Material Religion
Authors: Aktor Mikael 
Published: May 2017

Hindu material culture is a vast subject. It includes subjects that have been part of the study of Hinduism throughout its history such as archaeology, topography, city layout, architecture, epigraphs, iconography, art, food transactions, music, ritual, and more. This article, however, is mainly limited to works that can be related to the new interest in materiality within the study of religion. There is, however, no clear boundary between these modern branches of scholarship and former works within the same areas. Still, the new “material religion” can, to some extent, be distinguished by theoretical reflections that have been developed as part of the general “material turn” in the humanities. Just to give two examples, these theoretical reflections may be inspired by concepts from cognitive studies like the neuroscientist Merlin Donald’s idea of cultural objects as “exograms,” that is, brain-external stores of memory and knowledge, or by concepts in sociology like Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), the idea that non-human actors, “things,” must be included in the account of social interactions. But most often it is simply the more explicit focus on the material and perceptual properties of religious objects that distinguishes these new styles of scholarship from an earlier focus on the semantic, communicative, or symbolic properties of the same objects, although, of course, the one does not exclude the other. The rationale behind this material turn lies mainly in the recognition that lived, observable religion unfolds bodily in interaction with material objects. Materiality is not secondary to ideas. Rather, materiality triggers ideas and states of mind as much as ideas influence material practices. “Religious objects” have significance in religious practices. Many are objects of worship that represent, manifest, or make present a divine being. Others are ritual utensils or materials associated with ritual such as dress or incense. Religious objects of the former kind belong to many different material domains. Divine beings may be represented by or be understood to manifest as natural objects, of which some are immovable elements of the landscape like mountains, rivers, or trees, while others are movable like stones, shells, or seeds. Unlike these, cultural artifacts may be in the form of two- or three-dimensional images, or they may be aniconic objects like pillars or geometric designs. Unlike the art perspective, the materiality approach does not set up a boundary between the worship of elements of the landscape and the worship of cultural artifacts. The titles of the present bibliography represent this fluidity and cover many of these different types of objects. Works published before 2000 are not covered except for a few classical must-reads. Other significant works published before that date are mentioned in the articles from Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism listed under Reference Works. Subjects that are not covered include archaeology, film and TV, music, and digital Hinduism; subjects that are almost only covered in the reference section are food and architecture. Apart from food, each of these subjects has their own sub-bibliography under Oxford Bibliography of Hinduism. Find them here.