In Praise of Death : History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia)

Kamphorst, Janet

doi:10.5117/9789087280444

Cited by 27 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…While the census does not list data for specific castes, the history of Deshnoke is intimately bound to Karni Mata and the Charan caste, which is currently listed as an Other Backward Class (OBC) in the state of Rajasthan. Karni Mata was born as Ridhubai to Meha-ji and Deval Devi of the Kiniya Charan lineage sometime between the 14 th and 15 th centuries (Charan, 2015;Kamphorst, 2008). During her lifetime, Ridhubai became recognized as Karni Mata, the third incarnation of the goddess born into the Charan caste, preceded by Avar Mata and Hinglaj Mata.…”

Section: Charans Valmikis and The Karni Mata Mandirmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This leads to my second aim in conceptualizing jatikaran . Drawing on scholarship that critically examines the category of the “human” and how categories of “race” and “species” are interdependent and co-articulated (Boisseron, 2018; Haraway, 2008; Jackson, 2020; Kim, 2015; Weheliye, 2015), I aim to center the multivalence of the term jati and trace how “caste” and “species” are co-articulated, and therefore how practices of caste shape and are shaped by nonhuman worlds. A growing body of scholarship has explored how caste and nonhuman worlds are deeply connected in South Asia (Adcock, 2018; Bellwinkel-Schempp, 1998; Doniger, 2009; Govindrajan, 2018; Jalais, 2010; Kapoor, 2018; Narayanan, 2019, 2021; Sharma, 2017). Yamini Narayanan (2019, 2021) refers to the blurring of the boundaries between the human/animal/divine within India as “casteized speciesism,” or the projection of caste onto certain animals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Karni Mata Panorama is a museum comprised of intricate wax models that depict scenes of miracles that Karni Mata, the 14th-15th century saint, incarnation of the goddess, and member of the Charan caste, performed throughout her lifetime. In her explanation of Karni Mata's relevance to contemporary matters of governance, casteism, and environmental protection, Raje drew on hagiographic accounts of Karni Mata as an esteemed political leader, a protector of cows, trees, and "rats," and an advocate against practices of untouchability during her lifetime (Charan, 2015;Kamphorst, 2008). Such accounts continue to structure multispecies relationships in Deshnoke, as is apparent in the Karni Mata Temple's ownership of several gaushalas, sponsorship of an annual gaukatha, the temple administration's ban on the cutting of trees in Deshnoke, and in the estimated twenty thousand "rats" who reside within the main Karni Mata Temple and who are cared for by the temple's workers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir

Trembley

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores how multispecies relationships with a range of nonhuman actors shape and are shaped by the politics of caste and religion in the multi-caste-species spaces of the Karni Mata Mandir, a popular pilgrimage and tourist site in Deshnoke, Rajasthan that has become sensationally renowned as India's “rat temple.” However, to members of the dominant-caste Charan community, who administer and work in the Karni Mata Temple, the twenty thousand inhabitants of the temple are entirely different from rats—they are kaba, the reincarnated descendants of Charans from the lineage of Karni Mata and they are considered and cared for as kin by members of the Charan community. Charans differentiate kaba from rats through a variety of discursive and material means such as the surveillance and control of the temple's boundaries, discourses of health and hygiene, concepts of transmigration, and practices of consumption and touch. These ways of differentiating rats and kaba intersect with those mobilized by Charans in practices of caste and the exclusion of local Dalit communities from the inner temple, particularly Valmikis, who comprise the second largest population of workers employed by the temple. Drawing upon ethnographic research and insights from multispecies studies, Dalit studies, and critical race studies, this article examines interdependent, relational processes of jatikaran, or processes through which human and nonhuman bodies become reified along caste, species, and other classificatory lines at the Karni Mata Mandir.

show abstract

Section: Charans Valmikis and The Karni Mata Mandirmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir

Trembley

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…and form a distinct part of regional heritage (Lecomte-Tilouine 2009a). Smith (1991) remains the exemplary study of epic narrative, performance, and religious cults in South Asia, but see also Kamphorst (2008) for a recent elaboration on the same, and Snodgrass (2006) on present day-Rajasthani Bhats.…”

Section: The Bard's Talementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Authored by court pundits, the Shāhī Vaṃś Vinod was commissioned by raja HiraChand (r. 1850-82) (Chandel 2007, 81). Elderly Bhatts are still famous as witty impromptu poets today (personal communication, Ajay Singh, May 2008); see also,Kamphorst (2008). 4 'Ross Report', fo.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland

Moran¹

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

KingsHiP and Polit y on tHe Himalayan Borderland grant number 334489) enabled this project's completion -my warm thanks to them all.The responsive assistance of staff members at depositaries and libraries across the globe was indispensable for research. My deep thanks to the staff at the British Library in London, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the National Archives of India in New Delhi, and the Himachal Pradesh Department of Arts, Languages & Cultures Library at Shimla -a great many of the sources that are mentioned in this book would have been inaccessible without them. A shorter version of the third chapter was published in Modern Asian Studies, my thanks to Cambridge University Press for allowing its reproduction in an expanded format here, and to Lucy Rhymer of the same for insightful remarks on this project as a whole. Further credits are due to Alexander Cherniak for help with Kahluri diacritics, to Offek Orr for maps that are both readable and reflective of the mythic qualities attributed to Pahari Rajputs in modern historiography, and to Isabelle Ratié for photographs of the region.Parts of this book had developed through scholarly exchanges in various academic platforms. In Germanophone circles, my thanks to William Sax for Heidelbergian hospitality and engrossing discussions around the globe, and to Martin Gaenszle and Michael Mann for facilitating an exposition of key topics from the book in Vienna and Berlin, respectively. I am grateful to Elena de Rossi Filibeck and John Bray for fruitful collaborations during early phases of research in Rome. In Paris, I am thankful to the faculty and staff of the Centre d'Études Himalayannes (CNRS, UPR 299) for many warm welcomes and engaging scholarly enquiries; to Marie Lecomte-Tilouine and Anne de Sales for immaculately planned workshops that persistently managed to break new grounds in Himalayan Studies; and to Daniela Berti and Véronique Bouillier for delightful exchanges over the years. Further thanks to Emmanuel Francis for discussions at the Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud and elsewhere.Across the Channel, I am grateful to Roy Fischel, Michael Hutt, and James Mallinson of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for comments on an earlier version of Chapter 2. Farther still beyond the Atlantic, my thanks to Mark Turin for prompting a rethinking of Himalayan history, to Sara Shneiderman for pointed comments on the same, and to Catherine Warner for collegial collaboration on the topic. For academic exchanges in conferences and research institutes in India, I am grateful to

show abstract

Three Brajbhāṣā Versions of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

Horstmann

2018

Hindu Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In Praise of Death : History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia)

Cited by 27 publications

References 4 publications

Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir

Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir

Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland

Three Brajbhāṣā Versions of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About