Description: To Savor the Meaning examines the overlap of literary theory and religious philosophy in Medieval Kashmir. It explores an influential chapter in South Asian intellectual history in which this overlap between aesthetics and religious ideas became particularly pronounced and looks at the debates over how to understand literature through the lens of the wider network of religious assumptions and commitments in which they are embedded.
Review Quotes: "To Savor the Meaning offers a fascinating look into the merger of aesthetics and theology in Indian thought. Reich insightfully explores how Abhinavagupta analyzed the response to a poem as akin to God's self-reflection, what might have led to this view, and how it was later criticized, all in the context of the rich, multi-religious debates of Kashmir between the ninth and the twelfth centuries." -- Yigal Bronner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"To Savor the Meaning ventures into a significant but heretofore insufficiently explored area of intellectual enquiry: the relationship of aesthetics and religion in the Sanskritic learned literatures of Kashmir. The materials addressed in this book are complex, important, and fascinating, for Reich sets in comparison the approaches of two foundational authors of Indian aesthetics (alaṃkāraśāstra), the Śaiva polymath Abhinavagupta and the author of the Vyaktiviveka Mahimabhaṭṭa, both of whom flourished in Kashmir just after the turn of the second millennium. Lucidly written and exhibiting extensive learning, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of Indian religions." -- John Nemec, Author of The Ubiquitous Śiva, vols. I and II (OUP 2011 and 2021)"James Reich's study of the debate at the center of medieval Kashmiri philosophical aesthetics is an invaluable addition to the literature. It shows with exceptional clarity the complex argumentation inside two philosophical schools that sought to ground aesthetic philosophy in two different theologies; which reveals the grandeur and range of medieval Kashmiri philosophy. This will be an indispensable guide for those who, without being Sanskritists, wish to understand and make use of the immense diversity and subtlety of Kashmiri theories in philosophical aesthetics." -- Sudipta Kaviraj, Columbia University"To Savor the Meaning is a clear, cohesive, engaging, and compelling book. Most of all, it is a book worth reading carefully." -- Hamsa Stainton, Indo-Iranian Journal