Embodied Memory: Materiality and Remembrance at the Samadhi of Rupa Goswami in Vrindavan

This paper examines samadhis—Indian burial sites—as active sites of memory-making at the Radha Damodar temple in Vrindavan, India. Focusing on the samadhi of Rupa Goswami, a central saint and theologian of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, the study highlights how this site embodies a complex interplay of place, history, memory, and materiality. Despite the Goswami’s significance, scholarly attention to his samadhi has been limited. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing how bhaktas enact remembrance through ritual performances that re-present the saint’s past presence. Practices such as touching, praying, sitting, rolling, and recitation, though common in Hindu temple contexts, acquire distinctive meaning in relation to the goswami’s samadhi. Drawing on the concepts of rasa and bhava, the ethnographic study interprets these acts as modalities of memory-making, showing how the past is continually reproduced and authorized through the materiality of the site.