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Full-Text Articles in History of Religions of Eastern Origins
The Spiritual Prodigy, The Reluctant Guru, And The Saint: Mirabai And Collaborative Leadership At Hari Krishna Mandir, Nancy M. Martin
The Spiritual Prodigy, The Reluctant Guru, And The Saint: Mirabai And Collaborative Leadership At Hari Krishna Mandir, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research
This article explores the life and influence of Indira Devi Niloy (1920–1997) who in 1949 began to encounter the sixteenth-century saint–poet Mirabai during her meditative trance states. She would recount songs, stories, and teachings that the saint gave to her as well as scenes from Mirabai’s life that she witnessed as an observer and at other times experienced directly as a participant. Their ongoing relationship would have a tremendous influence on Indira Devi as well as her guru Dilip Kumar Roy (1897–1980) and the increasingly international community that grew up around them. Their interactions and Indira Devi’s reports in turn …
Invoking Mirabai: Elision And Illumination In The Global Study Of Women Mystics, Nancy M. Martin
Invoking Mirabai: Elision And Illumination In The Global Study Of Women Mystics, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters
From the early nineteenth century, British scholar-officers readily compared Mirabai to European mystics as a way to come to terms with this intriguing and admired sixteenth-century woman as they attempted to order the dense weave of Indian culture and religion through the production of knowledge. And in the twentieth century she would increasingly be cited in comparative works on women’s voices, resistance, and religious lives and on global ethics and spirituality. This chapter will explore the place she comes to occupy, beginning by tracing the ways that Hindu bhakti or “devotion” maps (or does not map) onto European Christian and …
Mirabai: The Making Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin
Mirabai: The Making Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters
This book traces the narrative genealogy of the immensely popular Indian saint Mirabai from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist formations to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence. This iconic sixteenth-century woman is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge thereby to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Though verifiable historical facts regarding her life are few, stories about her have multiplied across social, linguistic, regional, and religious boundaries. With attention to who is telling which …
Mirabai Comes To America: The Translation And Transformation Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin
Mirabai Comes To America: The Translation And Transformation Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research
The story of the sixteenth-century Hindu saint Mirabai is told and performed in a multitude of genres in India across the centuries, and her songs generate a tradition of continuing composition in her name. Her popularity readily moves across boundaries of language, caste, class, religion, and culture not only within India but also beyond, taking root in American culture more broadly in the latter decades of the 20th century, as Americans begin looking for figures for inspiration and canonisation within an emerging non-institutionalised global spirituality and women around the world mine the past to find their spiritual foremothers. Her popularity …
Rajasthan: Mirabai And Her Poetry, Nancy M. Martin
Rajasthan: Mirabai And Her Poetry, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters
"Mirabai (born c. 1500) is among the most well-known and loved of the Hindu women saints devoted to Krishna. Her devotion to her Lord is absolute, as her life and songs attest. Her story is a romantic tale of star-crossed lovers—one human, the other divine—marked by perseverance and triumph in the midst of great suffering. Songs sung in her name speak of the joys and trials of the devotional life and evoke the full range of romantic love, from the devastating longing that marks separated lovers and the blazing anger of a woman betrayed to the sweet and intoxicating pleasures …
Mirabai In The Academy And The Politics Of Identity, Nancy M. Martin
Mirabai In The Academy And The Politics Of Identity, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters
No abstract provided.