Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Introduction / Tracy Pintchman -- The icon of Yoga: Patañjali as Nāgarāja in modern Yoga / Stuart Ray Sarbacker -- God's eyes: the manufacture, installation, and experience of external eyes on Jain icons / John E. Cort -- North Indian materialities of Jesus / Mathew N. Schmalz -- Celebrating materiality: Garbo, a festival image of the Goddess in Gujarat / Neelima Shukla-Bhatt -- The Goddess's shaligrams / Tracy Pintchman -- The camphor flame in an age of mechanical reproduction / James McHugh -- Metal hands, cotton threads, and color flags: materializing Islamic devotion in south India / Afsar Mohammad -- Monastic matters: bowls, robes, and the middle way in South Asian Theravāda Buddhism / Bradley Clough -- Letting holy water and coconuts speak for themselves: Tamil Catholicism and the work of Selva Raj / Selva J. Raj and Corinne Dempsey.

English.

Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality's complex role within the "materially suspicious" contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.