Seeing through Texts: Doing Theology among the Śrīvaiṇavas of South India (Toward Comparative Phil (Dis)) - Softcover

Clooney, Francis X.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791429962 ISBN 13: 9780791429969

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1996

Synopsis

Examines texts and commentaries in the Tamil-language SArivastradition of South India; about the general issues of text, vision, and narrative that such texts raise, and about the implications of these for a particular style of comparative theology.

Seeing through Texts invites us into the world of south Indian Hinduism through a study of 100 songs of the Tiruvaymoli, the great masterpiece of the ninth-century Hindu saint Satkopan. These unique songs, dedicated to the Hindu god Visnu/Krsna, lead us through poetic and imaginative, philosophical and moral reflections on the nature of the self and the world, ancient myths and temple worship, and the mystical moods of longing, desire, and love in which one seeks, loses, and finds again the God who loves us first. The book is also a study of the interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli in the traditional Hindu Srivaisnava commentaries of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries, as well as a comparative theological study which explores the implication of the songs and their commentaries for readers from outside the Srivaisnava tradition.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Seeing through Texts invites us into the world of south Indian Hinduism through a study of 100 songs of the Tiruvaymoli, the great masterpiece of the ninth-century Hindu saint Satkopan. These unique songs, dedicated to the Hindu god Visnu/Krsna, lead us through poetic and imaginative, philosophical and moral reflections on the nature of the self and the world, ancient myths and temple worship, and the mystical moods of longing, desire, and love in which one seeks, loses, and finds again the God who loves us first. The book is also a study of the interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli in the traditional Hindu Srivaisnava commentaries of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries, as well as a comparative theological study which explores the implication of the songs and their commentaries for readers from outside the Srivaisnava tradition.

About the Author

Francis X. Clooney, S. J. is Professor of Comparative Theology at Boston College. He is the author of Theology after Vedanta, also published by SUNY Press, and of Thinking Ritual.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0791429962
• ISBN 13: 9780791429969
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 351