Abstract
The paper examines the memory and hagiography of the important but little-researched late sixteenth-century bhakti saint Agradās. After introducing this influential Vaiṣṇava devotional poet and the Rām rasik tradition he is said to have founded, the paper explores the political realities and motivations behind the molding of Agradās’s hagiography in particular ways in the nineteenth century and how his saintly authority has been drawn upon in modern times. Through a case study of Agradās, the paper makes an argument about the totemic function of the Hindu saint as a tangible expression of the intangible values and sentiments that bond and mobilize religious communities.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agrawal, Purushottam. 2008. “In Search of Ramanand: The Guru of Kabir and Others.” In Ishita Banerjee-Dube and Saurabh Dube, eds., Ancient to Modern: Religion, Power, and Community in India, 135–70. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Assman, Jan. 2006 [2000]. Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (trans. Rodney Livingstone). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bahura, Gopal Narayan and Chandramani Singh. 1988. Catalogue of Historical Documents in Kapad Dwara, Jaipur. Amber: Jaigarh Public Charitable Trust.
Burchett, Patton. 2019. A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India. New York: Columbia University Press.
Burghart, Richard. 1978. “The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect.” Ethnohistory 25, 2: 121–39.
Burghart, Richard. 1983. “The Discovery of an Object of Meditation: Sūr Kiśor and the Reappearance of Janakpur.” In Monika Thiel-Horstmann, ed., Bhakti in Current Research, 1979–1982, 53–64. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
Callewaert, Winand M., in collaboration with Swapna Sharma. 2000. The Hagiographies of Anantadās: The Bhakti Poets of North India. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Durkheim, Emile. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (trans. Karen E. Fields). New York: The Free Press.
Haberman, David L. 1988. Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rāgānugā Bhakti Sādhana. New York: Oxford University Press.
Haberman, David L. 2003. The Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu of Rūpa Gosvāmin. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992 [1952, 1941]. On Collective Memory (ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hare, James P. 2007. “A Contested Community: Priyādās and the Re-Imagining of Nābhādās’s Bhaktamāl.” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 3, 2: 185–98.
Hare, James P. 2011. “Garland of Devotees: Nābhādās’ Bhaktamāl and Modern Hinduism.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, New York.
Horstmann, Monika. 2002. “The Rāmānandīs of Galtā (Jaipur, Rajasthan).” In Lawrence A. Babb, Varsha Joshi, and Michael W. Meister, eds., Multiple Histories: Culture and Society in the Study of Rajasthan, 141–97. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
Jha, Narendra. 1978. “Pratham Khaṇḍ (Vivecan).” In Nābhājī, Bhaktamāl: Pāṭhānuśīlan evam Vivecan (ed. Narendra Jha), i–xv, 1–251. Patna: Anupam Prakāśan.
Lincoln, Bruce. 1989. Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lutgendorf, Philip. 1991a. The Life of a Text: Performing the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lutgendorf, Philip. 1991b. “The Secret Life of Rāmchandra of Ayodhya.” In Paula Richman, ed., Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, 217–34. Berkeley: University of California Press.
McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1983. “The Dhyān-Mañjarī of Agradās.” In Monika Thiel-Horstmann, ed., Bhakti in Current Research, 1979–1982, 237–44. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 2003. “The Progress of Hindi, Part 1: The Development of a Transregional Idiom.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, 912–57. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mishra, Ratanlal. 1980. Miśrabandhu Vinod. Lucknow: Gaṅgā Pustak Mālā.
Mishra, Ratanlal. N.d. Śrī Agradevācārya Pīṭh, Raivāsā: Ek Saṃkṣipt Paricay. Sikar: Raivāsā Dhām. [Pamphlet].
Nābhājī. 1978. Bhaktamāl: Pāṭhānuśīlan evam Vivecan (ed. Narendra Jha). Patna: Anupam Prakāśan.
Nābhājī. 2009 [1914]. Śrī Bhaktamāl (ed., with Hindi commentary, and trans. Sītaramsaran Bhagavanprasad Rupkala). Lucknow: Tejkumar Book Depot Limited.
Paramasivan, Vasudha. 2009. “Yah Ayodhyā Vah Ayodhyā: Earthly and Cosmic Journeys in the Ānand-Laharī.” In Heidi Rika Maria Pauwels, Patronage and Popularisation, Pilgrimage and Procession: Channels of Transcultural Translation and Transmission in Early Modern South Asia. Papers in Honour of Monika Horstmann, 101–15. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Paramasivan, Vasudha. 2010. “Between Text and Sect: Early Nineteenth Century Shifts in the Theology of Ram.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Pinch, William R. 1996. Peasants and Monks in British India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pinch, William R. 1999. “History, Devotion and the Search for Nabhadas of Galta.” In Daud Ali, ed., Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, 367–99. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rāghavdās. 1965. Bhaktamāl (Caturdās kṛt ṭīkā sahit) (ed. Agarchand Nahata). Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute.
Singh, Bhagavati Prasad. 1957. Rāmbhakti meṁ Rasik Sampradāy. Balarampur: Avadha Sahitya Mandir.
Stewart, Tony K. 2005. “Reading for Krishna’s Pleasure: Gauḍīya Vaishnava Meditation, Literary Interiority, and the Phenomenology of Repetition.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies 14, 1: 243–80.
van der Veer, Peter. 1989 [1988]. Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Yugalpriyā-śaraṇjī. 1962 [Saṃvat 2018]. Śrī Rasik Prakāś Bhaktamāl. Laksmankila (Ayodhya): Ācārya Svāmī Śrīsītārāmśaraṇjī Mahārāj “Vyās.”
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Burchett, P. Agradās and Rām Rasik Bhakti Community: The Politics of Remembrance and the Authority of the Hindu Saint. Hindu Studies 22, 431–449 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9240-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9240-6