Anne Feldhaus

Pastoral deities in western India

This is a translation of a book by the internationally renowned German ethnographer Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer. Sontheimer here describes the religious system of a pastoralist area which includes parts of three linguistic regions (Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh). Making use of oral narratives collected from this area, he describes its gods and their worshippers: not only pastoralists, but also ferrymen, merchants, robbers and wandering holy men. Sontheimer places the oral material in its social, cultural and ecological context, showing how myths and ritual cycles give shape to the peoples collective identity and attitudes toward other communities. This book represents hundreds of hours of interviews conducted under difficult fieldwork conditions. It not only presents a look at a virtually unstudied and fast disappearing way of life but makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Hindu tradition.

God and madman: Guṇḍam Rāuḷ

Guṇḍam Rāuḷ lived in the thirteenth century in Ṫddhipur, a small town in the easternmost part (Vidarbha) of the Marāṭhī-speaking region of India. He appears to have been somewhat mad. Members of the Mahānubhāva sect, a devotional ( bhakti ) sect native to the region, revere him as the guru of their founder, Cakradhar, and as one of five major incarnations of their one God, ParameŚvara. Reverence for Guṇḍam Rāuḷ does not lead his Mahānubhāva biographers to deny his madness: the present paper will demonstrate this fact, and attempt to explain it.

God and madman: Gundam Rāul

Guṇḍam Rāuḷ lived in the thirteenth century in Ṫddhipur, a small town in the easternmost part (Vidarbha) of the Marāṭhī-speaking region of India. He appears to have been somewhat mad. Members of the Mahānubhāva sect, a devotional ( bhakti ) sect native to the region, revere him as the guru of their founder, Cakradhar, and as one of five major incarnations of their one God, ParameŚvara. Reverence for Guṇḍam Rāuḷ does not lead his Mahānubhāva biographers to deny his madness: the present paper will demonstrate this fact, and attempt to explain it.

God and madman: Guṇḍam Rāuḷ 1

Guṇḍam Rāuḷ lived in the thirteenth century in Ṫddhipur, a small town in the easternmost part (Vidarbha) of the Marāṭhī-speaking region of India. He appears to have been somewhat mad. Members of the Mahānubhāva sect, a devotional ( bhakti ) sect native to the region, revere him as the guru of their founder, Cakradhar, and as one of five major incarnations of their one God, ParameŚvara. Reverence for Guṇḍam Rāuḷ does not lead his Mahānubhāva biographers to deny his madness: the present paper will demonstrate this fact, and attempt to explain it.