Sacred Sites of South Asia Series
Sacred Sites of South Asia Series is an open access and print-on-demand series of publications by the project “Hinduistische Tempellegenden in Südindien / Hindu Temple Legends in South India” (HTL) of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Pondicherry Centre of the École française d’Extrême-Orient. The project deals with the multiform transmission of the plethora of myths about South Indian sacred sites, especially Kanchipuram. The importance of sacred spaces for South Indian religiosity is unmistakable in these narratives, which are expressed not only in texts but also in iconography, inscriptions and temple architecture, as well as in other forms of material culture, in rituals, and in oral retellings. This series publishes relevant research — in open access and print-on-demand — including editions, translations, and philological studies of individual texts and text corpora, as well as studies on their contexts and anthologies. The aim is to gather different disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches — Indology, Ethno-indology, linguistics, history, anthropology, religious studies, as well as digital humanities or related disciplines. The editors are Ute Hüsken and Dominic Goodall.
Sacred Sites of South Asia
Editors: Ute Hüsken and Dominic Goodall
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Multifarious Sacred Geographies
Multifarious Sacred Geographies takes an in-depth look at the sacred geography of the South Indian temple city Kanchipuram. Kanchipuram's particularly diverse religious landscape, with over four hundred temples, is attested to in numerous Sanskrit and Tamil texts that glorify the city. Malini Ambach investigates for the first time three of these glorifying Sanskrit Sthalamāhātmyas in detail and comparatively with regard to their literary geographies of Kanchipuram. These texts link mythology with the local physical landscape and each coloured by a sectarian perspective, they describe the same sacred space, Kanchipuram, by constructing shared and contradictory notions of the temple city.
The God Who Does as He Is Told
This volume is the first comprehensive study of the Yathoktakārī Perumāḷ temple, one of the oldest Viṣṇu shrines in the South Indian temple town of Kanchipuram. Part one brings together essays that examine the temple from various perspectives, including its architecture, ritual traditions, and mythology. Part two offers editions and translations of key primary sources. Together, they provide an essential resource for understanding this important sacred site. This is the first volume in the publication series of the ‘Hindu Temple Legends in South India’ project, which investigates the textual and living traditions of Kanchipuram’s temples.
Temple of the Heart
Located in the far south of India, the village of Tirukkurungudi is home to an impressive Vishnu temple that is revered as one of the 108 Divya Desas (Divine Places) by Tamil Vaishnavas (Srivaishnavas). Temple of the Heart is an immersive, interdisciplinary study of Tirukkurungudi’s Alakiya Nambi temple, bringing art and architectural history, inscriptions, ritual, poetry, ornamentation and narrative into conversation to demonstrate the many ways a site’s sacrality is constituted, animated and maintained. This richly illustrated and accessible book will appeal both to the general reader interested in the temples of south India and to scholars of Hinduism, Indian art and architecture, rituals and festivals.
All Books
There are no publications in this series yet.
