Swaminarayan Movement
SWAMINARAYAN MOVEMENT. Chronologically located between the "bhakti renaissance" of the medieval period and the early to mid-nineteenth-century Hindu revivalism of colonial India, the Swaminarayan movement is a devotional tradition rooted in Vaiṣṇavism and arising out of Gujarat in western India. The spread and transnational growth of specific Swaminarayan sects demonstrate how a regional expression of Hindu devotionalism, in accommodating to larger political and social changes, has succeeded in providing meaningful ways of being Hindu in the diasporic context.
Swaminarayan Origin Narrative
All Swaminarayan sects connect their devotional tradition to the historical person of Sahajanand Swami (1781–1830 CE), who was born near Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India. His biography is the basis for the Swaminarayan origin narrative, one that combines hagiography with historically confirmed persons, events, and places.
According to Swaminarayan tradition, the young Sahajanand Swami was known as Ghanshyama. Following the death of his parents when he was eleven years old, he embarked on a phase of wandering. He attracted attention for his textual knowledge (evidenced by his winning debates with older religious scholars), asceticism (adoption of brahmacarya vows of celibacy), and performance of austerities (tapas), an example of which involved standing on one leg for four months while clad only in a loincloth.
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