Events

2020 Annual Meeting

Your AAR staff continues to work toward holding the Annual Meeting in Boston, Nov. 21-24, 2020. We are aware of the uncertainty and contradictory projections related to the COVID-19 pandemic and with health and safety as a priority, we will continue monitoring the guidance of governments and health experts as we plan and make decisions. Should any changes need to be made related to the 2020 Annual Meeting, we will promptly notify you.

2020 Regional Meetings

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All remaining regional meetings for 2020 have been canceled

The Fading Light of Advaita Acarya: Three Hagiographies

Manring, Rebecca J.

Description

Rebecca J. Manring offers an illuminating study and translation of three hagiographies of Advaita Acarya, a crucial figure in the early years of the devotional Vaisnavism that originated in Bengal in the fifteenth century. Advaita Acarya was about fifty years older than the movement’s putative founder, Caitanya, and is believed to have caused Caitanya’s advent by ceaselessly storming heaven, calling for the divine presence to come to earth. Advaita was a scholar and highly respected pillar of society, whose status lent respectability and credibility to the new movement. A significant body of hagiography and related literature about Advaita Acarya has developed since his death, some as late as the early twentieth century. The three hagiographic texts included in this book examine the years of Advaita’s life that did not overlap with Caitanya’s lifetime, and each paints a different picture of its protagonist. Each composition clearly advocates his view that Advaita was himself divine in some way, and a few go so far as to suggest that Advaita reflected even greater divinity that Caitanya, through miraculous stories that can be found nowhere else in Bengali Vaisnavi literature. Manring provides a detailed introduction to these texts, as well as remarkably faithful translations of Haricarana Dasa’s Advaita Mangala, Laudiya Krsnadasa’s Balya-lila-sutra, and Isana Nagara’s Advaita Prakasa.

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