2025 Theses Doctoral

Nishkulanand, Premanand, and the Musical Formation of the Swaminarayan Sampraday

Trivedi, Yogendra

Central to the formation and development of the Swaminarayan Sampraday over the past 200 years is the role played by a small group of poet-musicians who gathered around the founder, Swaminarayan (1781-1830) in Gujarat.

In this dissertation, I analyze the musical compositions of two prominent poet-musicians, Nishkulanand (1766-1848) and Premanand (1784-1855), and the way in which the community has received both their songs and their own life stories.

The purpose of this thesis is twofold: to show, through two paradigmatic examples, 1) how such a nexus of musical verse, performance, and word came into being, and 2) how this religious community formed around bodies of songs and the identities—in memory and history—of their creators and performers. I approach this study with a combination of textual studies, ethnographic and musicological analyses, and research in manuscript archives. My own experiences as a bhakti music and katha (didactic homily) exponent within the community also play a role.