Reading Syed Abdul Malik’s Dhanya Nara Tanu Bhal and Rudrani Sarma’s Lauhitya Tirar Amrit Gatha in the light of Assamese Vaishnavite Hagiography

Abstract

As part of the pan-Indian Bhakti movement, the Neo-Vaishnavite movement sought to reform the decadent modes of worship practiced in medieval Assam and, in the process, moved beyond the religious confines of the sectarian domain to influence the socio-cultural life of the milieu to which it addressed itself. An important document which enables a reading pertaining to the stated framework is the hagiography. In a hagiographic tradition, the biographical account of the saint is continually juxtaposed with the socio-cultural ethos of the contemporary spatio-temporal frameworks.

Keywords

• Hagiography
• Neo-Vaishnavism
• Sankardeva
• Social Energy
• Self-Fashioning
• Dhanya Nara Tanu Bhal