Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints

Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints
Author: William Joseph Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Bhakti in literature
ISBN: 9780195660517

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This anthology provides a representative selection from the songs of three great singer-saints of sixteenth century southern India. William Jackson translates the songs of Annamacharya, Purandaradasa, and Kanakadasa in an English that is sometimes startlingly contemporary and colloquial, capturing the essence of bhakti as a movement that belonged to the people, and spoke the language of the streets. All three singer-saints lived during the peak of the Vijayanagara empire, around 1500 AD, when southern India a renaissance of Hindu culture and the north experienced a wave of bhakti enthusiasm. Thay shared an intense, transformative devotion to Vishnu in various forms; in experiences imbued with drama, each of them found their calling, gave up their humdrum lives for an ascetic one. Between them they were the acknowledged masters, even progenitors, of the love lyric, and Karnatic music. Jackson's illuminating essays on each of the singer-saints tells the story of their lives and the literature they originated. A general introduction and an essay on Bhakti literature put the songs into their historical and literary context.

Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints

Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints
Author: William Joseph Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

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In This Book The Author Translates The Songs Of Annamacharya, Purandaradasa And Kanakadasa, In An English That Is Sometimes Startlingly Contemporary And Colloquial, Capturing The Essence Of Bhakti As A Movement That Belonged To The People, And That Spoke The Language Of The Streets.

Vijayanagara Voices

Vijayanagara Voices
Author: William J. Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317001931

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The Vijayanagara Empire flourished in South India between 1336 and 1565. Conveying the depth and creativity of Hindu religious and literary expression during that time, Vijayanagara Voices explores some of the contributions made by poets, singer-saints, and philosophers. Through translations and discussions of their lives and times, Jackson presents the voices of these cultural figures and reflects on the concerns of their era, looking especially into the vivid images in their works and their legends. He examines how these images convey both spiritual insights and physical experiences with memorable candour. The studies also raise intriguing questions about the empire's origins and its response to Muslim invaders, its 'Hinduness', and reasons for its ultimate decline. Vijayanagara Voices is a book about patterns in history, literature and life in South India. By examining the culture's archetypal displays, by understanding the culture in its own terms, and by comparing associated images and ideas from other cultures, this book offers unique insights into a rich and influential period in Indian history.

Holy People of the World [3 volumes]

Holy People of the World [3 volumes]
Author: Phyllis G. Jestice
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 1044
Release: 2004-12-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1851096493

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A cross-cultural encyclopedia of the most significant holy people in history, examining why people in a wide range of religious traditions throughout the world have been regarded as divinely inspired. The first reference on the subject to span all the world's major religions, Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia examines the impact of individuals who, through personal charisma and inspirational deeds, served both as glorious examples of human potential and as envoys for the divine. Holy People of the World contains nearly 1,100 biographical sketches of venerated men and women. Written by religious studies experts and historians, each article focuses on the basic question: How did this person come to be regarded as holy? In addition, the encyclopedia features 20 survey articles on views of holy people in the major religious traditions such as Islam, Buddhism, and African religions, as well as 64 comparative articles on aspects of holiness and veneration across cultures such as awakening and conversion experiences, heredity, gender, asceticism, and persecution. Whether exploring by religion, culture, or historic period, this extensively cross-referenced resource offers a wealth of insights into one of the most revealing—and least explored—common denominators of spiritual traditions.

These My Words

These My Words
Author: Eunice de Souza
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 818475793X

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The ultimate anthology of Indian poetry from the Vedas to the present in all the major Indian languages These My Words is an anthology of magnificent breadth, ranging from Valmiki to Agha Shahid Ali, Aurobindo to Vikram Seth, Andal to Tagore, spanning Indian poetry in its myriad forms, styles and languages. The poems speak for themselves and to each other, as folk songs and tribal epics sit alongside classical Sanskrit and formal Tamil verse is a companion to contemporary Bengali or Dogri. There is Ghalib in praise of love, Tukaram on religious bigotry, Ksetrayya on divine love through the erotic, Gieve Patel on identity. In Eunice de Souza and Melanie Silgardo’s carefully curated selection, each poem illumines exquisitely the tradition of Indian poetry.

A Storm of Songs

A Storm of Songs
Author: John Stratton Hawley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2015-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674425286

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India celebrates itself as a nation of unity in diversity, but where does that sense of unity come from? One important source is a widely-accepted narrative called the “bhakti movement.” Bhakti is the religion of the heart, of song, of common participation, of inner peace, of anguished protest. The idea known as the bhakti movement asserts that between 600 and 1600 CE, poet-saints sang bhakti from India’s southernmost tip to its northern Himalayan heights, laying the religious bedrock upon which the modern state of India would be built. Challenging this canonical narrative, John Stratton Hawley clarifies the historical and political contingencies that gave birth to the concept of the bhakti movement. Starting with the Mughals and their Kachvaha allies, North Indian groups looked to the Hindu South as a resource that would give religious and linguistic depth to their own collective history. Only in the early twentieth century did the idea of a bhakti “movement” crystallize—in the intellectual circle surrounding Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal. Interactions between Hindus and Muslims, between the sexes, between proud regional cultures, and between upper castes and Dalits are crucially embedded in the narrative, making it a powerful political resource. A Storm of Songs ponders the destiny of the idea of the bhakti movement in a globalizing India. If bhakti is the beating heart of India, this is the story of how it was implanted there—and whether it can survive.

Music and Temple Ritual in South India

Music and Temple Ritual in South India
Author: William Tallotte
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2022-12-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1000829251

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Music and Temple Ritual in South India: Performing for Śiva documents the musical practices of the periya mēḷam, a South Indian instrumental ensemble of professional musicians who perform during the rituals and festivals of high-caste (Brahmanical) Tamil Hindu temples dedicated to the Pan-Indian god Śiva – an important patron of music since at least the tenth century. It explores the ways in which music and ritual are mutually constitutive, illuminating the cultural logics whereby performing and listening are integral to the kinetic, sensory and affective experiences that enable, shape and stimulate ritual communication in present-day devotional Hinduism. More than a rich and vivid ethnographic description of a local tradition, the book also develops a comprehensive and original analytical model, in which music is understood as both a situated and creative activity, and where the fluid relationship between humans and non-humans, in this case divine beings, is truly taken into consideration.

The Power of the Sacred Name

The Power of the Sacred Name
Author: Venkatarama Raghavan
Publisher: World Wisdom, Inc
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1935493965

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In Hinduism, as in all of the great religious traditions from around the globe, the repeating or singing of a sacred name is an integral part of prayer and daily life. With chapters that explore the contribution of Mahatma Gandhi and Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, this edited collection of the writing of renowned Indian scholar, V. Raghavan, examines the lives and contributions of the main exponents of the tradition in India.

Divine Sounds from the Heart—Singing Unfettered in their Own Voices

Divine Sounds from the Heart—Singing Unfettered in their Own Voices
Author: Rekha Pande
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443825255

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Recent years have seen a sea change in the way history is written and also in the way our conceptions of the past are being rewritten. In traditional historiography, women’s articulation is often marginalized and dominated by male voices. Through centuries of patriarchal control, women negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out different forms of resistance which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium. Religion provided the space in the medieval period and women saints embraced bhakti to define their own truths in voices that question society, family and relationships. For all these women bhaktas, the rejection of the male power that they were tied to in subordinate relationship became the terrain for struggle, self assertion and alternative seeking. Most of these women lived during the period from 12th to 17th Century. While the dominant mode of worship in bhakti was prostration to a deity like a feudal lord, the women bhaktas’ idea of God as a lover, a husband and a friend came as a breath of fresh air. The individual outpourings and the voices of these women, who had the courage to sing unfettered in their own voices, refused to melt in the din of the feudal scene which was largely patriarchal. This book will be useful to scholars interested in Feminist History, Comparative Religion and Asian Studies. The sensitive and rigorous research will be of great help to young scholars interested in embarking on a journey to discover religious history, especially with regards to women’s history in the South Asian context.

Interpreting Devotion

Interpreting Devotion
Author: Karen Pechilis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2013-03-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1136507043

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Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world’s religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār’s poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet ‘speak’ to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women’s studies.