Greetings All,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my monograph:

The Festival of Indra: Innovation, Archaism, and Revival in a South Asian Performance. SUNY Series in Hindu Studies. Albany: SUNY Press

The Festival of Indra details the textual and performative history of an important South Asian festival and its role in the development of classical Hinduism. Drawing on various genres of Sanskrit textual sources—especially the epic Mahābhārata—the book highlights the innovative ways that this annual public festival has supported the stable royal power responsible for the sponsorship of these texts. More than just a textual project, however, the book devotes significant ethnographic attention to the only contemporary performance of this festival that adheres to the classical Sanskrit record: the Indrajatra of Kathmandu, Nepal. Here, Indra's tall pole remains the festival's focal point, though its addition of the royal blessing by Kumari, the "living goddess" of Nepal, and the regular presence of the fierce god Bhairav show several significant ways that ritual agents have re-constructed this festival over the past two thousand years.

“This valuable and ambitious work covers an important and understudied ritual form that has a long South Asian history, the Indra Festival. This festival is particularly interesting historically, since it falls between the Vedic sacrificial models of ritual in the earliest period and the image‐puja models of later temple Hinduism. Baltutis approaches the topic as an Indologist, historian, and ethnographer, and the resulting book represents a significant contribution to South Asian religious studies.” — Richard H. Davis, author of The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography

Ordering information can be found here: The Festival of Indra.

Best,
Michael

Michael Baltutis
Professor, South Asian Religions
Chair, Department of Anthropology, Global Religions, and Cultures
Chair, Global Council
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Book Review Editor, International Journal of Hindu Studies