikary (California)
The Place of Devotion
Siting and Experiencing Divinity in
Bengal-Vaishnavism
Sukanya Sarbadhikary
univerSity of california preSS
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© 2015 by The Regents of the University of California
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC
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Suggested citation: Sarbadhikary, Sukanya. The Place of
Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-
Vaishnavism. Oakland: University of California Press,
2015. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/luminos.2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sarbadhikary, Sukanya, 1983- author.
The place of devotion : siting and e xperiencing
divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism / Sukanya
Sarbadhikary.—First edition.
pages cm. — (South Asia across the disciplines)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
iSbn 978–0-520–28771–6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
iSbn 0–520–28771–1 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
iSbn 978–0-520–96266–8 (ebook) —
iSbn 0–520–96266–4 (ebook)
1. Vaishnavism—India—Bengal. 2. Sacred space—
India—Bengal. 3. Anthropology of religion—India—
Bengal. I. Title. II. Series: South Asia across the
disciplines.
BL1284.532.B46S37 2015
294.5’35095414—dc23
2015007907
Manufactured in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of anSi/niSo z39.48–1992 (r 2002)
(P ermanence of Paper).
To the sounds and silences of faith
