Description
Book SynopsisThis volume examines the intellectual trajectories of remarkable individuals who interacted with religious discourses, doctrines or practices in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Inspired by S. Subrahmanyam and S. Gruzinski’s historiographical model of “connected histories”, this book introduces the approach of “connected religion” and invites the study of cross-cultural and “translocal” encounters by bringing together documents that represent diverse aspects of the story and reconstructing a narrative from diverse standpoints, with analytical potential. Testing this approach through specific cases of interactions between Asia and Europe, the volume explores the little-known stories of actors such as migrants or expatriates interacting with religious discourses, and of religious leaders producing and propagating beliefs and practices. The cases pose questions that can be applied to further contexts, such as: the significance of improved travels and communications for the diffusion of religious content across national, cultural and institutional boundaries; the impact of specific individuals, charismatic or not, well-established or subaltern in the reconfiguration of institutional forms of religion; and the role of the South Asian referent in legitimating the propagation of specific religious views. Offering both an innovative methodological framework and original cases based on new research, the book will be of interest to scholars of religion, to specialists of South Asia in late modernity and to the broader public.
Table of ContentsPreface Sujit Sivasundaram, Cambridge University Editor’s Introduction Philippe Bornet Part I: Introduction 1. From Comparative to Connected Religion: Translocal Aspects of Orientalism and the Study of Religion Philippe Bornet Part II: Transnational Trajectories and Individual Appropriations of Religion 2. “In-Between” Religiosity: European Kālī-bhakti in Early Colonial Calcutta Gautam Chakrabarti, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/Freie Universität Berlin 3. The Making of the Ideal Transnational Disciple: Unravelling Biographies of Margaret Noble/Sister Nivedita Gwilym Beckerlegge, The Open University 4. The Curious Case of the Drs. D’Abreu: Catholicism, Migration and a Kanara Catholic Family in the Heart of the Empire, 1890-1950 Dwayne Ryan Menezes, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London 5. Religion and the “Simple Life”: Dugald Semple and Translocal “Life Reform” Networks Steven Sutcliffe, University of Edinburgh 6. Re-discovering Buddha’s Land: The Transnational Formative Years of China’s Indology Minyu Zhang, Beijing Foreign Studies University Part III: Religions on the Move 7. Charles Pfoundes and the Forgotten First Buddhist Mission to the West, London 1889 Brian Bocking, University College Cork 8. Travelling through Interstitial Spaces: The Radical Spiritual Journeys of Pandita Mary Ramabai Saraswathi Parinitha Shetty, Mangalore University 9. A “Christian Hindu Apostle”? The Multiple Lives of Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889‒1929?) Philippe Bornet 10. The Chen Jianmin (1906-1987) Legacy: An “Always on the Move” Buddhist Practice Fabienne Jagou, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris Part IV: In Summary 11. Afterword Maya Burger, University of Lausanne
