New Books Network Elaine M. Fisher, "The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Feb 12, 2026
Elaine M. Fisher, Associate Professor of Buddhism at Stanford and author of The Meeting of Rivers, explores multilingual Vīraśaiva history from Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, and Tamil archives. She remaps origins away from a monolingual narrative. Topics include translation as creative work, the linguiscape model of multidirectional flows, and how historiography was shaped by European reform analogies.
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No Simple Sanskrit–Vernacular Divide
- Elaine Fisher overturns the idea that Vīraśaivism split neatly into Sanskritic and vernacular branches.
- She shows the tradition developed as an interconnected, multilingual whole from early on.
Rejecting The Martin Luther Model
- Fisher critiques the Protestant-style metanarrative that casts Basava as an Indian Martin Luther overthrowing Sanskrit.
- She argues Vīraśaiva anti-caste and bhakti elements derive from earlier Sanskrit Śaiva traditions too.
Bhakti Isn't Purely Vernacular
- Fisher shows bhakti in Vīraśaivism was already entwined with Sanskritic learning and caste-inclusion debates.
- Overreliance on bhakti-as-vernacular occludes this deeper Shaiva textual inheritance.
