On the Road

Religious Studies Review, 2012

in: Schalk, Peter et al. (Hg.). 2010. Geschichte und Geschichten. Historiographie und Hagiographie in der asiatischen Religionsgeschichte. (= Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia religionum 30). Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. pp. 433–516, 2010

2009

The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2020

This article examines styles of mastery practised by a wealthy, managerial Brahman family in late eighteenth-century Bengal, when managerial Brahmans found new opportunities in association with the English East India Company. It is based on Tīrthamaṅgala by Vijayram Sen, a verse narrative of a pilgrimage in 1769, led by Krishnachandra Ghoshal for the purpose of performing the trayasthalī śrāddha in Gaya, Kashi and Prayag. Krishnachandra was the elder brother of Gokulchandra Ghoshal, who then was the chief banian of Governor Harry Verelst. The poem describes agencies that enabled the Ghoshals’ success and purposes that shaped their identity. It represents the family’s practices of accountancy, patronage and charity. It represents Krishnachandra’s self-control and control of others, his austerity and munificence in shraddha rites (obsequies), and his use of both Indo-Persian and Sanskrit codes of conduct in gift exchanges and formal conversations. In quite different settings, he used ...

This paper presents an ethnographic vignette of pilgrimage worship in north India, in which I attempt to understand a mother and son's divergent reactions to changes in temple practice. My interpretation of these differences hinges on whether or not each actor was able to perceive divine presence in their material environment, and the conditions under which they could and could not do so. I follow how three aspects of the arranged temple environment-space, time, and material objects-triggered conflicting affective memories and expectations in the perceptual repertoires of the mother and son, with consequences for their ability to recognize the criteria of divine presence. Analyzing these memories in relation to the mother and son's varying life histories and expectations for pilgrimage worship, I show how questions of ritual authority, family loyalty, and community politics figured as well into their emotional reactions and abilities to recognize the criteria of the divine. I use this example to draw attention to a recent discussion regarding the "agency of gods and spirits" in certain life-worlds, with ties to postcolonial Indian studies, religious studies, and anthropology. Offering a methodology for assessing ritual interchanges between the material environment, bodily-sensorial schemas, forms of interiority, and divine life-forms, my close-range investigation then supplies the "divine agency" discussion with an analytical antecedent: I argue that before one can understand the agency of gods, one must first grasp how gods become intelligible to humans. For my two research subjects, this intelligibility was dependent upon the ways in which a certain arrangement of the material environment confronted their affective memories and expectations regarding divinity, ritual authority, family loyalty, and community politics. "She's being crazy-who knows why?" Raju offered.' Shortly before this, he had been huddled with the other two men around their liquor in the picnic area of the Bhairuji temple in Kodamdesar, India. The goat curry cooking over the fire demanded the efforts of Raju's mother, Radha, and wife, Mamta, albeit under Raju's supervision. He occasionally offered them cups of beer. In the meantime, Radha had become angrier at the pilgrimage priests for charging them a small fee to use the temple's utensils, bowls, and cooking pot. Her protesta-tions and accusations now grew louder, and she jumped up and paced around the cookout site. "I shouldn't have given her alcohol;' Raju later guessed bashfully, "that's the issue." Raju's interpretation of his mother's response to the charge for temple cookware defined her as "crazy." At the same time, because her madness came from the beer he gave her, it construed her actions as dependent upon his. These remarks were also part of his attempt to understand why Radha was so angry. I, too, was deeply puzzled by this, but the madness explanation never held any water. Insofar as she remained angry for the duration of the pilgrimage in western Rajasthan, the tiny amount of beer she had consumed likewise explained precious little. In this pape1; I attempt to understand Radha and Raju's divergent reactions to changes in pilgrimage practice at the Kodamdesar Bhairuji temple in Rajasthan, India. I argue that the disparity between their responses to d1e fee was rooted in the different composition of Radha and Raju's repertoires of perception and practice. These variant repertoires-similarly classed, but inconsistent in their gendered, generational, and life-historical aspects-made for separate experiences of the temple's material environment. Central to the difference between these experiences were a) Raju's ability and Radha's inability to recognize the criteria of divine presence in the temple's material environment, and b) the affective memories triggered in each of them by enco,mters with this environment. I show how Raju and Radha responded affirmatively to the architectural criteria of divine life-forms, but were pulled in different directions by their "rhythming," or intellectual-cum-bodily training in perception, thought, and action in time. Radha perceived the temple staff's irresponsible handing of the kitchenware-that is, material mediators of Bhairuji's graces-which confounded her memories, commitments, and expectations. This ensemble context, I argue, disallowed her from recognizing Bhairuji's life-forms at the temple. The implication of this example for ritual studies is twofold. First, this paper offers a new approach to ethnographic interlocutors' forms of interiority as these are engaged by ritual practice and its material infrastructure. Secondly, it responds to stud

2019

How do social practices construct and contest the discourses that constitute social reality? What meanings exist within a historical reality (i.e. in a given space and time)? These are some of the questions that are raised in this paper with specific reference to women in religious movements.

Numen, 2012

Itinerario, 2010