Episode Details

In The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India (Oxford UP, 2025), Elaine Fisher reconstructs Vīraśaiva origins from unstudied multilingual archives, overturning the conventional narrative of a monolingual Kannada bhakti movement protesting Sanskrit Brahmanism. The evidence reveals Vīraśaivism as multilingual from inception—its anti-caste inheritance deriving from Sanskrit Śaiva tradition, not rejecting it. Fisher proposes a "linguascape" model replacing unidirectional vernacularization with multidirectional flows through which local Vīraśaivisms were translated into being across south India.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network