Attending Krishna's Image

Description

There is a steady and growing scholarly, as well as popular interest in Hindu religion – especially devotional (bhakti) traditions as forms of spiritual practice and expressions of divine embodiment. Associated with this is the attention to sacred images and their worship.

Attending Krishna's Image extends the discussion on Indian images and their worship, bringing historical and comparative dimensions and considering Krishna worship in the context of modernity, both in India and the West. It focuses on one specific worship tradition, the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, as it develops and sustains itself in two specific locales. By applying the comparative category of ‘religious truth’, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of a living religious tradition. It successfully demonstrates the understanding of devotion as a process of participation with divine embodiment in which worship of Krishna’s image is integral.

Contents

Introduction Part 1: Embodied Truth 1.Texts As Context: Core Textual Sources and Patterns for Caitanya Vaisnava Image Worship 2. Temple As Context: The Radharamana Temple as Embodied Community Part 2: Missionizing Truth 3. Krishna’s New Look: A Worship Tradition Faces West 4. Migrant Texts, Migrant Images: Resettling Krishna in the West Part 3: Images of Religious Truth

Author Bio

Kenneth Russell Valpey is currently a post-doctoral research fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and an associate lecturer of the University of Wales, Lampeter (Open Learning Theology and Religious Studies Programme). He has studied, practiced, and taught the murti-seva tradition of Chaitanya Vaishnavism since 1972.

Related Subjects

1. Hinduism
2. Chinese Studies
3. South Asian Studies
4. India (studies of)
5. History of Art
6. Asian Religion