Ritual Innovation

Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America, the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage.Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual's inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances.

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Brian K. Pennington andAmy L. Allocco

Part I. Ritual Innovation and Political Power

1. Coronation of the Hindu King: Tradition and Innovation in Nepalese History
Nawaraj Chaulagain

2. Ritual Replacement and the Unmaking of Monarchy: Notes on Nepal’s Bhot.o Jātrā, 2006–2008
Anne T. Mocko

3. Innovating the Ancient, Instantiating the Urban: The South Asian Indra Festival
Michael C. Baltutis

4. Changes in Ritual Practice at the Himalayan Hindu Shrine of Kedarnath
Luke Whitmore

5. Ritual Renunciation and/or Ritual Innovation? Redescribing Advaita Tradition
Reid B. Locklin

Part II. Ritual and the Economies of Caste and Class

6. Ancestral Rites Reworked: The Transition from Solemn to Domestic Modes of Feeding the Dead
Matthew R. Sayers

7. Flower Showers for the Goddess: Borrowing, Modification, and Ritual Innovation in Tamil Nadu
Amy L. Allocco

8. Consuming Krishna: Women, Class, and Ritual Economies in Pushtimarg Vaishnavism
Shital Sharma

Part III. Ritual and the Negotiation of Gender

9. Village Widow/Town Priestess: Innovating Ritual Power in a Pilgrimage Economy
Brian K. Pennington

10. Leveraging Agency: Young Jain Women’s Ritual Innovations through the Updhān Fast
M. Whitney Kelting

11. Ritual Innovation and Masculine Identity Formation in the Contemporary Cult of Lord Ayyappan
Liz Wilson

Part IV. Ritual Innovation in Contemporary Transnational Contexts

12. Dancing the Vedas, Deritualizing Theory: A Study of “The Universal Truth”
Charles S. Preston

13. Ganesha and the Chocolate Almonds: Ritual Innovation and Efficacy in Diaspora
Janet Gunn

14. Recasting Sexuality, Gender, and Family through Contemporary Canadian Ritual Innovation
Sudharshan Durayappah andCorinne G. Dempsey

Contributors
Index