Polemics and Patronage in the City of Victory: Vyasatirtha, Hindu Sectarianism, and the Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara Court
In this Book
Valerie Stoker
Published by: University of California Press
Series: South Asia Across the Disciplines
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How did the patronage activities of India's Vijayanagara Empire (c. 1346–1565) influence Hindu sectarian identities? Although the empire has been commonly viewed as a Hindu bulwark against Islamic incursion from the north or as a religiously ecumenical state, Valerie Stoker argues that the Vijayanagara court was selective in its patronage of religious institutions. To understand the dynamic interaction between religious and royal institutions in this period, she focuses on the career of the Hindu intellectual and monastic leader Vyasatirtha. An agent of the state and a powerful religious authority, Vyasatirtha played an important role in expanding the empire's economic and social networks. By examining his polemics against rival sects in the context of his work for the empire, Stoker provides a remarkably nuanced picture of the relationship between religious identity and sociopolitical reality under Vijayanagara rule.
pp. vii-viii
pp. ix-xi
p. xii
Note on Transliteration and Translation
p. xiii
1. Hindu Sectarianism and the City of Victory
2. Royal and Religious Authority in Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara: A Maṭhādhipati at Kṛṣṇadevarāya's Court
3. Sectarian Rivalries at an Ecumenical Court: Vyāsatīrtha, Advaita Vedānta, and the Smārta Brahmins
4. Allies or Rivals? Vyāsatīrtha's Material, Social, and Ritual Interactions with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas
pp. 73-105
5. The Social Life of Vedānta Philosophy: Vyāsatīrtha's Polemics against Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
6. Hindu, Ecumenical, Sectarian: Religion and the Vijayanagara Court
Related ISBN
10.1353/book.63420