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Bihani Sarkar, "Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship" (Oxford UP, 2017)
Bihani Sarkar, "Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship" (Oxford UP, 2017)
ratings:
Length:
67 minutes
Released:
Oct 16, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Heroic Saktism is the belief that a good king and a true warrior must worship the goddess Durga, the form and substance of kingship. This belief formed the bedrock of ancient Indian practices of cultivating political power. Wildly dangerous and serenely benevolent at one and the same time, the goddess's charismatic split nature promised rewards for a hero and king and success in risky ventures. Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship (Oxford UP, 2017) is the first expansive historical treatment of the cult of Durga and the role it played in shaping ideas and rituals of heroism in India between the 3rd and the 12th centuries CE. By assessing the available epigraphic, literary and scriptural sources in Sanskrit, and anthropological studies on politics and ritual, Bihani Sarkar demonstrates that the association between Indian kingship and the cult's belief-systems was an ancient one based on efforts to augment worldly power.
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Released:
Oct 16, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, “New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India” (Oxford UPs 2015): New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 2015), edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, is a wonderfully rich and theoretically coherent collection of texts that critically as... by New Books in Indian Religions