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Routledge Hindu Studies Series

Bhakti and Embodiment

Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Krsna Bhakti

Holdrege, Barbara A. (University of California, USA)

Bhakti and Embodiment

Routledge Hindu Studies Series

Bhakti and Embodiment

Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Krsna Bhakti

Routledge Hindu Studies Series: Bhakti and Embodiment

 

"With the emergence of bhakti (devotion) movements in the post-Vedic period, the body was re-figured to accord with the epistemological framework of the discourse of devotion. This historical shift from Vedic to bhakti traditions is characterised by various transformations which can best be understood in terms of these newly emerging discourses of the body in bhakti traditions.


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Beschrijving Routledge Hindu Studies Series: Bhakti and Embodiment

The historical shift from Vedic traditions to post-Vedic bhakti (devotional) traditions is accompanied by a shift from abstract, translocal notions of divinity to particularized, localized notions of divinity and a corresponding shift from aniconic to iconic traditions and from temporary sacrificial arenas to established temple sites. In Bhakti and Embodiment Barbara Holdrege argues that the various transformations that characterize this historical shift are a direct consequence of newly emerging discourses of the body in bhakti traditions in which constructions of divine embodiment proliferate, celebrating the notion that a deity, while remaining translocal, can appear in manifold corporeal forms in different times and different localities on different planes of existence. Holdrege suggests that an exploration of the connections between bhakti and embodiment is critical not only to illuminating the distinctive transformations that characterize the emergence of bhakti traditions but also to understanding the myriad forms that bhakti has historically assumed up to the present time.



This study is concerned more specifically with the multileveled models of embodiment and systems of bodily practices through which divine bodies and devotional bodies are fashioned in Krsna bhakti traditions and focuses in particular on two case studies: the Bhagavata Purana, the consummate textual monument to Vaisnava bhakti, which expresses a distinctive form of passionate and ecstatic bhakti that is distinguished by its embodied nature; and the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, an important bhakti tradition inspired by the Bengali leader Caitanya in the sixteenth century, which articulates a robust discourse of embodiment pertaining to the divine bodies of Krsna and the devotional bodies of Krsna bhaktas that is grounded in the canonical authority of the Bhagavata Purana.


ISBN
9780415670708
Pagina's
432
Verschenen
Serie
Routledge Hindu Studies Series
NUR
700
Druk
1
Uitvoering
Hardback
Taal
Engels
Uitgever
Taylor & Francis Ltd

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