Surprising Bedfellows: Hindus and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern India argues that religious and cultural identities in medieval and early modern India were marked by fluid and constantly shifting relationships rather than by the binary model of opposition that is assumed in so much scholarship. Building on the pioneering work of scholars such as Cynthia Talbot and Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, these chapters seek to understand identity perception through romances, historical documents, ballads and historical epics, inscriptions and even architecture. The chapters in this volume urge readers to reconsider the simple and rigid application of categories such as Hindu and Muslim when studying South Asia's medieval and early modern past. It is only by doing this that we can understand the past and, perhaps, help prevent the dangerous rewriting of Indian history.

In the early sixteenth century, a charismatic Bengali Brahmin, Visvambhara Misra, inspired communities of worshipers in Bengal, Orissa, and Vraja with his teachings. Misra took the ascetic name Krsna Caitanya, and his devotees quickly came to believe he was divine. The spiritual descendents of these initial followers today comprise the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement, one of the most vibrant religious groups in all of South Asia.
In The Final Word, Tony Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish. The answer, he argues, can be found in a brilliant Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographical exercise: the Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasasa Kaviraja. Written some seventy-five years after Caitanya's passing, Krsnadasa's text gathered and synthesized the divergent theological perspectives and ritual practices that had proliferated during and after Caitanya's life. It has since become the devotional standard of the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement.
The text's power, Stewart argues, derives from its sophisticated use of rhetoric. The Caitanya Caritamrta persuades its readers covertly, appearing to defer its arrogated authority to Caitanya himself. Though the text started out as a hagiography like so many others-an index of appropriate beliefs and ritual practices that points the way to salvation-its influence has grown far beyond that. Over the centuries it has become an icon, a metonym of the tradition itself. On occasion today it can even be seen worshiped alongside images of Krsna and Caitanya on altars in Bengal.
In tracing the origins, literary techniques, and dissemination of the Caitanya Caritamrta, Stewart has unlocked the history of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas, explaining the improbable unity of a dynamic religious group.

These enchanting stories from early modern Bengal reveal how Hindu and Muslim traditions converged on timeless themes of human morality, social culture, and survival. The Bengali stories in this collection are first and foremost tales of survival. Each story in Needle at the Bottom of the Sea underscores the need for people to work together-not just to overcome the challenges of living in the Sundarban swamps of Bengal, but also to ease hostilities born of social differences in religion, caste, and economic class. Translated by award-winning scholar of early modern Bengali literature Tony K. Stewart, Needle at the Bottom of the Sea brims with fantasy and excitement. Sufi protagonists travel through a world of wonder where tigers talk and men magically grow into giants, a Hindu princess falls in love with a Muslim holy man, and goddesses rub shoulders with kings and merchants. Across religion, class, and gender, what binds these fabulous stories together is the characters' pursuit of living honorably and morally in a difficult, corrupt world.

The mythic figure Satya Pir has a wide following among Hindus and Muslims alike in the Bangla-speaking regions of South Asia. Believed to be an avatara of krsna, or a Sufi saint, or somehow both, he is worshiped for his ability to bring wealth and comfort to a family. At the heart of this worship is the simple proposition that human dignity and morality are dependent upon a proper livelihood-without wealth, people cannot be expected to live moral lives. Men have a special responsibility to create that stability, but sometimes fail miserably, making ill-advised decisions that compromise the women who are dependent upon them. At these threatening junctures, women must take matters into their own hands, and they call on Satya Pir to help them right the wrongs done by their husbands or fathers.
In this book, Tony K. Stewart presents lively translations of eight closely related 18th- and 19th-century Bengali folk tales centered on Satya Pir and the people he helps. To extricate her husband and other family members from these predicaments, one heroine dresses in drag, dons armor to fight cutthroats, slays a raging rhino and hacks off its horn, and takes the prize of the king's daughter, to the consternation of all. In another tale, one woman's husband is magically transformed into a ram and kept by a witch as breeding stock, and another's is transformed into a popinjay parrot, the better to elude her jealous father, intent on protecting his good daughter's virtue. In each case the men are rescued and restored to normal by resourceful women. While the worship of Satya Pir is the ostensible motivation for the tales, they are really demonstrations of the Pir's miraculous powers, which authenticate him as a legitimate object of worship. The tales are also wickedly funny, parodying Brahmins and yogis and kings and sepoys.
These surprising and entertaining stories fly in the face of conventional wisdom about the separation of Muslims and Hindus. Moreover, the stories happily stand alone, speaking with an easily recognized if not universal voice of exasperation and amazement at what life throws at us.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dating to the sixteenth century, the stories-pir katha-are still widely read and performed today. The events that play out rival the fabulations of the Arabian Nights, which has led them to be dismissed as simplistic folktales, yet the work of these stories is profound: they provide fascinating insight into how Islam habituated itself into the cultural life of the Bangla-speaking world. In Witness to Marvels, Tony K. Stewart unearths the dazzling tales of Sufi saints to signal a bold new perspective on the subtle ways Islam assumed its distinctive form in Bengal.