Telling Stories: Hindu–Muslim Worship in South India

摘要

This essay explores a strikingly-different local sainthood practice in a South Indian village called Gūgūḍu in Andhra Pradesh. Focusing on specifically local story-telling practices about a pīr who represents a liminal space between Islam and Hinduism, this essay tries to capture the implications of various narrative strategies that these local devotees use to tell the hagiography of this local martyr-saint called Kuḷḷāyappa. The story of Kuḷḷāyappa is pivotal in Gūgūḍu's local religious culture, effectively displacing the better-known story of the Imam Hussain from Shi'a Islam. The ten-day rituals of Muharram in Gūgūḍu function like a stage on which various global Islamic practices and South Indian Hindu temple practices come to frame a local pīr tradition surrounding the life story of Kuḷḷāyappa – a story that is neglected in more formal texts.