Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Summary

The Kannada language boasts an ongoing literary tradition spanning more than a millennium, with a rich array of social positions and roles, religious traditions, and poetic styles that developed over the dramatic history of the region. Yet translations from premodern Kannada to English have been inconsistent, with only a handful of works that have endured. Stories of Shiva's Saints is the first English translation of selected stories from a thirteenth-century text by Hampeya Harihara that sheds light on the rapid spread of Shiva devotion in the region through edified biographies of figures who lived a few decades earlier, and the stories' historical significance is matched by their gripping plots and emotional expressivity.

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Raj Balkaran

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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