Smṛti Practices in Nineteenth-Century Gujarat

This presentation analyzes the practices and discourses concerning smṛti surrounding experiences with and life stories of Swaminarayan in the nineteenth century. He argues that smṛti, which generally translates to remembering, is the central operating factor in the processes of biography and hagiography production and reception. Examining texts from the community, which include recorded discourses of Swaminarayan elaborating on the topic and several texts by monks who demonstrate the practice, presenter #4 proposes the concept of (re)experiencing to explain smṛti practices in the context of life stories. (Re)experiencing is a generative framework that situates biography/hagiography as a category in a more complex web of material and cognitive practices by which Swaminarayan followers actively engaged with episodes they experienced personally or through some other medium.