Emilia Bachrach, "Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2022)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Aug 30, 2023 · 45m

Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. Emilia Bachrach's Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism (Oxford UP, 2022) considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Vārtā Sāhitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies…