Swaminarayan

Swaminarayan (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: Svāminārāyaṇa, b. 1781–d. 1830), or Sahajānand Svāmī, was the founder and is the principal deity of the eponymous tradition, the Swaminarayan Sampradaya. Born in 1781 in Chhapaiya, a village near Ayodhya, northern India, Swaminarayan lived a short life of forty-nine years. As a child, he was known as Ghanaśyam until he left home at the age of eleven to undertake a journey across the subcontinent as the child-yogi Nilakaṇṭh. Eventually settling in western India, he accepted initiation from Rāmānand Swami (b. 1738–d. 1801) (not to be confused with Rāmānanda of the well-known Rāmānandi Sampradaya) under the name Sahajānand Svāmī. Soon after, Rāmānand Swami bestowed leadership of his sampradāya onto this young and newly initiated ascetic, before passing away. As early as the turn of the 19th century, his followers had begun writing about Swaminarayan as the manifestation of God. They understood him as Parabrahman, their chosen (iṣṭa) deity and paid their reverence to him as Bhagavān Swaminarayan. The tradition saw rapid growth under his leadership across the western Indian regions of Gujarat, Kathiawar, and Kutch, with much of the final decade of his life engaged in activities aiding the tradition’s formal institutionalization, with the establishment of temples, scriptures, and administrative and spiritual leadership. Swaminarayan’s following is estimated to have been 1.8 million by the time of his death. Today the Swaminarayan tradition is one of the largest and most visible expressions of Hinduism across the world, representing a distinct and dynamic form of Hinduism in India and in the Indian diaspora. The last decade has witnessed considerable interest in the tradition, with literature produced under a wide range of topics and disciplinary lenses, and with a particular focus on the BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Sanstha) denomination. This article provides an introduction to the literature on Swaminarayan and his eponymous tradition, comprising primary sources written by Swaminarayan and his disciples, translations, and studies of these works, and various secondary studies of the tradition written in English, French, German, and Gujarati. One hopes that this bibliography will spark interest in the developing, nascent field of what might be called “Swaminarayan Studies,” a field dedicated to scholarship on this dynamic form of Hinduism, with important contributions to various discourses and frameworks, from colonial history, media, art, and architecture to digital religion, philosophy, modern religion, globalization, and more.