Oral Competition Narratives of Muslim and Hindu Saints in the Deccan

Abstract

This article presents a number of oral narratives from Aurangabad (Maharashtra, India) concerning competition between rival saints. The superficially uncomplicated issue of Muslim-Hindu competition is deconstructed with reference to the contexts of the narratives in order to reveal individual saintly cults within a local landscape as the main competitors rather than religions per se. Attention is therefore drawn to the contextual role of competing religious institutions within a local geography of pilgrimage in the shaping of such narratives. The presence of a mixed Hindu-Muslim following is seen to be an important factor in assembling the symbolic attributes of the Sufi saint Shah NOr, around whom the narratives revolve, forming a salient reminder of the role of oral narratives in the localization of religious traditions.

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