Table of Contents

llustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Prelude to a Book Confessions of an Inexpert Ethnographer Contours of the Book 1. Kartik as a Sacred Month: The Kartik Vrat in Text and Context Kartik and the Hindu Calendar Textual Sources and Kartik The Texts of the Kartik Mahatmya Kartik and Auspiciousness The Kartik Vrat Eulogy and Narrative in the Kartik Mahatmyas: Glorifying Kartik and the Kartik Vrat The Bhishmapancak and the Bhishmapancak Vrat 2. Kartik's Religious Celebrations and the Churning of the Ocean of Milk Krishna and Kartik Sharat Purnima (Autumn Full Moon) Karva Cauth Govatsa Dvadashi Yamatrayodashi and Dhanteras Narak Caturdashi Diwali Kartik Shukla Pratipada/Govadhan Worship/Annakut Yamdvitiya or Bhaiya Duj Nag Nathaiya Dala Chath or Surya Chath Gopashtami Akshaya Navami Prabodhani Ekadashi and the Tulsi Vivaha Vaikunth Caturdashi Kartik Purnima 3. Adoring Krishna at the River's Edge: The Practice of Kartik Puja Prologue Setting the Stage, and a Tale of Two Votaries Performing Kartik Puja 4. Krishna, Kartik, and Hindu Women's Lives Being a Sakhi in Kartik Puja Krishna as Lover, Husband, and Son Radha and Tulsi in Kartik Puja Traditions Concluding Remarks 5. Kartik Puja Traditions and Women's Empowerment Appendix: Transliterated Song Texts Notes Works Cited

About the Author

Tracy Pintchman is Professor of Hindu Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition and the editor of Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing the Identities of the Hindu Great Goddess, both also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"There is a lamentable dearth of material on urban religious experiences in South Asia, which makes this book particularly welcome. The author is a gifted translator; her renditions of the stories and songs of women’s Kartik rituals are a pleasure to read and are among the book's most attractive and important contributions. She is also well versed in Sanskrit literatures, which allows her to consider popular traditions and their mythological elements thoroughly and precisely as they may emerge and diverge from Puranic sources. Eminently accessible, the book would be useful at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.” — Ann Grodzins Gold, coauthor of In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan

"An excellent resource for South Asian specialists in religion and folklore, Guests at God's Wedding presents a vivid picture of all that is entailed in the sacred month of Kartik." — Kirin Narayan, author of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching

"A powerful feature of the book is its combination of textually based and field-based research. Pintchman provides a view of how the religious world of these women participants looks from the inside—with admirable attention, simultaneously, to the issues raised by their construction of reality. The book would make an excellent ancillary text in courses dealing with women's religion globally, Hinduism broadly, and postcolonial challenges to Western feminism." — John Stratton Hawley, coeditor of Devi: Goddesses of India