Greetings All,
I am pleased to announce the publication of my
monograph:
The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in
a South Asian Performance. SUNY Series in Hindu Studies. Albany: SUNY
Press
The Festival of Indra details the textual and performative history of an
important South Asian festival and its role in the development of classical
Hinduism. Drawing on various genres of Sanskrit textual sources—especially the
epic Mahābhārata—the book highlights
the innovative ways that this annual public festival has supported the stable
royal power responsible for the sponsorship of these texts. More than just a
textual project, however, the book devotes significant ethnographic attention
to the only contemporary performance of this festival that adheres to the
classical Sanskrit record: the Indrajatra of Kathmandu, Nepal. Here, Indra's
tall pole remains the festival's focal point, though its addition of the royal
blessing by Kumari, the "living goddess" of Nepal, and the regular
presence of the fierce god Bhairav show several significant ways that ritual
agents have re-constructed this festival over the past two thousand years.
“This
valuable and ambitious work covers an important and understudied ritual form
that has a long South Asian history, the Indra Festival. This festival is
particularly interesting historically, since it falls between the Vedic
sacrificial models of ritual in the earliest period and the image‐puja models
of later temple Hinduism. Baltutis approaches the topic as an Indologist,
historian, and ethnographer, and the resulting book represents a significant
contribution to South Asian religious studies.” — Richard H. Davis, author of The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography
Ordering information can be found here: The Festival of
Indra.
Best,
Michael
Michael
Baltutis
Professor, South Asian Religions
Chair, Department of Anthropology, Global Religions, and Cultures
Chair, Global Council
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Book Review Editor, International Journal of Hindu Studies
