| In post-colonial historiography, earlier representations of Hinduism by British colonial and scholarly authorities, by Christian missionaries, and by the Hindu intelligentsia of the day are given unique significance. In order to test the validity of the notion that the colonial-era representations of Hindu gods and Hindu practices constituted a singularly ideologically-driven reformation, this dissertation examines the changing representations of one god, Krishna, in religious, poetic, and visual texts of ancient and medieval India. Borrowing a new theoretical framework from the philosophy of science and linguistics, it analyzes the conceptual evolution of Krishna captured in these texts. It presents strong evidence suggesting that religious change in Hinduism has consistently been driven by the activities of bilingual practitioners, that the contours of change conform to dominant conceptual categories prevailing at any given time across different communities, that the processes of innovation and propagation involve foregrounding of certain aspects over others due to cognitive and social factors, and, finally, that these processes of change and 'reform' unfold along similar paths regardless of the time period. |
