American publishers are increasingly unwilling to support essential philological scholarship, so Oxford University Press is to be commended for working with the University of Texas South Asia Institute to make available works such as this monograph. Davis has translated from the Sanskrit the twelfth‐century Śaiva Siddhānta ritual guidebook Mahotsavavidhi by the South Indian master Aghoraśiva. The mahotsava, or “Great Festival,” is the nine‐day temple festival held annually at each large Śaiva Siddhānta temple. Because the text itself, like any technical manual, was intended for priests who already knew most of the basics, Davis in his footnotes expands upon it from traditional commentaries and related texts. These notes, in fact, in good commentarial fashion, easily outweigh the text itself. The translation and notes together are aimed largely at a specialist Indological audience—the modern scholastic analogue of Aghoraśiva's priestly inline image. Davis therefore precedes the translation with an extensive introductory overview of the text and the rituals it prescribes. Here he presents the Great Festival within the larger context of public ceremonials; in his words, this is “an effort to reimagine the relationship between the Mahotsavavidhi and the medieval Śaiva ‘worshiping community’ toward which Aghoraśiva originally directed it.” The introduction constitutes an excellent and accessible discussion of the temple culture of twelfth‐century Tamilnad that will be essential reading for all scholars and students of medieval temple Hinduism.
