Sweetening and Intensification
Currents Shaping Hindu Practices
Published on 1. October 2025
Book
Hardback
354 pages
979-8-8558-0405-8 (ISBN)
Description
Explores how these two currents are shaping the contours of contemporary Hindu worship, myth, and visual and material culture in contemporary South Asia and its diasporas.
This volume focuses on two alternately converging and diverging currents that increasingly shape Hindu traditions-namely, sweetening and intensification. Sweetening is understood here to include the softening of deities' iconographies, the standardization of religious narratives, and the sanitization of ritual practices. Alongside this current exists intensification, which is understood as an insistence on the continuing relevance of rigorous, visceral, and frequently stigmatized practices and beliefs, often in response to new circumstances and challenges. This volume emphasizes an inclusive approach by bringing these two currents into sustained conversation. As Hindu traditions are increasingly expanding into new settings, including but not limited to new diaspora and new media contexts, the long-established yet ever changing scale of sweet/neutral/spicy unfolds in new ways, as well. The essays in this volume delineate these developments across diverse Hindu geographic, linguistic, ethnic, and social contexts; textual and theological traditions; and ritual and media formats. Indeed, the volume's multidisciplinary approach shows how these processes intersect with and even drive contemporary (re)negotiations, (re)interpretations, and (re)constructions of Hindu deities, practices, narratives, and symbols.
This volume focuses on two alternately converging and diverging currents that increasingly shape Hindu traditions-namely, sweetening and intensification. Sweetening is understood here to include the softening of deities' iconographies, the standardization of religious narratives, and the sanitization of ritual practices. Alongside this current exists intensification, which is understood as an insistence on the continuing relevance of rigorous, visceral, and frequently stigmatized practices and beliefs, often in response to new circumstances and challenges. This volume emphasizes an inclusive approach by bringing these two currents into sustained conversation. As Hindu traditions are increasingly expanding into new settings, including but not limited to new diaspora and new media contexts, the long-established yet ever changing scale of sweet/neutral/spicy unfolds in new ways, as well. The essays in this volume delineate these developments across diverse Hindu geographic, linguistic, ethnic, and social contexts; textual and theological traditions; and ritual and media formats. Indeed, the volume's multidisciplinary approach shows how these processes intersect with and even drive contemporary (re)negotiations, (re)interpretations, and (re)constructions of Hindu deities, practices, narratives, and symbols.
Reviews / Votes
"This volume is distinguished not just by its geographical and linguistic diversity but also by its variety of disciplinary approaches-textual, historical, literary, visual, and anthropological. All of the chapters take pains to showcase Hinduism's lived and living traditions as they adapt and change. Further, they expand how we understand the sweetening/intensification dialectic within the context of several current impulses, including globalization and the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in India." - Archana Venkatesan, University of California, Davis"The driving theme of this book opens into fascinating twists and turns in the study of Hindu traditions while poking important holes in scholarly assumptions. Against the backdrop of long-observed processes of Sanskritization, or sweetening, we find these processes to be far from inevitable or unidirectional. Through this collection's vivid explorations of how deities, rituals, and traditions sweeten and intensify over time and space, we find a new appreciation for the dynamism of Hindu traditions." - Corinne G. Dempsey, Nazareth University
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Albany, NY
United States
Target group
College/higher education
US School Grade: College Graduate Student and over
Illustrations
37 Figures; 2 Tables, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
729 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-8558-0405-8 (9798855804058)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2025
State University of New York Press
€38.99
Available for download
Persons
Amy L. Allocco is Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Multifaith Scholars Program at Elon University in North Carolina. She is the coeditor, with Brian K. Pennington, of Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion, also published by SUNY Press. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. She is the editor of Digital Hinduism and the coeditor of several volumes on digital culture and religion in Asia and beyond.
Content
Introduction: Sweetening and Intensification Processes in Hindu Traditions
Xenia Zeiler and Amy L. Allocco
Part 1: Temples, Localities, and Deities
1. A Divine Dust-Up: Diverging Trajectories of Local Gods in Garhwal
Brian K. Pennington
2. Your Friendly, Neighborhood Bhairava: Understanding the Role of a Terrifying God in the Form of an Adorable Little Boy (Batuk)
Seth Ligo
3. This Is a Place Where Shakti Dances: Intensifying the Goddess's Power in Michigan
Tracy Pintchman
Part 2: Ritual and Possession Performances
4. Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Amy L. Allocco
5. Developing Danda: Aspirations and Transformations of Divine Presence in Uttarakhand
Aftab S. Jassal
6. Feral Gods: Inklings of a Mercurial Sacrality in Village Tamil Nadu
Indira Arumugam
Part 3: Pilgrimage and Festival Practices
7. The Changing Flavors of Gogaji Worship
Carter Hawthorne Higgins
8. Sleep Sweetly, Fierce Goddess: Rituals of Intensification and Sweetening of the Goddess Chamundeshwari of Mysore in Navaratri/Dasara and Her Mahotsava
Caleb Simmons
9. The Sweetening of Bhairav as a Merchants' Miracle Deity
R. Jeremy Saul
Part 4: Narrative and Visual Spaces
10. Envisioning Kameshvari and the Mahavidyas in Women's Nam of the Kamakhya Temple and Pilgrimage Site
Patricia Dold
11. Sanskritizing and Saffronizing the Rabies Goddess: Sweetening and Intensification in the Folklore of Hadkai Mata
Darry Dinnell
12. Sensational Poetics: The Modern Visual Contextualities of Tiruvalluvar's Tirukkural
Amy-Ruth Holt
13. Kali in a Time of Hurt Sentiments
Rachel Fell McDermott
List of Contributors
Index
Xenia Zeiler and Amy L. Allocco
Part 1: Temples, Localities, and Deities
1. A Divine Dust-Up: Diverging Trajectories of Local Gods in Garhwal
Brian K. Pennington
2. Your Friendly, Neighborhood Bhairava: Understanding the Role of a Terrifying God in the Form of an Adorable Little Boy (Batuk)
Seth Ligo
3. This Is a Place Where Shakti Dances: Intensifying the Goddess's Power in Michigan
Tracy Pintchman
Part 2: Ritual and Possession Performances
4. Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Amy L. Allocco
5. Developing Danda: Aspirations and Transformations of Divine Presence in Uttarakhand
Aftab S. Jassal
6. Feral Gods: Inklings of a Mercurial Sacrality in Village Tamil Nadu
Indira Arumugam
Part 3: Pilgrimage and Festival Practices
7. The Changing Flavors of Gogaji Worship
Carter Hawthorne Higgins
8. Sleep Sweetly, Fierce Goddess: Rituals of Intensification and Sweetening of the Goddess Chamundeshwari of Mysore in Navaratri/Dasara and Her Mahotsava
Caleb Simmons
9. The Sweetening of Bhairav as a Merchants' Miracle Deity
R. Jeremy Saul
Part 4: Narrative and Visual Spaces
10. Envisioning Kameshvari and the Mahavidyas in Women's Nam of the Kamakhya Temple and Pilgrimage Site
Patricia Dold
11. Sanskritizing and Saffronizing the Rabies Goddess: Sweetening and Intensification in the Folklore of Hadkai Mata
Darry Dinnell
12. Sensational Poetics: The Modern Visual Contextualities of Tiruvalluvar's Tirukkural
Amy-Ruth Holt
13. Kali in a Time of Hurt Sentiments
Rachel Fell McDermott
List of Contributors
Index