The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritamrita and the Grammar of Religious Tradition

by Tony K Stewart

Overview

The Gaudiya Vaisnava movement is one of the most vibrant religious groups in all of South Asia. Unlike most devotional communities that flourished in 15th-, 16th-, and 17th-century Bengal, however, the group had no formal founder. Today its devotees are uniform in their devotion to the historical figure of Krishna Caitanya (1486-1533), whom they believe to be not just Krishna incarnate, but Radha and Krishna fused into a single androgynous form. But Caitanya neither founded the community that coalesced around him nor named a successor. Tony Stewart seeks to discover how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless comes to successfully define itself, fix its canon and flourish. He finds the answer in the brilliant hagiographical exercise in Sanskrit and Bengali titled the Caitanya Caritamrita (CC) of Krishnadasa Kaviraja.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199889372
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/21/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Tony K. Stewart is Professor of South Asian Religions and Literatures at North Carolina State University. He divides his time between Raleigh, London, and Dhaka.

Table of Contents

Preface: Reconstructing the Life of a Text
1. Facing the Peril of Disintegration
2. Coping with the Enigma of Divinity
3. Early Formal Theories of Manifest Divinity
4. The Ascendency of the Erotic
5. Hierarchizing Theologies, Sanctioning New Practices
6. The Rhetoric of Primer, Commentary, Canon
7. A Phenomenology of Repetition and The Self-Replicating Community
8. Four Examples of the Grammar of Mimicry: the Legacy of the Caitanya Caritamrita
Personae
Works Consulted

Editorial Reviews

"In "The Final Word, a majestic and comprehensive book by any standard, Tony K. Stewart pulls together the work of a scholarly lifetime. . . This book is a landmark in its field. One can scarcely resist calling it the final word."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"The Caitanya Caritamrta is one of the great works of Bengali literature, and it deserves a great exposition. That is what we are given in The Final Word - but not only that. Tony K. Stewart's book makes a major contribution to the religious, intellectual, and social history of early modern India."
—Sheldon Pollock, William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Columbia University

"It is difficult to overstate the significance of the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement for Bengal, for India, and now for the world. Yet what steps led from the ecstatic bliss of Caitanya to the religious movement? How did this god-obsessed man become known as god himself? With comprehensive scholarship, Tony K. Stewart answers these questions and traces the creation of the central text of the movement, the vast Caitanya Caritamrta, and its transformation from pious text, to hagiographical index, to symbol of identity, to the icon that itself is the object of worship."
—Ralph W. Nicholas, William Rainey Harper Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

"There are few books that can deservedly be called masterworks, but Tony Stewart's The Final Word is certainly one of them. The fruit of a lifetime of fine-tuned historical scholarship, theoretical sophistication, exhaustive translation work, and ethnographic experience, this book is sure to revolutionize our understanding of not only these important Bengali texts and traditions, but of the very nature of religion, tradition, translation, sainthood, and secrecy. A stunning and deeply significant achievement."
—Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies, Rice University

From the Publisher