Lives of Indian ImagesPrinceton University Press, 2.5.1999 - 331 sivua For many centuries, Hindus have taken it for granted that the religious images they place in temples and home shrines for purposes of worship are alive. Hindu priests bring them to life through a complex ritual "establishment" that invokes the god or goddess into material support. Priests and devotees then maintain the enlivened image as a divine person through ongoing liturgical activity: they must awaken it in the morning, bathe it, dress it, feed it, entertain it, praise it, and eventually put it to bed at night. In this linked series of case studies of Hindu religious objects, Richard Davis argues that in some sense these believers are correct: through ongoing interactions with humans, religious objects are brought to life. Davis draws largely on reader-response literary theory and anthropological approaches to the study of objects in society in order to trace the biographies of Indian religious images over many centuries. He shows that Hindu priests and worshipers are not the only ones to enliven images. Bringing with them differing religious assumptions, political agendas, and economic motivations, others may animate the very same objects as icons of sovereignty, as polytheistic "idols," as "devils," as potentially lucrative commodities, as objects of sculptural art, or as symbols for a whole range of new meanings never foreseen by the images' makers or original worshipers. |
Kirjan sisältä
Tulokset 1 - 5 kokonaismäärästä 69
... Human- ities in 1994 allowed me to complete my work , and enabled me to conduct further research in London and India . At a time when governmental agencies like the N.E.H. are under extreme duress , I wish to acknowledge my grati- tude ...
... human devotees , and they immediately took steps to treat the goddess in suitable fashion . Walsh and Spooner , on the other hand , understood the object to be a specimen of ancient Indian statuary . As such , they arranged to have the ...
... human devotees , and they may engage in contests of miracles with one another to resolve their own disputes over status and authority . According to Indian legal literature , central images are the lords and owners of the temples they ...
Richard H. Davis. remade through interactions with humans . Responses to such objects , I will argue , are primarily grounded not in universal aesthetic principles of sculp- tural form or in a common human psychology of perception , but ...
... human life and its possibilities , and on the role of images in a world so constituted . I occasionally use the theological term " dispensation " as a shorthand way of designating historically grounded and socially shared understandings ...
Sisältö
Living Images | 15 |
Trophies of War | 51 |
Images Overthrown | 88 |
Visnus Miraculous Returns | 113 |
Indian Images Collected | 143 |
Reconstructions of Somanatha | 186 |
Loss and Recovery of Ritual Self | 222 |
Identities and Manifestations | 261 |
Notes | 265 |
Bibliography | 293 |
Bibliographic Appendix | 317 |
319 | |