Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions by Stainton, Hamsa; White, Anna Lee;

Short description:

This book brings together new scholarship by eleven scholars for the first such volume focused on this major genre of religious literature. Central themes of the volume include the stotra genre itself and the role of such hymns of praise in ritual and performative contexts (including liturgy and preaching).

Long description:

Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotra/ stuti/ stava) have been popular and influential within multiple religious traditions for thousands of years. Sanskrit hymns remain lively, meaningful parts of the religious lives of countless Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains today, and new stotras continue to be composed and recited around the world. The academic study of these hymns has made notable progress in recent decades as scholars have paid increasing attention to such compositions.

This book brings together new scholarship by eleven scholars for the first such volume focused on this major genre of religious literature. Central themes of the volume include the stotra genre itself, the role of such hymns of praise in ritual and performative contexts (including liturgy and preaching), and the public and polemical dimensions of such hymns across traditions. The chapters dwell on theoretical, methodological, and comparative concerns, and they contain original translations of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain stotras.

A valuable pedagogical resource for educators teaching about Asian religions and literature, especially in comparative contexts, this book also establishes the foundation for future research and scholarship on a genre of religious poetry popular across South Asian religious traditions.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Studying Stotras across Traditions 

Part One: On the Stotra Genre

2. Navigating an Ocean of Hymns: Popular Anthologies and the Study of Sanskrit Stotras 

3. An Epistemology of Stotra: Hemacandra’s Understanding of the Hymnic Genre through His Mahādeva Stotra 

4. Praise-Poems in Kṛṣṇa Temples and Royal Courts: Virudāvalī as Stotra and Praśasti

Part Two: Recitation, Liturgy, and Preaching

5. The Jain Hymn of Undying Devotion: An Annotated Translation of the Bhaktāmara Stotra of Mānatuṅga 

6. History, Supernormal Powers, and Liturgy: Jain Sets of Stotras 

7. Praise You as I Should: Stotras and the Dharma-Preacher (Dharmabhāṇaka) in Mahāyāna Buddhist Sūtras 

8. Stotra as Mantra and Materiality: The Case of Budha-Kaśika’s Rāmarakṣāstotra 

Part Three: Polemics and Publics: Stotras between and across Traditions

9. Receptiveness, Assertion, and Subversion in Sectarian Spaces: Appayya Dīkṣita, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, and Engagement across Traditions 

10. When Haradatta Met Kūreśa: Printed Stotras and the Public Memory of Sectarian Figures in India between the Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries 

11. Colonial-Era Engagements with the Stotra Genre: Bhāratendu Hariścandra’s Sītāvallabhastotra 

Epilogue

12. Stotra Musings: Shared and Contested Spaces of the Praise Poem across Traditions