Ramchandra Chintaman Dhere The Rise of a Folk God Vitthal of Pandharpur Translated from the Marathi by Anne Feldhaus RAMCHANDRA CHINTAMAN DHERE is widely known as the foremost scholar of religious traditions in Maharashtra. ANNE FELDHAUS is Foundation Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe, where she teaches Hinduism, Sanskrit, and religious geography. Soon after she published her translation of this book, Permanent Black engaged in the following BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH ANNE FELDHAUS Q. An influential view of the current state of historical and literary scholarship pertaining to India is that of Sheldon Pollock, who remarks: "the number of citizens capable of reading and understanding the texts and documents of the classical era—or precolonial or premodern or pre-1800 era, all equivalent terms for my purpose here—will very soon approach a statistical zero. India is a