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When God Is a Customer : Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others by Kṣetrayya and others is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

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How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night? These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice, the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen, autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making love. This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing devices. The tra

Who reads When God Is a Customer : Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others?

Author

Kṣetrayya and others

Publisher

University of California Press; Brand: University of California Press

Published

1994

Language

EN

ISBN

9780585102979

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Literary Criticism, Poetry, Religion

Updated

2026-03-24