Reciting The Goddess – Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz

Reciting the Goddesspresents the first critical study of theSvasthanivratakatha(SVK), a sixteenth-century Hindu narrative textual tradition. The extensive SVK manuscript tradition offers a rare opportunity to observe the making of a specific, distinct Hindu religious tradition. Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz argues that the SVK serves as a lens through which we can observe the creation of modern ‘Hinduism’ in the Himalayas, as the text both mirrored and informed key moments in the self-conscious creation of Nepal as the ‘world’s only Hindu kingdom’ in the late medieval and early modern period.

Reciting The Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal – Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz