Preliminary Material /John A. Ramsaran -- Preface /John A. Ramsaran -- Introduction /John A. Ramsaran -- The European Background /John A. Ramsaran -- The Indian Background /John A. Ramsaran -- Religious Practice and Poetic Expression /John A. Ramsaran -- Middle English Lyrics and Saguṇa Bhakti /John A. Ramsaran -- The Baroque in English and Hindi Religious Poetry /John A. Ramsaran -- Divine Infatuation /John A. Ramsaran -- The Metaphysical Vision /John A. Ramsaran -- English Metrical Psalms, Donne's Holy Sonnets and Tulasī Dāsa's Vinaya Patrikā /John A. Ramsaran -- Allegory and the Religious Epic /John A. Ramsaran -- Conclusion /John A. Ramsaran -- Bibliography /John A. Ramsaran -- Index /John A. Ramsaran.

This book offers an interpretive history of bhakti, an influential religious perspective in Hinduism. Prentiss argues that although bhakti is mentioned in every contemporary sourcebook on Indian religions, it still lacks an agreed-upon definition. "Devotion" is found to be the most commonly used synonym. Prentiss seeks a new perspective on this elusive concept. Her analysis of Tamil (south Indian) materials leads her to suggest that bhakti be understood as a doctrine of embodiment. Bhakti, she says, urges people towards active engagement in the worship of God. She proposes that the term "devotion" be replaced by "participation," emphasizing bhakti's call for engagement in worship and the necessity of embodiment to fulfill that obligation.

Combines Western theories of the sublime (from Longinus to Lyotard) with indigenous Indian modes of reading in order to construct a comprehensive theory of both the Indian sublime and Indian devotional verse.

In this interpretive history of bhakti, both chronicle and comparison are used to identify and analyze bhakti as understood by various Tamil Siva-bhakti authors and authorities."--BOOK JACKET.

This book constructs an anthropological history of a subaltern religious formation, Mahima Dharma of Orissa, a large province in eastern India. Tracking the contingent making of a critical community over a hundred and forty year period, ‘Religion, Law and Power’ explores the interplay of distinct expressions of time and history, innovative reformulations of caste and Hinduism and distinct engagements with state and nation. This serves to unravel the wider entanglements of religion, history, law, modernity and power.