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Podcast: New Books in Indian Religions
Episode: Gil Ben-Herut, "Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragaḷegaḷu (Oxford UP, 2018)
Description: Studies of Hindu saints tend to focus primarily on the saints themselves—their words, teachings, and practices—rather than tending to the often complex and complicated world of texts and traditions about those saints—which is how we have come to know them. Even when hagiographical writings are addressed, more often than not such writings are presumed to belong to a monolithic tradition in which certain texts simply contain more information or stories about the saints than others. In Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragaḷegaḷu (Oxford University Press, 2018), Gil Ben-Herut, Assi...