The Art of the Procession: Ritual and Display in Festivals of the Goddess Minakshi

FAIN: FT-55216-07

Richard H. Davis
Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)

I request an NEH Summer Stipend for work in India on a project entitled “The Art of the Procession: Ritual and Display in Festivals of the Goddess Minaksi.” In this project I examine South Indian bronze images, seen in the West as museum works of sculpture, in their broader religious context as festival icons (utsavamurti) to be paraded in temple processions. I wish to examine more closely the ways in which images are displayed by temple priests and received by Hindu audiences in such a religious setting. I focus on the ceremonies of a single well-known temple, the Minaksi-Sundaresvara temple in Madurai, Tamilnad.