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Nine Lives In Search of the Sacred in Modern India William Dalrymple 9781408801536 Books

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Nine Lives In Search of the Sacred in Modern India William Dalrymple 9781408801536 Books

Nine Lives provides a wonderful down-to-Earth understanding of where India's diverse religious traditions are in the 21st century. Through in-depth interviews with facinating people Dalrymple gives readers a real look behind the curtain at what their lives, their beliefs and their faith mean.

From Jain nun whose friend ritually starved herself, to a Tibetan Monk who took up arms to fight the Chinese, to a family of idol makers, to outcasts living in a cremation ground this book take us inside an alien world and offers significant insights.

In the process we also see how the 21st century is forcing change on ancient traditions. We hear an artisan's concerns that his sons will not follow him, we hear how a dancer makes a living during the off-season as a laborer and prison guard and how mass media is homoganizing India's diverse religious traditions.

Nine Lives offers a facinating and nuanced look into these worlds and is never a dull read.

I had one problem however with the Kindle edition. Throughout the book Dalrymple uses hindi terms but always explains them in context. There's a glossery in the back but I found my Kindle did not allow me to read it, assuming that the last page of text was the end of the book. The only way I could see the glossery was to use the table of contents to go to the end notes and page back, it was very frustrating. But other than that it was an excellent read and I sincerely recommend it.


Tags : Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India [William Dalrymple] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Book by William Dalrymple,William Dalrymple,Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India,Bloomsbury UK,1408801531

Nine Lives In Search of the Sacred in Modern India William Dalrymple 9781408801536 Books Reviews

Read the book out in a weekend - was glad the author took the time to document several people who follow various religious paths in danger of being submerged by the homogeneity of the larger organized religions like Wahhabi Islam and orthodox Hinduism. While I was grateful that those interviewed shared their life stories all of which evoked more than a touch of pathos; I wondered about Mr Darymple profiting off them, but acknowledge a more respectful attitude towards those he encountered compared to his first book- In Xanadu- which I also enjoyed.
A couple of the stories illustrated how the rigid, strait-laced Indian society fostered the extremes that people would go to express themselves- in the first and last stories, children of well-to-do families rejected the conventional `safe' path for the unknown- one embracing celibacy, although supposedly practising non-attachment, was devastated when the companion of 20 years died- and the other engaging in tantric-like Baul practices.
Published in 2009, it documented well the devastation of HIV/AIDS on one family forced to continue in prostitution under the `tradition' of dedicating the young girls to Yellamma/becoming devadasis - applicable to pre-Mugal India, certainly not 21st century `Shining India'!
The book was very informative about Sufism and illustrated well the devastation Partition had on the lives of ordinary Indians. The story about the Idol-maker reminded me of the part in Anil's Ghost where the final part of installation of the eyes is very sacred, but sadly that tradition is also under threat of the Mass-produced market. Interesting and informative too was the fact that the erotic images/sculptures on the Khujharo temples were illustrating Tantric practices prevalent when the temple was being built.
I read this book in India about a year ago while on vacation. Since I write about India in my own fiction I often hope to pick up more insights from other writers. Dalrymple is one of my favorite writers, and this is one of my favorite books. The author explores the lives of nine individuals who have given their lives in one way or another to the pursuit of the spiritual and the sacred. The first one of the lives he explores is that of a Jain nun who struggles with the loss of her companion and contemplates suicide. That last person he interviews is a Baul, a member of a Bengali caste that has rejected the rigid life of Indian society. For over 500 years the Bauls have wandered the country, mostly North India and Bangladesh, singing their songs and living outside acceptable society. The man the author interviews is a blind Baul singer who talks about his life as a devotee. Especially moving is the story of a Buddhist monk who leaves Tibet during the invasion of the Chinese in 1954 and in India confronts his own prejudices and thinks deeply about what it means to be a devotee. This book moved me as few others have.
This is truly a wonderful book. So many (too many) respectable books on religion fail to ground their subject matter with the actual experiences of practitioners (i.e. real people). This is particularly true of academically oriented material - where a book on Hinduism (e.g.) will often provide an excellent historical or thematic account of the many traditions that fall under that umbrella term, but fail to anchor such ideas by focusing much attention on lived experience. Plutarch believed that the best history, history at its most meaningful, was biography because it provided windows into the lives of history's greatest figures - lives that we can learn from and from which we can better ourselves. While the goals of Plutarch and Dalrymple are admittedly not exactly parallel, they nevertheless share a basic and laudable belief in the meaningfulness of biographies in not just presenting history, but making it present - rich, meaningful and identifiable. I have used portions of this book in my classes on Indic religions with much success and this book thus remains one of the first, if not THE first book, I would recommend to someone interested in Indic religions. A book to be savored and shared.
Nine Lives provides a wonderful down-to-Earth understanding of where India's diverse religious traditions are in the 21st century. Through in-depth interviews with facinating people Dalrymple gives readers a real look behind the curtain at what their lives, their beliefs and their faith mean.

From Jain nun whose friend ritually starved herself, to a Tibetan Monk who took up arms to fight the Chinese, to a family of idol makers, to outcasts living in a cremation ground this book take us inside an alien world and offers significant insights.

In the process we also see how the 21st century is forcing change on ancient traditions. We hear an artisan's concerns that his sons will not follow him, we hear how a dancer makes a living during the off-season as a laborer and prison guard and how mass media is homoganizing India's diverse religious traditions.

Nine Lives offers a facinating and nuanced look into these worlds and is never a dull read.

I had one problem however with the edition. Throughout the book Dalrymple uses hindi terms but always explains them in context. There's a glossery in the back but I found my did not allow me to read it, assuming that the last page of text was the end of the book. The only way I could see the glossery was to use the table of contents to go to the end notes and page back, it was very frustrating. But other than that it was an excellent read and I sincerely recommend it.