Books by Borayin Larios
Popularly Hinduism is believed to be the world’s oldest living religion. This claim is based on a... more Popularly Hinduism is believed to be the world’s oldest living religion. This claim is based on a continuous reverence to the oldest strata of religious authority within the Hindu traditions, the Vedic corpus, which began to be composed more than three thousand years ago, around 1750–1200 BCE. The Vedas have been considered by many as the philosophical cornerstone of the Brahmanical traditions (āstika); even previous to the colonial construction of the concept of “Hinduism.” However, what can be pieced together from the Vedic texts is very different from contemporary Hindu religious practices, beliefs, social norms and political realities. This book presents the results of a study of the traditional education and training of Brahmins through the traditional system of education called gurukula as observed in 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharasthra. This system of education aims to teach Brahmin males how to properly recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Veda. This book combines insights from ethnographic and textual analysis to unravel how the recitation of the Vedic texts and the Vedic traditions, as well as the identity of the traditional Brahmin in general, are transmitted from one generation to the next in contemporary India.
Papers by Borayin Larios
Cracow Indological Studies 25, 2023
The Śrī Gurudeva Datta Mandir is a modern Hindu temple constructed around the udumbara tree (ficu... more The Śrī Gurudeva Datta Mandir is a modern Hindu temple constructed around the udumbara tree (ficus racemora) believed to be the mythical dwelling place of the antinomian god Dattātreya. Originally located in a public park, the temple is now an independently registered trust and is widely recognized as one of the most prominent and celebrated Hindu places of worship in the affluent residential area of Deccan Gymkhana in Pune, India. In this article, we examine how the natural and built environment, along with religious practices, are constantly reconfigured and renegotiated by various actors catering to the contemporary sensitivities of the urban Hindu middle classes. We argue that to understand urban religious spaces like the Śrī Gurudeva Datta Mandir, it is essential to consider how cultural, religious, and political sensitivities converge to give material form to these spaces. Through an analysis of the temple, the deity of Dattātreya, and the udumbara tree, we explore the complex interplay of these forces and their role in shaping contemporary Hindu religious practices and beliefs in urban India.
Dastavezi | The Audio-Visual South Asia, 2021
This photo essay on the public festival that celebrates the Maratha king-hero Śivājī was performe... more This photo essay on the public festival that celebrates the Maratha king-hero Śivājī was performed in the city of Pune, India, in 2020. The essay reflects upon the practice of photography as a research tool that not only provides the researcher with the opportunity to capture that which is not possible to convey with words alone, but also "frames" an aesthetic moment that serves as a visual commentary. During such public festivals, parts of the city become stages saturated with symbols and the theatricality of performing one's Hindu identity. The creative manipulation of symbols facilitates the construction of this practice with Hindu pride at its center: a habitus that potentially leads to collective activism and, if needed, violence. Public festivals are understood by the author as Schaufenster (shop windows) that allow him to observe and experience social rhythms firsthand and, at the same time, reflect on the role of the images and their circulation for the participants' construction of their identity. Primarily young men and increasingly young women are inexorably drawn into the mythicized Śivājī stories on social media, television, and cinema, developing a reactionary vision of themselves and the nation as proudly Hindu.
Philological Encounters, 2021
This article discusses the first Indian compilation of the four Vedic Saṃhitās into a printed boo... more This article discusses the first Indian compilation of the four Vedic Saṃhitās into a printed book in the year 1971 entitled “Bhagavān Vedaḥ.” This endeavor was the life’s mission of an udāsīn ascetic called Guru Gaṅgeśvarānand Mahārāj (1881–1992) who in the year 1968 founded the “Gaṅgeśvar Caturved Sansthān” in Bombay and appointed one of his main disciples, Svāmī Ānand Bhāskarānand, to oversee the publication of the book. His main motivation was to have a physical representation of the Vedas for Hindus to be able to have the darśana (auspicious sight) of the Vedas and worship them in book form. This contribution explores the institutions and individuals involved in the editorial work and its dissemination, and zooms into the processes that allowed for the transition from orality to print culture, and ultimately what it means when the Vedas are materialized into “the book of the Hindus.”
South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2018
Drawing on this special issue’s ethnographic data and analysis this introduction aims to offer an... more Drawing on this special issue’s ethnographic data and analysis this introduction aims to offer an analytical framework for understanding the notion of wayside shrines. It does so by defining wayside shrines as sites that enshrine a worshipped object that is immediately adjacent to a public path, visible from it and accessible to any passerby. Further, we argue that wayside shrines are spaces in which we can observe a unique form of everyday religiosity that challenges sedimented discourses and practices at three different scales: at the level of the individual, of the community, and of the state.
This article presents the results from brief ethnographic research conducted in 2016 in the city ... more This article presents the results from brief ethnographic research conducted in 2016 in the city of Pune, Maharashtra. Through two case studies of wayside shrines in Pune—the first, a tiny pavement shrine which is steadily growing in popularity, and the second, a small shrine turned into an extravagant temple in just a few years—I consider them as more than just spontaneous expressions of devotion. Taking into consideration the roles that urban conditions and social configurations have been playing in how social actors forge connections between localities and different communities, this paper will look at how these shrines can be spaces of creative subversion of the established socio-religious order and its structures of power. In in this contribution, I argue that the wayside shrine reveals the blurred boundaries between the rural and the urban, the sacred and the mundane, the institutionalized and the popular as well as the legal and the illegal.
GEMSTONES IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM AD MINES, TRADE, WORKSHOPS AND SYMBOLISM
Historically believed to be a key zone for the extraction of red garnet, the region of Rajasthan,... more Historically believed to be a key zone for the extraction of red garnet, the region of Rajasthan, India has now allegedly become »second choice« for the gemstone manufacturers from Jaipur. According to craftsmen in the »Pink City«, sourcing gem-quality garnet in Rajasthan has become increasingly rare. During a field trip in the autumn of 2014, with the intention to look for red garnet sources in the region of Rajasthan, a different story turned up: large mining operations for all kinds of minerals, including garnet, go on despite being outside the law. In the case of gem-quality garnet, small-scale and artisanal mining activities are being carried out in different parts of the state and it seems that this type of informal mining might have been the rule rather than the exception in earlier times, as well.
In this paper I explore how Vedic textual heritage is appropriated and performed in contemporary ... more In this paper I explore how Vedic textual heritage is appropriated and performed in contemporary Maharashtra. I will revisit the concept of the Vedas as the cornerstone of Brahmin identity and how this identity is constructed through a system of formal education and through different modes of socialization, ritual in particular. In doing so, I will highlight the relevance of the Vedas as embodied texts in the figure of the Brahmin male. I will present here examples of pre-modern discourses on the orality of the Vedas as an intrinsic value linked to the social and cosmic order and how these continue to circulate and solidify in current practices in the Vedic schools of India. With this, I hope to show discursive continuities between the past and the present that have contributed to shape current practices and ideologies in the Bråhma~ical transmission of knowledge. The material presented here is based on the study of traditional Vedic schools, or vedapå †haçålås, of the state of Maharashtra. 1
Films by Borayin Larios
Short film: Embodying the Vedas - A day in the Śrī Kṛṣṇayajurveda Pāṭhaśālā
This is a short video for educational purposes to illustrate a day at a traditional Vedic school.... more This is a short video for educational purposes to illustrate a day at a traditional Vedic school. Some colleagues have found it useful to show it in their Intro classes/seminars on Hinduism.
Elusive gemstone mines: the red garnet industry in contemporary Rajasthan
This is a short video accompanying the paper of the same title.
A 3 min version can be found he... more This is a short video accompanying the paper of the same title.
A 3 min version can be found here: https://youtu.be/OBXA5Rcwzdc
Book Chapters by Borayin Larios
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint Shirdi Sai Baba's Presence, 2022
In 2005, during one of my first rides in an auto-rickshaw in the city of Pune, the driver explain... more In 2005, during one of my first rides in an auto-rickshaw in the city of Pune, the driver explained to me that the white-plastic saint that adorned the mini-shrine resting in front of his handlebar was "the Jesus Christ of India." The iconic murti (image) of the bearded fakir (ascetic) wearing his headscarf was garlanded with a string of marigolds, and in front of him, a fragrant incense-stick burned. On the windshield flanking the mini-shrine, one could read the words "Shraddha" (faith) and "Saburi" (patience) on multicolored neon glitter-stickers crowned by an equally polychrome "OM." The rickshaw driver's Sai Baba shrine initiated my prolonged interest in the saint and urban displays of popular religion more generally. 1 As I began to study wayside shrines in Pune, I came across many dedicated to Sai Baba. 2 How devotees produce sacred places through the presence of a saint defies formal religion. Street shrines provide blessings and safe haven to those living at the margins of social stratification and attendant privilege, but also serve the processes of identity formation that allow less-advantaged persons to imagine themselves as part of localities and the nation at large (Lohokare 2016). Wayside shrines vary in size, form, and materials used to house Baba, but most share a common aesthetic. Baba is always the central presence through one of his photographs, a painting, or a lithograph based on one of his iconic images, a murti, or a combination of such materials. A murti is usually a replica of the largerthan-life-size marble "embodiment" located at Baba's samadhi shrine in Shirdi (see Roberts, this volume), here housed in a miniature temple that indexes the architectural aesthetics of Shirdi or a generic Hindu temple (cf. Elison 2018a). More elaborate shrines present Baba's padukas in the form of his footwear, footprints, or a depiction of his feet. Very often, the words shraddha and saburi flank his image as do an OM-symbol and a mantra such as OM sai, OM sairam or saishyam, OM sainathaya namah, or sometimes digambara digambara shripada vallabha digambara linking him to the Datta-sampradaya of Maharashtra. 3 Many have attested to the transreligious and composite nature of Sai Baba from his early depictions as a living master who brought together Muslim and Hindu religious sensitivities, leading to his re-imagination as a symbol
Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, 2021
Book Reviews by Borayin Larios
Kim Siebenhüner, Die Spur der Juwelen. Materielle Kultur und transnationale Verbindungen zwischen Indien und Europa in der Frühen Neuzeit, Köln (Böhlau) 2018, 425 S., 37 farb. Abb., 5 Kt. (Ding, Materialität, Geschichte, 3), ISBN 978-3-412-50929-3, EUR 62,00. , 2019
Kim Siebenhüner, Die Spur der Juwelen. Materielle Kultur und transnationale Verbindungen zwischen... more Kim Siebenhüner, Die Spur der Juwelen. Materielle Kultur und transnationale Verbindungen zwischen Indien und Europa in der Frühen Neuzeit, Köln (Böhlau) 2018, 425 S., 37 farb. Abb., 5 Kt. (Ding, Materialität, Geschichte, 3), ISBN 978-3-412-50929-3, EUR 62,00. rezensiert von | compte rendu rédigé par
HIstoria Mínima del Yoga, 2021
Review of Brian Collins "The Head Beneath the Altar. Hindu Mythology and the Critique of Sacrifice."
Reviews of my book by Borayin Larios
Review of my book by Charles S. Preston for the International Journal of Hindu Studies (2020), 2020
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Books by Borayin Larios
Papers by Borayin Larios
Films by Borayin Larios
A 3 min version can be found here: https://youtu.be/OBXA5Rcwzdc
Book Chapters by Borayin Larios
Book Reviews by Borayin Larios
Reviews of my book by Borayin Larios