Monika Horstmann and Dalpat S. Rajpurohit
In the Shrine of the Heart
Sants of Rajasthan from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
In the early modern period, the Sants emerged in North India as devotees of a formless interior god. The volume introduces seven Sant authors living in Rajasthan in the period from the first half of the sixteenth to the eighties of the seventeenth century. It explores their complex cultural background, their literary conventions, and their sectarian network, and presents samples of their poetry in the original Hindi with English translations. By far the most of the compositions in this volume have not been translated before, and of one of these the original text is published also for the first time.
Sant poetry has been transmitted in oral and written form. It owes its continuing vitality largely to congregational and private performance. This fact has been illustrated by a number of audio and video samples.
Monika Horstmann (a.k.a. Monika Boehm-Tettelbach) retired as Professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. Her research foci have been early modern north Indian literatures, diplomatics, religious movements and their interface with politics.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4789-7842
Dalpat Singh Rajpurohit is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He teaches Hindi language and literature and associated topics, with a focus on classics of the bhakti tradition. He also offers courses on South Asian history and cultures. His research interests are in the Sant tradition, monastic and court cultures of early modern North India. His first book, Sundar ke Svapn, is published by the Delhi based Rajkamal publication.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6328-6315