The image of an individual is usually a result of accretions of motifs in history. However most modern biographies crucial for popularizing Ramanuja have overlooked this fact. Emphasizing the dialogic interaction between the hagiographies and biographies, this study argues that the two cannot always be understood merely within the binaries of the sacred and the secular.
Based upon a range of historical sources, the book delineates various moments of interactions in history when the notion of a remembered past and the historical memories through which the past would become a received tradition were being configured.
Contents: 1. Encountering Ramanuja: some preliminaries. 2. Texts, tradition and the Srivaisnava community. 3. Texts, contexts and the Srivaisnava community. 4. Ramanuja as an Acarya. 5. Devotion and dissent: Ramanuja as a "social reformer". 6. From hagiographies to biographies: some concluding remarks. Bibliography. Index.
There are no reviews yet.