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The Hindu goddess Santoṣī Mā (also commonly written, in Devanagari script and in Indian English, Santoṣī Māṃ and Santoshi Ma/Maa) is widely venerated today, especially by women. Large numbers of women observe a vrat or fasting ritual on Fridays in her honor, and her shrines may be found in both urban and rural areas, often incorporated within temples to other deities. Although her worship seems to have originated in northwest India, probably through 20th-century modifications of an older cult of a local goddess, she is now r…

The Hindi term akhāṛā means “wrestling arena,” from which akhāṛiyā derives, meaning “master fighter,” “skilled manoevrer,” or “strategist.” There is a network of akhāṛās throughout India, particularly in the North, where men train in wrestling and other methods of fighting. Akhāṛās specialize in various techniques of fitness and combat, which include the use of weights, clubs, and maces. The akhāṛās have a resident guru. The wrestlers’ patron deity is Hanumān. This network of akhāṛās, which serves local men who typically train before or after work, is distinct …

Partition and Recent History At the Partition of British India in 1947, the leaders of newly independent Pakistan designated their state as the home of South Asian Muslims. Accordingly, the drawing of its boundaries was an artificial process – that is, the outcome of controversial negotiations rather than given cultural divisions. It resulted in the forced migration of millions Muslims to Pakistan and an equal number of non-Muslims fleeing to India under the impact of communal riots with mass killin…

Rādhā (other names/epithets: Śrī Rādhikā Rāṇī, Śyāmā, Lārilī, Nāgarī, Svāminī, Kiśorī, Kuñjabihārinī, Vṛṣabhānunandinī, Vṛṇḍāvaneśvarī) is Kṛṣṇa’s consort and foremost of the gopīs or milkmaids of Braj, the area between Delhi and Agra, where Kṛṣṇa is said to have grown up incognito. Rādhā is considered to be Kṛṣṇa’s teenage and/or childhood sweetheart ( kiśorī), whose innocent love moved him to the highest passion. Rādhā herself is passion incarnate, and the depth of her feelings has inspired numerous artists to create sensual desc…

The constellation of persons, communities, texts, doctrines, and practices denoted by the term "Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism" constitutes a distinctive tradition of religious affiliation centered on the worship of Kṛṣṇa (regarded as the source of all Viṣṇu forms and avatāras) with geographical origination and locus in the region of greater Bengal. “Gauḍīya” is an adjectival derivative of Gauḍa, referring roughly to the areas of present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh. Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism is also referred to as Bengal Vaiṣṇavism …

Rivers in India are almost all feminine in gender. They are treated ritually as women, appear in stories as female persons, and have many iconographic and narrative associations with cows. Almost universally in India, rivers’ names are grammatically feminine. In addition, there are numerous goddesses who live in or personify rivers. The earliest evidence of this pattern is found in the Vedas, where the Sarasvatī is both a goddess and a river (e.g. ṚV. 2.41.16; 2.61.2), and where rivers are compared with cows ( ṚV. 1.32.11; 1.32.2).A common iconographic expression of the pattern…

Threads have great symbolic value in Hindu traditions not only as material objects used in ritual but also metaphorically as can be seen in the case of the terms guṇa and sūtra, which both literally mean thread or cord. While guṇa is the term used for the three basic material constituents and the material cause of creation ( prakṛti) in Sāṃkhya philosophy, sūtra designates the authoritative guidelines and manuals of the Śāstras (authoritative texts of the disciplines and sciences) and the short aphoristic rules that these texts consist of (see Sūtras). D…

Mudrā in different texts and contexts might mean not only coin (money), fingerring or earring, mark, and sign of recognition but also a method of calculation and a decoration of poetry. Such meanings as “seal” and “sign of recognition” can be found in Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (13.4.41; 2nd–3rd cents. CE; Olivelle, 2013, 29, 31). Mudrā as the gesture sign will be discussed on the basis of three different kinds of sources: 1.  texts on dance and performance (see drama and theatre); 2.  texts on iconography; and 3.  tantric texts (Tantras). Mudrās in TheatreAccording to secondary literatur…

Hinduism and Islam: Medieval and Premodern Period Hinduism and Islam: Modern Period North IndiaHinduism and Islam: Modern Period South India

The field of bioethics addresses areas of human inquiry that are concerned with the ethical evaluation of human involvement in medicine and biotechnology. One of the aims of the discipline is to formulate a normative ethics of responsible interaction with other humans, living beings in general, and the environment. The key areas of bioethical inquiry have developed over time in accordance with developments in medical science and biotechnology, and different countries and cultures have differing …

Śrīvaiṣṇavism refers to the literature, rituals, beliefs, philosophies, practices, and social organization connected with a dominant Vaiṣṇava tradition. Vaiṣṇava means “follower of Viṣṇu,” śrī may be translated as “sacred” or as referring to the goddess Śrī-Lakṣmī, and “Śrīvaiṣṇava” is the name given to the people as well as the faith and practices of those Hindus who hold Viṣṇu (“The All-Pervasive One”) and the goddess Lakṣmī as supreme deities, who hold specific texts in Tamil and Sanskrit to be author…

Ancient Indian kingship has been a richly researched and theorized topic in Indology and history. Its interpretation has been remarkably complex, being linked to theories of caste and the state in classical India. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, kingship was deemed a key part of India’s overall civilizational attainment, and in the colonial period, it formed the pretext for administrative policy. Like Hinduism itself, kingship in ancient India was seen to be the repository of Aryan and…

At one point in the Mahābhārata, the great Indian epic, we come across a declaration so unusual that we pause to take in its dramatic import: yad na iha asti na tat kvacit (“what is not here is nowhere else to be found"; MBh. 1.56.34). The assertion is forthright, it lacks qualification, and, being part of an epic, has no ironic modality. It means what it says for in the Mahābhārata, which the text itself declares as a fifth Veda, all that is known and all that is yet to be written down are present. If this is a declaration of theme or substance, of content, there…

It may be difficult to overstate the importance and religious significance of gift-giving practices in Hinduism. Extolled in early vedic “Hymns to Giving” (Dānastutis), the gift develops in the course of Indian history into a central religious category in brahmanical discourse, and is discussed prolifically in the epic, puranic and dharmashastric sources. Gifts are also recorded in the epigraphical record where we learn about the actual gifts people gave as they are inscribed on stone monuments,…

Hindu texts and communities conceptualize and experience the divine as one, as many, and as being beyond numerical count; as male, female, androgynous, and transcending gender; as having form and being formless; as transcendent and immanent; as fully present in the local temple and in a heavenly abode; as unmanifest and as manifesting itself through trees, plants, animals, birds, and snakes; as being present in or appearing as human beings and as being trans-human; and as ineffable. The same per…

Sree Narayana Guru (1856?-1928), or Nanu (a contracted form of Narayana), a member of the Īzhava caste in Kerala, and a product of the colonial period in Kerala, was deeply influenced by the renaissance movement in India. As a result, he critiqued some of the customary practices within the caste-oriented society of early 20th-century Kerala and pioneered a socioreligious reform movement based on his manifesto, “One caste, one religion, one God for mankind.” People in the community recognized thi…

In this article, Punjab denotes the “Punjab region” or “greater Punjab,” the land of five ( pañj) waters (Pers. āb), namely, the Indus’ tributaries. From west to east, these are the rivers 1.  Jhelum (Hind. Jhelam, Skt. Vitastā); 2.  Chenab (Punj./Hind. Canāb, Skt. Candrabhāga); 3.  Ravi (Punj./Hind. Rāvī, Skt. Iravatī); 4.  Beas (Punj. Biās, Hind. Byās, Skt. Vipāśā); and 5.  Sutlej (Punj. Satluj, Hind. Satlaj, Skt. Śatadru). This “greater Punjab,” stretching from the Indus in the west to the Yamunā River in the east, approximates more closely to the province …

Theatre and drama have been associated with religion in a Hindu context for many centuries. The link is certainly older than its literary documentation in the Nāṭyaśāstra ascribed to Bhārata (200–300 CE). The sacred dimension derived from the origin myth of theatre in this treatise and later commentaries was and is arguably not the only link between Hinduism and the performing arts. However, Indian and Western scholars alike continue to refer to the Nāṭyaśāstra, and there is an obvious tendency to invoke its textual “proof” of a divine origin of theatre and drama i…

The term āśrama has two related meanings. The first is that of a residence, often located in forests, where holy people live and perform religious austerities ( tapas). This is by far its most common meaning; it is so used in Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Jain literary sources, as well as in nonreligious texts such as drama, poetry, and fables. The second meaning of the term is that of a religious or holy way of life. The latter is, in all likelihood, a technical usage, as it occurs exclusively in Brahmanical literature and mainly within the context of the āśrama system (Olivelle, 1993). This e…

Years of plundering by North Indian Muslims under the aegis of the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) imperiled South India, exacerbating Hindu–Muslim relations in many precincts. By 1565, the culling of the Hindu empire of Vijayanagara at the hands of Bijapur and Golconda Muslims – bolstered by North Indian sultanates – heeled lines of Hindu rule that had succeeded the once-glorious Kakatiyas and Yadavas in northern South India and the Pandyas and Hoysalas in the southern reaches. On the heels of the …