On Tuesday, March 12 the Religion Department hosted their second iteration of their new speaker series, New Research in the Study of Religion. This event featured Professors Louise Marlow and Neelima Shukla-Bhatt both discussing their recent books.
Professor Marlow, who is chair of the department and specializes in teaching Islamic cultural studies and researching classical Arabic and Persian literature, presented first. Her book was published in Jan. 2023 by Cambridge University Press, and is entitled “Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes: An Anthology of Arabic, Persian and Turkish Political Advice.” Mirrors for princes, as Marlow described them, are literary texts designed to offer advice to the ruler (or ruler-to-be) from topics as varied as general health and wellbeing to political, ethical and practical advice. She defined them as discursive texts, in which they attempted to persuade the ruler in some way, and often were “eclectic” in their use of examples as a deliberate strategy to demonstrate the overwhelming evidence in favor of the argument. Marlow mentioned Machiavelli’s “The Prince” as an early model from a modern European context, as mirrors for princes are a widespread literary tradition across many cultures and linguistic communities.
Marlow then went on to describe the layout of her book, as well as her process of elimination and refinement to incorporate elements of such a vast literary tradition into a singular work. The first part of her book is an introduction to the literature, including its reception, history and context. The second part is an anthology of nine different authors’ texts. Marlow explained that in writing the book she had four main areas to tackle. The first was the time period, which she chose to limit to the tenth-twelfth centuries (which scholars of Islamic history refer to as the middle or early middle period). Marlow explained that this allowed her to have many sources that engaged with similar events, allowing for more connections and greater intertextuality. This time period also saw the production of the first book length, thematically divided Islamic mirrors for princes, including some of the most celebrated.
Marlow explained that her choice to limit the time period covered in her book allowed her greater breadth in her choice of which authors and texts to focus on, and their geographic spread stretched from Spain to Central Asia. After selecting the time and texts, Marlow then considered themes and the question of translation and introductions to an English speaking audience. As a translator, Marlow found it important for the various sections to have “integrity,” which she described as an “organic coherence of the text [so as] to be apparent to the reader.” To maintain the coherence and integrity of the translated selections, she chose to use entire chapters or sections, and where different styles of writing were used (e.g. the insertion of poetry) she chose to retain all portions as “it was put there for a reason.”
The second portion of the lecture was dedicated to Professor Shukla-Bhatt’s book “Hinduism: The Basics” which was published in March of 2023 by Routledge. Shukla-Bhatt described this book as a “long time in coming,” but from its conception she faced a two-part dilemma with her book. Her first query was in relation to the fact that there are already many great introductions to Hinduism, and she wondered what she could say that was new. For her second issue she explained that, “what we call Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the world, internally it’s so diverse that scholars agree it’s difficult to categorize.” She linked this with a greater theory posited by Jonathan Z. Smith in his book “Imagining Religion” where he claims that religion as a distinct unit is the creation of academia.
Shukla-Bhatt expanded on this theory by considering that there is no essentialized form of any religion that can be presented as a whole, instead she sees it as dynamic or an ongoing process, which was especially important in her consideration of Hinduism, which has more than 3500 years of history. The name given to the religion can also be misleading, as it doesn’t come from a founder or core concept. Shukla-Bhatt explained that the term “Hindu” derived from Persian is in reference to the Sindu river (located in modern-day Pakistan), and that the region east of the river was known as “Hindu.” Because of this she decided to instead talk about Hindu religious culture, as she finds “Hinduism” to be a bounded category, whereas Hindu religious culture has greater capacity to encompass the change, diversity and agency she hopes to capture.
“How do you create a system out of a geographic location, that is something that I have tried to explain in the book. To get to the basics of such a complex and diverse system, because it is so diverse, you will not have Hindus uniformly following any single thing. Because of this diversity, coming to its basics is a complex task, you can only talk about those broadly accepted elements that are manifested in various religious currents in different ways. The one thing that captures the spirit of this conference is that rather than a single god or a single religious ideal, is the idea that the cosmos in itself is sacred. And there are sacred forces or energies that prevail in the cosmos and tapping into how to harness the power of the sacred into one’s own life is something that you can find very broadly in all disconnects,” Shukla-Bhatt said.
She noted that in understanding Hindu religious culture, it is often divided into two categories, “great” (male priestly elite) and “popular” (everyone else). Shukla-Bhatt described these traditions as not parallel but always intersecting, and then took the concept further to think about them as in constant interaction, where information and practice is exchanged mutually between both categories.
“Oftentimes the elite tradition gets preference, and that tradition is described as mainstream. What I have tried to do in my work is to mainstream those aspects that are followed by a larger number of people … the leader is always a small faction of the society, but they are always in conversation with one another. So I have tried to describe and record those aspects which are in conversation,” Shukla-Bhatt said.
She described three principle ways in which Hindus from diverse strata engage with traditions, texts, social and moral norms (dharma) and customs, and practices (arts, worship, festivals). She explained that texts serve as sources of spiritual concepts that shape worldviews, but unlike many other religions there is no central text, there are hundreds. For social norms and customs Shukla-Bhatt covered societal organization, which includes caste (jati) and gender as well as ethical norms. She noted that this chapter of her book took her the most time, as it’s usually the topic people are most interested in but also have the most misconceptions about. She explained that she didn’t want to “shy away” from problems within the system, but she also wanted to be careful as depictions are often distinct from the “on the ground” reality. In her discussion of practices, Shukla-Bhatt focused especially on food, which was something of a “personal choice.”
“Many textual based elite accounts didn’t give voice to my mothers and grandmothers and that was something I wanted to honor,” Shukla-Bhatt said, “The way we look at religion gives us the kind of religion we are going to see … There is a parallel of practice, but the agency is dispersed. Agency is not concentrated in just one place. Authority is one thing, but authenticity of practice is another thing. So only a few people have the authority, but the authenticity of practice, everybody has.”
Shukla-Bhatt described her grandmother’s role as a religious leader. At festival times, she was responsible for preparing the food and decorating, and she explained that the food is a central part of how these festivals are practiced and experienced.
“Even just looking at that plate [of food] was inspiring, because it looked auspicious. And therefore, the sense of sacred which is talked about in so many high sounding terms in Sanskrit texts is right there in front of you on a plate prepared by your grandmother … most people are not going to be always thinking about high sounding ideas like liberation or things like that, for them religion means woven into festivals to thinking of certain deities, but to the memories of those things, since childhood, they are woven with the flavors and aromas of the kind of things that your grandmother cooked or the men in the house prepared for the rest of the people to enjoy. And that is also a vibrant part of a religious tradition … what I have done in the book is rather than talking generally I have created characters … through specific characters, it becomes more accessible, because you’re telling the story of people as a lived experience, rather than just describing them in abstract terms,” Shukla-Bhatt concluded.
Following the presentations, the audience followed up with a round of questions. A year out from publication, both professors identified that although during the writing process they went back and forth over small details, they are both now looking forward to their next projects.
Samara Mellis ’27 a student administrative assistant for the religion department described the event as a “big success” and noted how much she enjoyed the more relaxed style of the series lectures.
“I always really enjoy them. I thought it went very smoothly. They’re meant to be informal and casual events because I think the professors don’t want to have it be like this stressful ‘we’re giving a talk’ thing. I always really like the … living room style lectures,” Mellis said, “It’s nice to see faculty outside of the more pedagogical environment, in a more casual setting. It’s nice to hear people talk about the work they’ve done because I feel like they work on it for so long and they don’t get to talk about a lot of the time.”
