It is customary to conceive of the manifold Vaiṣṇava trajectories and modalities that find their source of inspiration in Viṣṇu or one of his numerous alternate identities—most commonly, Rāma or Kṛṣṇa—as broadly constituting a cohesive “religious current”. Indeed, the term “Vaiṣṇava” is suggestive of an “overarching” religion. Such an understanding is justified not least by the broad continuity of conceptions of the divine and the somewhat congruent textual and ritual foundations exhibited by the various Vaiṣṇava traditions across several centuries and South Asian regions. It is nevertheless essential to bear in mind that such a unitary construal of Vaiṣṇavism, even if at times articulated in indigenous sources, can only ever be an “ideal view”, one that in reality corresponds to the “aggregation of a multitude of varied traditions”. Any critical approach to Vaiṣṇavism cannot therefore fail to attend to the specificities concomitant with a given Vaiṣṇava expression’s geographical and temporal context. The present introduction discusses the book, which proffers a focused examination of Vaiṣṇavism in one such context.