Hindu Deities in the Flesh: “Hot” Emotions, Sensual Interactions, and (Syn)aesthetic Blends

Abstract

In Hindu practices and narratives, otherworldly and nonhuman beings appear with nonhuman and otherworldly bodies and feelings. In this article, I draw from ethnographic fieldwork as well as from philology to outline the widespread perception of divine presence or emotion as “heat”. This embodied idea or multi-sensual “aesthetic blend”, as I propose to call it, can be found in very diverse cultural and historical traditions of South Asia. It is more than a concept, a “mapping” or a metaphor, insofar as it informs how people not only think of, but sensually encounter the bodies of goddesses and gods. By adding this new term to the vocabulary of the Study of Religions, I intend to build upon the focus on embodied, enacted and situated religion, as it has become prominent within the discipline, to see the seemingly disembodied texts and stories in a new light. Does, in the end, the way divine bodies are imagined feed back into how humans conceptualize and feel their own bodies?