This paper is published in Volume-9, Issue-2, 2023
Area
History
Author
Kirtana Bardalai
Org/Univ
North Eastern Hills University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Pub. Date
28 August, 2023
Paper ID
V9I2-1437
Publisher
Keywords
Bhakti, Neo-Vaishnavism, Performative Traditions, Role of Women, Medieval Assam

Citationsacebook

IEEE
Kirtana Bardalai. Women Through Hagiographies: Analyzing women’s role within Neo-Vaishnavism, International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology, www.IJARIIT.com.

APA
Kirtana Bardalai (2023). Women Through Hagiographies: Analyzing women’s role within Neo-Vaishnavism. International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology, 9(2) www.IJARIIT.com.

MLA
Kirtana Bardalai. "Women Through Hagiographies: Analyzing women’s role within Neo-Vaishnavism." International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology 9.2 (2023). www.IJARIIT.com.

Abstract

Medieval history of Assam is largely dependent on religious and mystical literatures, which forms a major portion of its sources. The historical study of the medieval Bhakti and Sufi movements paved the way for utilizing the wide corpus of ‘hagiographies’, which are the biographies of the religious saints. The existing hagiographies are accounts which are centered around the glorification of the saints in which facts are intertwined with mystical imaginations. In addition, these are produced by male saints and their disciples and in many ways are inadequate to capture the experiences of females, associated to the religious movement. Understanding the lives and role of women within these movements and within the different spheres of society is important. Also equally important is to acknowledge the gendered nature of the past to connect women’s experiences, for a better and broader picture of the past. This article is an attempt to analyze the lives of women within the Neo-Vaishnavite movement through the existing hagiographies, since there is a dearth of written sources coming from the womenfolk.