The Relic in the Glass Cabinet

Abstract The Śikṣāpatrī (1826) is a scripture presented as a letter to devotees from Svāminārāyaṇa (1781–1830), the founder and principal deity of the eponymous Svāminārāyaṇa tradition. Designated by millions as a revelatory scripture owing to the belief of its divine authorship, the text is treated as a succinct and authoritative index of Svāminārāyaṇa beliefs and practices. Early manuscripts of the text are so cherished that some, like the one enclosed in a glass cabinet in the Oxford Bodleian libraries, are treated as relics. For the first time, Avni Chag’s thorough text-historical analysis of the Śikṣāpatrī adds nuance to the story of its canonization. Featuring the first English translation of an earlier, shorter version of the text (1823), The Relic in the Glass Cabinet submits the text’s authorship, intent, and historical development to critical scrutiny. Based on a comparative study of two Śikṣāpatrī recensions, Chag demonstrates that the text did not originally align with the specific Vaiṣṇava theological identity it now claims. Instead, doctrinal commitments were added after Svāminārāyaṇa’s passing, fundamentally reshaping how the text, its author, and his tradition have been understood. The Relic in the Glass Cabinet offers novel dimensions to existing scholarly interpretations of early Svāminārāyaṇa history, theology, and literature. It tells an untold story of the complex histories of textual production, exploring the interplay between historically contingent circumstances and inherited, albeit negotiated, religious ideas and practices, all at the formative moment of a tradition’s inception in early nineteenth-century western India, present-day Gujarat.