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The Final Word : The Caitanya Caritamrita and the Grammar of Religious Tradition by Tony K. Stewart is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Final Word : The Caitanya Caritamrita and the Grammar of Religious Tradition about?

In the early sixteenth century, a charismatic Bengali Brahmin, Visvambhara Misra, inspired communities of worshipers in Bengal, Orissa, and Vraja with his teachings. Misra took the ascetic name Krsna Caitanya, and his devotees quickly came to believe he was divine. The spiritual descendents of these initial followers today comprise the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement, one of the most vibrant religious groups in all of South Asia. In The Final Word, Tony Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish. The answer, he argues, can be found in a brilliant Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographical exercise: the Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasasa Kaviraja. Written some seventy-five years after Caitanya's passing, Krsnadasa's text gathered and synthesized the divergent theological perspectives and ritual practices that had proliferated during and after Caitanya's life. It has since become the devotional standard of the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement. The text's power, Stewart argues, derives from its sophisticated use of rhetoric. The Caitanya Caritamr

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Author

Tony K. Stewart

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published

2010

Language

EN

ISBN

9780199777327

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Religion, History, Anthropology