St Antony’s College, Oxford, 5/6 June 2009

The centuries of the ‘early modern’ in South Asia saw particularly dynamic and complex developments in the region’s religious cultures.  Novel forms of syncretic  practice emerged alongside a deepening of other religious and vernacular identities.  Regional as well as imperial states of the period expanded their religious patronage, while new sectarian centres of doctrinal and spiritual authority emerged beyond the confines of the state.   Royal and merchant patronage stimulated the growth of new classes of mobile intellectuals deeply committed to the reappraisal of many aspects of religious law and doctrine.  Supra-regional institutions and networks of many other kinds - sect-based religious maths, pilgrimage centres and their guardians, sants and sufi orders - flourished, offering greater mobility to wider communities of the pious.  This was also a period of growing vigour in the development of vernacular religious literatures of different kinds, and often of new genres blending elements of older devotional, juridical and historical literatures.  Oral and manuscript literatures too gained more rapid circulation, although the meaning and canonical status of texts frequently changed as they circulated more widely and reached larger lay audiences. 

Through these and other perspectives, the workshop will explore this critical formative period in the making of India’s modern religious cultures.

Participants

Conference Organizers:
Polly O’Hanlon
Jeevan Deol
David Washbrook

There is no fee for attendance.  To register, please contact Polly O’Hanlon at rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk.

Sponsored by the University of Oxford Fell Fund, the Faculty of Oriental Studies and St Antony’s College.