The Hagiographies of Anantadas


Book Description

Anantadas is the first 'biographer' who, around 1600, wrote about the most popular bhakti poets of the 15th and 16th centuries in Northern India. This critical study of these manuscripts yields a broad spectrum of the linguistic and morphological variants. It also reveals the processes of oral and scribal transmission during this time when sectarian interests appropriated certain poets and changed their 'biographies' accordingly.




The Strides of Vishnu


Book Description

Books about Hinduism often begin by noting the immense size and complexity of the subject. Hinduism is vast and diverse, they say. Or it doesn't exist at all - Hinduism is merely a convenient (and foreign) term that masks a plurality of traditions. In either case, readers are discouraged by the sense that they are getting only a tiny sample or a shallow overview of something huge and impossible to understand. This book is designed to be accessible and comprehensive in a way that other introductions are not, maintaining an appealing narrative and holding the reader's interest in the unfolding sequence of ideas through time and place. Each of the 13 chapters combines historical material with key religious and philosophical ideas, supported by substantial quotations from scriptures and other texts. The overarching organizational principle is a historical narrative largely grounded in archaeological information. Historic places and persons are fleshed out as actors in a narrative about the relation of the sacred to ordinary existence as it is mediated through arts, sciences, rituals, and philosophical ideas. Although many books purport to introduce the Hindu tradition, this is the only one with a broad historical focus that emphasizes archaeological as well as textual evidence. It will nicely complement Vasuda Narayanan's forthcoming introduction, which takes the opposite approach of focusing on the lived experience of Hindu believers.




Hinduism


Book Description

An invaluable encyclopedia of Hinduism Hinduism is one of the world’s oldest religions; an amalgam of diverse beliefs and schools, it originates in the Vedas and is rooted in Indian culture. Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide illuminates complex philosophical concepts through lucid definitions, a historical perspective and incisive analyses. It examines various aspects of Hinduism, covering festivals and rituals, gods and goddesses, philosophers, memorials, aesthetics, and sacred plants and animals. The author also explores pivotal ideas, including moksha, karma, dharma and samsara, and details the diverse commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita and other important texts. Citing extensively from the regional languages, the book describes Hinduism’s innumerable myths and legends, and looks at the many versions of texts including the Ramayana and Mahabharata, placing each entry in its historical context and tracing its evolution to the present. • Outlines all eighteen major Puranas, the 108 Upanishads, and a selection of Vaishnava, Sahiva and Tantric texts • Provides quotations from rare original texts • A product of years of research, with a wide range of entries




Voice, Text, Hypertext


Book Description

Voice, Text, Hypertext illustrates brilliantly why interest in textual studies has grown so dramatically in recent years. For the distinguished authors of these essays, a “text” is more than a document or material object. It is a cultural event, a matrix of decisions, an intricate cultural practice that may focus on religious traditions, modern “underground” literary movements, poetic invention, or the irreducible complexity of cultural politics. Drawing from classical Roman and Indian to modern European traditions, the volume makes clear that to study a text is to study a culture. It also demonstrates the essential importance of heightened textual awareness for contemporary cultural studies and critical theory—and, indeed, for any discipline that studies human culture.




Indian Asceticism


Book Description

Using religio-philosophical discourses and narratives from epic, puranic, and hagiographical literature, Indian Asceticism focuses on the powers exhibited by ascetics of India from ancient to modern time.




Pipa Greets: The Songs of Saint Pipa


Book Description

"Pipa Greets: The Songs of Saint Pipa" presents a complete translation of Saint Pipa's songs available to date. Saint Pipa's verses in this collection echo the eternal principles of spirituality, devotion, yoga, ethics, and societal improvement. His words, translated with care and precision by Dr.Rupali, carry the profound essence of his teachings, touching on divine love, self-purification,and the reinstatement of human values for the greater good. This book not only serves as a bridge connecting the spiritual wisdom of Saint Pipa with contemporary readers but also aligns with the broader narrative of the Bhakti movement's influence on social reform. The author's dedication to preserving the original style of Pipa's verses ensures that the English translation captures the authenticity and spirit of the saint's words




The Intimate Other


Book Description

The Intimate Other explores the theme of the devotional element in Indic Religions not only in Hinduism in which bhakti has become the dominant form, but also in Budhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Islam. The essays by scholars of international repute, show the strength of this devotion to the divine as a living and powerful source of value, aesthetic imagination, creativity and well-being . They also analyse the sometimes divergent interests of scholar and devotee, problematising devotion and exposing its historical development as complex, contested and 'political'. Of particular interest are the chapters on the Jain and Buddhist traditions where the existence of devotion has often been doubted or denied. Contributors investigate widely raging topics: these include an analysis of bhakti within the Sanskrit epics; a text-historical approach to Valmiki; Kabir's authorship of the poems attributed to him; contemporary attitudes to devotion to the Ganga: devotion within a syncretistic Jain movement, in Theravada Budhism, subcontinental Sufi Islam, young Sikhs in Britain and in the shared musical and poetic traditions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The volume ends with a sensitive exploration of the devotional love that overpowers death within the Hindus, sikhs and Muslims. The volume ends with a sensitive exploration of the devotional love that overpowers death within the Hindu bhakti context. Together they demonstrate vividly just how passionate love for the intimate other penetrates and inspires so many aspects of the religious culture of South Asia.




The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Hinduism


Book Description

An accessible and up-to-date survey of scholarly thinking about Hinduism, perfect for courses on Hinduism or world religions The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Hinduism examines the historical trajectories that have led to the modern religion of Hinduism. Covering main themes such as philosophy, practice, society, and science, this comprehensive volume brings together a variety of approaches and perspectives in Hindu Studies to help readers better appreciate the richness, complexity, and diversity of Hinduism. Essays by acknowledged experts in the field present historical accounts of all major traditions, analyze key texts, engage with Hindu theology and philosophy, address contemporary questions of colonialism and identity, and more. Throughout the text, the authors highlight the links, common threads, and issues that reoccur in the history of Hinduism. Fully revised and updated, the second edition of the Companion incorporates the most recent scholarship and reflects the trend away from essentialist understandings of Hinduism. New chapters examine the Goddess tradition, Hindu diaspora, Hinduism and inter-religious comparison, Hindu philosophy, and Indian astronomy, medicine, language, and mathematics. This edition places further emphasis on the importance of region-specific studies in analyzing Hinduism, discusses important theoretical issues, and offers fresh perspectives on current discourse in Hindu society and politics. Provides a thorough overview of major texts, their histories, and the traditions that preserve them Describes the major textual traditions in Sanskrit with examples in different Indian vernacular languages Addresses major issues and contemporary debates about the nature and study of Hinduism Discusses the importance of systematic, rational thinking in Indian sciences, philosophy, and theology Examines key socio-political themes in Hinduism that are of particular relevance to the modern world The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, Second Edition is an excellent text for undergraduate courses on Hinduism in Religious Studies and Philosophy departments, and an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers in Hindu Studies.




Who Invented Hinduism


Book Description

Who Invented Hinduism? presents ten masterly essays on the history of religious movements and ideologies in India by the eminent scholar of religious studies, David N. Lorenzen. Stretching from a discussion on the role of religion, skin colour and language in distinguishing between the Aryas and the Dasas, to a study of the ways in which contact between Hindus, on the one hand, and Muslims and Christians, on the other, changed the nature of the Hindu religion, the volume asks two principal questions: how did the religion of the Hindus affect the course of Indian history and what sort of an impact did the events of Indian history have on the Hindu religion. The essays cast a critical eye on scholarly Arguments which are based as much on current fashion or on conventional wisdom as on evidence available in historical documents. Taking issue with renowned scholars such as Louis Dumont, Romila Thapar, Thomas Trautmann and Dipesh Chakrabarty on some central conceptions of the religious history of India, Lorenzen establishes alternative positions on the same through a thorough and compelling look at a vast array of literary sources. Touching upon some controversial arguments, this well-timed and insightful volume draws attention to the unavoidably influential role of religion in the history of India, and in doing so, it creates a wider space for further discussion focusing on this central issue.




If All the World Were Paper


Book Description

How do writing and literacy reshape the ways a language and its literature are imagined? If All the World Were Paper explores this question in the context of Hindi, the most widely spoken language in Southern Asia and the fourth most widely spoken language in the world today. Emerging onto the literary scene of India in the mid-fourteenth century, the vernacular of Hindi quickly acquired a place alongside “classical” languages like Sanskrit and Persian as a medium of literature and scholarship. The material and social processes through which it came to be written down and the particular form that it took—as illustrated storybooks, loose-leaf textbooks, personal notebooks, and holy scriptures—played a critical role in establishing Hindi as a language capable of transmitting poetry, erudition, and even revelation. If All the World Were Paper combines close readings of literary and scholastic works with an examination of hundreds of handwritten books from precolonial India to tell the story of Hindi literature’s development and reveal the relationships among ideologies of writing, material practices, and literary genres. Tyler W. Williams forcefully argues for a new approach to the literary archive, demonstrating how the ways books were inscribed, organized, and used can tell us as much about their meaning and significance as the texts within them. This book sets out a novel program for engaging with the archive of Hindi and of South Asian languages more broadly at a moment when much of that archive faces existential threats.