Reading Syed Abdul Malik’s Dhanya Nara Tanu Bhaland Rudrani Sarma’s Lauhitya Tirar Amrit Gathain the light of Assamese Vaishnavite Hagiography
Abstract
As part of the pan-Indian Bhakti movement, the Neo-Vaishnavite movement sought to reform the decadent modes of worship practiced in medieval Assam and, in the process, moved beyond the religious confines of the sectarian domain to influence the socio-cultural life of the milieu to which it addressed itself. An important document which enables a reading pertaining to the stated framework is the hagiography. In a hagiographic tradition, the biographical account of the saint is continually juxtaposed with the socio-cultural ethos of the contemporary spatio-temporal frameworks.
Keywords
Hagiography, Neo-Vaishnavism, Sankardeva, Social Energy, Self-Fashioning, Dhanya Nara Tanu Bhal, Lauhitya Tirar Amrit Gatha, Assam, India
Author Biography
Dhurjjati Sarma
Assistant Professor of Comparative Indian Literature, Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, Gauhati University, Assam
References
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 1988. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Malik, Syed Abdul. 1987. Dhanya Nara Tanu Bhal. Guwahati: Student’s Store.
Neog, Maheswar (ed.). 1987. Guru-Charit-Katha. University Publication Department: Gauhati University.
Phukan, K.N. 1996. ‘Bezbaroa’s Analytical Perspectives in Sankaradeva Studies’. In Ranjit Kumar Dev Goswami (ed.), Essays on Sankaradeva. Guwahati: Forum for Sankaradeva Studies and Lawyer’s Book Stall, pp.138-160.
Sarma, Rudrani. 2015. Lauhitya Tirar Amrit Gatha. Guwahati: Bishal Prakashan.