28. introduction
duism’: The Impact of the Protestant Missionary Movement on Hindu Self-
Understanding,” in Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication
since 1500, with Special Reference to Caste, Conversion, and Colonialism, ed. Robert
Frykenberg (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 156. For a general overview of the sub-
ject, see David N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?” Comparative Studies in Soci-
ety and History41:1 (1999): 630–59.
- Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 363. - Cf. A. K. Ramanujan, “Is There a Hindu Way of Thinking?” in India through
Hindu Categories, ed. McKim Marriott (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990), 41–58. - Interested readers are particularly referred to the fascinating analysis provided
by Jonathan Parry, “The Last Sacrifice,” in Death in Banaras(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 151–66. - A. K. Ramanujan, “Food for Thought,” in The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas
and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists, ed. R. S. Khare (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1992), 223–37. - For a short exposition on this topic see Mary McGee, “Desired Fruits: Motive
and Intention in the Votive Rites of Hindu Women,” in Roles and Rituals for Hindu
Women, ed. Julia Leslie (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 71–88. - This also happens when Krishna’s life is portrayed, and in many similar settings.
See J. S. Hawley, “Pilgrims’ Progress through Krishna’s Playground,” Asia,Sept.–Oct.
1980, 12–19, 45. - Rajiv Malhotra, whose position as president of the Infinity Foundation connected
him with a number of conference participants, emphasized this point in “Problematizing
God ’s Interventions in History,” http://www.sulekha.com (accessed March 21, 2003). The draft
title of this same article was “Indic Challenges to the Discipline of Science and Religion.”
A brief description of the conference, held at Barnard College, Columbia University, on
May 3, 2003, can be found at http://www.barnard.edu/religion/hinduismhere. - E.g., Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2001). - See J. S. Hawley, “Global Hinduism in Gotham,” inAsian-American Religion,ed.
Tony Carnes and Fenggang Yang (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 112–37. - Generally on this topic, but from the Islamic side, see Imtiaz Ahmad and Hel-
mut Reifeld, eds., Lived Islam in South Asia: Adaptation, Accommodation, and Conflict
(Delhi: Social Science Press, 2004). - Yoginder Sikand, “Sri Guru Dattatreya Baba Budhan Dargah,” inSacred
Spaces: Exploring Traditions of Shared Faith in India(New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2003),
53–68. Sikand takes his readers to adargahin the hills of Karnataka where the founding
pir,a Sufi saint, is commonly understood to have been an incarnation of the Hindu god