Bøger af Monika Horstmann

Jaipur 1778 narrates the interregnum concluded with the royal consecration of Pratapsingh (1778-1803). Over the period of a month, the new king became vested with the power of symbols that legitimated his dynasty. To the extent that this was a process taking place in the public space, it also confirmed the symbolic structure of the two royal residences involved. Monika Horstmann's book examines the history of those symbols and their human agents and the public ritual performed. The "Kingdom of Jaipur", "Funeral and Mourning", "Processions" as well as the "Royal Consecration" are analysed. A concluding chapter addresses the functional change inherent in a royal consecration that took place in Jaipur in the year 2011, at a time when Indian kingship had ceased to be functional for about half a century. Furthermore the translation of the court record of the interregnum and royal consecration of Maharaja Pratapsingh in 1778, the main database for the book, is given in the appendix.

In the early modern period, the Sants emerged in North India as devotees of a formless interior god. The volume introduces seven Sant authors living in Rajasthan in the period from the first half of the sixteenth to the eighties of the seventeenth century. It explores their complex cultural background, their literary conventions, and their sectarian network, and presents samples of their poetry in the original Hindi with English translations. By far the most of the compositions in this volume have not been translated before, and of one of these the original text is published also for the first time. Sant poetry has been transmitted in oral and written form. It owes its continuing vitality largely to congregational and private performance. This fact has been illustrated by a number of audio and video samples.

The religious order named Dādūpanth, which originated in Rajasthan, produced a wealth of manuscripts from about 1600 onwards. From the begining of this manuscript culture, huge codices were produced representing a chorus of voices, and reflecting the decisions made by the compilers or copyists regarding the validity of texts or entire traditions. These codices also served as the study manuals and homiletic tools of the compilers and copyists, all of them sadhus, who were more often than not also the users of these books. The discourse generated by them represents the intellectual and religious cosmos of their makers. In these codices, bhakti texts and the vernacular works of yogis are transmitted simultaniously, along with works representing a broader Vaishnava tradition, thereby documenting the dialogue of bhakti and yoga, and how commonalities and boundaries between the two were negotiated