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Summary
Explores how objects shape the worlds of religious participants across a range of South Asian traditions.
Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality’s complex role within the “materially suspicious” contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.
“Sacred Matters is a short collection of disparate papers, but with the help of a pithy introduction and the concluding essay they cohere remarkably well … Sacred Matters invites perusal, and adds materially to the field.” — Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
Tracy Pintchman is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the International Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago. Her books include The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition and Guests at God’s Wedding: Celebrating Kartik among the Women of Benares, both published by SUNY Press. Corinne G. Dempsey is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Nazareth College. She is the author of Bringing the Sacred Down to Earth: Adventures in Comparative Religion and The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York: Breaking Convention and Making Home at a North American Hindu Temple.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Tracy Pintchman
1. The Icon of Yoga: Patanjali as Nagaraja in Modern Yoga Stuart Ray Sarbacker
2. God’s Eyes: The Manufacture, Installation, and Experience of External Eyes on Jain Icons John E. Cort
3. North Indian Materialities of Jesus Mathew N. Schmalz
4. Celebrating Materiality: Garbo, a Festival Image of the Goddess in Gujarat Neelima Shukla-Bhatt
5. The Goddess’s Shaligrams Tracy Pintchman
6. The Camphor Flame in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction James McHugh
7. Metal Hands, Cotton Threads, and Color Flags: Materializing Islamic Devotion in South India Afsar Mohammad
8. Monastic Matters: Bowls, Robes, and the Middle Way In South Asian Theravada Buddhism Bradley Clough
9. Letting Holy Water and Coconuts Speak for Themselves: Tamil Catholicism and the Work of Selva Raj Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey
