Handwriting, notes and marginalia: The story of the Ādinarayankathā

Abstract

In the early nineteenth century, in Gujarat, the Swaminarayan Sampradāya began
forming its ritual and liturgical canon. Based on the 24–27th chapters of
Vāsudevamāhātmyam, contained in the “Viṣṇukānda” of the Skandapūrāṇa, the
liturgical practice became written into a proprietary text within the sixteenth canto
of the Śrīharicaritam, a Sanskrit-language, pūrāṇa-style text composed in the
1820s on the life of Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the founder of the sampradāya. This
paper examines the ways in which thes ritual text became “available” to their lay
publics and even other ritual specialists, first through manuscript copying, and
later through printed editions. These printed editions are particularly notable,
since they wrap the ritual texts within narrative forms, to give them an timeless
and etherial quality. Yet, we can see how marginalia contained within copied
manuscripts and older printed editions brought about small changes within
updated printed editions. An example of this is the “Ādinārāyakathā”, which
adapted liturgy contained within the Śrīharicaritam and the Vāsudevmāhātmyam,
bringing the Swaminarayan version of the mahāpūjā ritual into a single,
pocketable manual of less than 40 pages in printed form. We shall also see how
the same books are printed, and re-printed, as different editions of the
Ādinārāyaṇakathā in different sizes and with different fonts, but notably with
different introductions by scholarly sādhus (renunciants) and Ācāryas as a means
for demonstrating authority and power, whilst also giving access to these ritual
texts to a lay public, being used and then being filled with their own notes and
marginalia giving extra instructions on performance and meaning.