Sacred Matters

Description

Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality's complex role within the "materially suspicious" contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Tracy Pintchman

1. The Icon of Yoga: Patanjali as Nagaraja in Modern Yoga
Stuart Ray Sarbacker

2. God’s Eyes: The Manufacture, Installation, and Experience of External Eyes on Jain Icons
John E. Cort

3. North Indian Materialities of Jesus
Mathew N. Schmalz

4. Celebrating Materiality: Garbo, a Festival Image of the Goddess in Gujarat
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt

5. The Goddess’s Shaligrams
Tracy Pintchman

6. The Camphor Flame in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction
James McHugh

7. Metal Hands, Cotton Threads, and Color Flags: Materializing Islamic Devotion in South India
Afsar Mohammad

8. Monastic Matters: Bowls, Robes, and the Middle Way In South Asian Theravada Buddhism
Bradley Clough

9. Letting Holy Water and Coconuts Speak for Themselves: Tamil Catholicism and the Work of Selva Raj
Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey

List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• East Asian religions
• Comparative religion

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 16 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438459448
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SACRED MATTERS
SACRED MATTERS
Material Religion in South Asian Traditions
Edited by
Tracy Pintchman
and
Corinne G. Dempsey
Cover image: Shaligram stones at the Parashakthi Temple. Courtesy of Tracy Pintchman.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sacred matters : material religion in South Asian traditions / edited by Tracy Pintchman and Corinne G. Dempsey.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5943-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5944-8 (e-book)
1. Southeast Asia—Religious life and customs. 2. Religious articles—Southeast Asia. 3. Southeast Asians—Material culture. I. Pintchman, Tracy. II. Dempsey, Corinne G.
BL1055.S328 2016 200.954—dc23 2015008210
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Tracy Pintchman
1. The Icon of Yoga: Patañjali as Nāgarāja in Modern Yoga
Stuart Ray Sarbacker
2. God’s Eyes: The Manufacture, Installation, and Experience of External Eyes on Jain Icons
John E. Cort
3. North Indian Materialities of Jesus
Mathew N. Schmalz
4. Celebrating Materiality: Garbo , a Festival Image of the Goddess in Gujarat
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt
5. The Goddess’s Shaligrams
Tracy Pintchman
6. The Camphor Flame in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction
James McHugh
7. Metal Hands, Cotton Threads, and Color Flags: Materializing Islamic Devotion in South India
Afsar Mohammad
8. Monastic Matters: Bowls, Robes, and the Middle Way in South Asian Theravāda Buddhism
Bradley Clough
9. Letting Holy Water and Coconuts Speak for Themselves: Tamil Catholicism and the Work of Selva Raj
Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey
List of Contributors
Index
Illustrations Figure 1.1 Modern image of Patañjali as King of the Serpents (Nāgarāja). Figure 1.2 Patañjali as Nāgarāja image at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram . Figure 1.3 Patañjali as Nāgarāja image at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, Maharashtra . Figure 1.4 Patañjali as Nāgarāja image from Cidambaram Temple, Tamil Nadu . Figure 2.1 Ornamented Śvetāmbara icon of Ādeśvara (Ādinātha), Śām ḷ ājī Pārśvanātha temple, Patan, North 7 Gujarat, July 18, 1996 . Figure 2.2 Digambara icon of Ādinātha, Ba ṛ ā Terāpanth temple, Jaipur, July 24, 2013 . Figure 2.3 Glass cak ṣ u in workshop of Haricharan Manekchand Jadiya, Ahmedabad, November 9, 1995 . Figure 2.4 Glass cak ṣ u in collection of author . Figure 2.5 Enamel cak ṣ u in collection of author . Figure 2.6 Śvetāmbara icon of Pārśvanātha, dated 988. Originally from Broach, now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.71.26.38). Gilt copper inlaid with silver and gemstones . Figure 2.7 Śvetāmbara icon of Ādeśvara (Ādinātha), A ṣṭ āpad temple, Patan, North Gujarat, August 13, 1996 . Figure 2.8 Ornamented Śvetāmbara icon of Pañcāsar Pārśvanātha, Pañcāsar Pārśvanātha temple, Patan, North Gujarat, August 13, 1996 . Figure 3.1 Catholics hang a picture of Jesus as Guru at the Mission . Figure 3.2 A worshipper prostrates himself before an image of Jesus in the Ashram’s chapel . Figure 3.3 Jesus as charismatic healer at the Ashram . Figure 3.4 The resurrection of Jesus depicted in an aluminum grille at the Varanasi Cathedral . Figure 3.5 Jesus depicted in the Jeevan-Darshan exhibit at the Varanasi Cathedral . Figure 4.1 Garbo arena in Naranpura Village, October 2004 . Figure 5.1 Shaligram stones at the Parashakthi Temple . Figure 7.1 The Metal Battle Standards of the Martyrs . Figure 7.2 Metal battle standards in a procession . Figure 7.3 Red sacred threads for sale . Figure 7.4 Holy staff displayed inside the dargah of the Baba Fakhruddin . Figure 9.1 Coconut sapling carried in St. Antony festival procession in Puliampatti . Figure 9.2 Sandalwood paste is applied to a newly shaved head at St. John de Britto Shrine in Oriyur . Figure 9.3 St. Antony festival procession on the beach. Figure 9.4 Selva Raj interviewing pilgrims outside St. John de Britto shrine.
Acknowledgments
We offer our deepest gratitude to the colleagues whose contributions appear in this volume. Several of the chapters were initially prepared as papers for the June 2006 Conference on the Study of Religions of India, held at Loyola University of Chicago. Our colleague Selva Raj was at the time president of the conference organizing committee and was the individual responsible for suggesting we put together a collaborative volume around the theme of material religion. Several colleagues who could not attend the conference in 2006 agreed to contribute chapters to fill out the book. We wish also to offer our most heartfelt thanks to the editorial and production staff at State University of New York Press, especially Nancy Ellegate, Diane Ganeles, and Eileen Nizer for their support of this project. Finally, many thanks to Elspeth Tupelo of Twin Oaks Indexing, who prepared the index to the book with funding provided by Loyola University of Chicago.
Introduction
T RACY P INTCHMAN 1
There has been a tendency in many forms of religious discourse to associate religion primarily with the nonmaterial realm of extramundane considerations and experiences, especially beliefs about God or “the Ultimate” variously understood, timeless truths about eternal realities, and experiences that lie beyond the realm of ordinary human awareness. This tendency has remained remarkably tenacious despite numerous attempts by religious studies scholars to unseat it. It can be traced to the origins of contemporary religious studies in Enlightenment-era Protestant theology with its emphasis on belief and doctrine as the defining elements of religion. The field of religious studies continues also to be influenced by early phenomenological categories and approaches to religion scholarship, with their emphases on, for example, “the Holy” or “the Sacred” as categories that reside, ultimately, outside of history and the material realm. As Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer have recently observed about the origins of the academic study of religion,
Wasn’t the opposition between spirituality and materiality the defining characteristic of religion, understood as geared to a transcendental “beyond” that was “immaterial” by definition? Grounded in the rise of religion as a modern category, with Protestantism as its main exponent, this conceptualization entails the devaluation of religious material culture—and materiality at large—as lacking serious empirical, let alone theoretical interest. (Houtman and Meyer 2012, 1)
An overriding emphasis on ideas, beliefs, theologies, and doctrines as the essence of religion persists in a widespread discursive practice of equating “religion” with “faith” and speaking of individuals as “members of the (Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and so forth) faith” and promoting “interfaith dialogue” as a means of bridging differences among religiously diverging groups.
The devaluation of the material realm in the study of religion is reinforced within critical academic religious studies scholarship by approaches that elevate texts and the ideas contained therein as the most favored objects of serious scholarly inquiry. This kind of textualism has now extended beyond the written word to include approaches to various nonliterary religious phenomena as, metaphorically speaking, simply other kinds of texts to be deciphered using the same methods of textual interpretation in which earlier generations of religion scholars indulged uncritically and unproblematically (c.f. Vaquez 2011, 15). Thomas Csordas observes that textualism
has become, if you will, a hungry metaphor, swallowing all of culture to the point where it becomes possible and even convincing to hear the deconstructionist motto that there is nothing outside the text. It has come to the point where the text metaphor has virtually … gobbled up the body itself. … I would go so far as to assert that for many contemporary scholars the text metaphor has ceased to be a metaphor at all and is taken quite literally. (Csordas 1999, 146, quoted in Vasquez 2011, 15)
It is not at all our intention in this book to argue that there is anything inherently problematic with studying religious texts, doctrines, or ideas, or with approaching non-textual phenomena as metaphoric texts. But it is our intention to call into question the normativity of such approaches in the academic study of religion,