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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian sacred works & liturgy > Sacred texts > General
Imam Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim is one of the most highly
regarded works in Islamic thought and literature. Accepted by every
sunni school of thought, and foundational in the Shaafi school,
this text, available for the first time in English, is famed
throughout the Muslim world. After the Qur'an, the prophetic
traditions are the most recognised source of wisdom in Islam.
Amongst the collected Hadith, Sahih Muslim is second only to the
the collection of Imam Bukhari. With a commentary by Imam Nawawi,
whose other works are amongst the most widely-read books on Islam,
and translated by Adil Salahi, a modern scholar of great acclaim,
this immense work, finally available to English readers, is an
essential addition to every Muslim library, and for anybody with an
interest in Islamic thought.
The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature
explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen)
Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the
earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of
Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and
one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the
texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical
Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) literature in China, others have
been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently.
Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the
historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first
time into English or other Western language. He surveys the
distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and
analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key
processes of textual production during this period. Although his
main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan
tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era
(618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and
Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan
collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative
adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with
novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of
Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several
distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the
subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East
Asia.
Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, wielding an authority second only
to the Qur'an. The words of Muhammad (d. 11/632), God's messenger
and prophet of Islam, have a special place in the hearts of his
followers. Wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an,
Muhammad's hadith are cited by scholars as testimonial texts in a
vast array of disciplines-including law, theology, metaphysics,
poetry, grammar, history, and medicine-and are quoted by Muslims to
one another in their daily lives. Assembling Muhammad's words has
been a major preoccupation for scholars throughout the fourteen
centuries since his death, resulting in an abundance of
compilations. Among the legally-grounded collections, which aimed
to guide the community in its practice of religious law and ritual
worship, one which stands out in particular is Light in the Heavens
(Kitab al-Shihab) by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, a Shafi'i judge in the
Fatimid court in Egypt. The collection's overall conceptualization
is distinctively ethical and pragmatic, and offers humanitarian
lessons and practical insights with universal appeal. From North
Africa to India, generations have used Light in the Heavens as a
teaching text for children as well as adults, and many of its 1200
sayings are familiar to individuals of diverse denominations and
ethnicities. For Muslims-who consider Muhammad's teachings the
fount of wisdom and the beacon of guidance in all things, mundane
and sublime-these sayings provide a direct window into the inspired
vision of one of the most influential humans to have walked the
Earth. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
The figure of Sakuntala appears in many forms throughout South
Asian literature, most famously in the "Mahabharata" and in
Kalidisa's fourth-century Sanskrit play, "Sakuntala and the Ring of
Recollection." In these two texts, Sakuntala undergoes a critical
transformation, relinquishing her assertiveness and autonomy to
become the quintessentially submissive woman, revealing much about
the performance of Hindu femininity that would come to dominate
South Asian culture. Through a careful analysis of sections from
"Sakuntala" and their various iterations in different contexts,
Romila Thapar explores the interactions between literature and
history, culture and gender, that frame the development of this
canonical figure, as well as a distinct conception of female
identity.
For countless generations families have lived in isolated
communities in the Godavari Delta of coastal Andhra Pradesh,
learning and reciting their legacy of Vedas, performing daily
offerings and occasional sacrifices. They are the virtually
unrecognized survivors of a 3,700-year-old heritage, the last in
India who perform the ancient animal and soma sacrifices according
to Vedic tradition. In Vedic Voices, David M. Knipe offers for the
first time, an opportunity for them to speak about their lives,
ancestral lineages, personal choices as pandits, wives, children,
and ways of coping with an avalanche of changes in modern India. He
presents a study of four generations of ten families, from those
born at the outset of the twentieth century down to their
great-grandsons who are just beginning, at the age of seven, the
task of memorizing their Veda, the Taittiriya Samhita, a feat that
will require eight to twelve years of daily recitations. After
successful examinations these young men will reside with the Veda
family girls they married as children years before, take their
places in the oral transmission of a three-thousand-year Vedic
heritage, teach the Taittiriya collection of texts to their own
sons, and undertake with their wives the major and minor sacrifices
performed by their ancestors for some three millennia. Coastal
Andhra, famed for bountiful rice and coconut plantations, has
received scant attention from historians of religion and
anthropologists despite a wealth of cultural traditions. Vedic
Voices describes in captivating prose the geography, cultural
history, pilgrimage traditions, and celebrated persons of the
region. Here unfolds a remarkable story of Vedic pandits and their
wives, one scarcely known in India and not at all to the outside
world.
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt offers an illuminating study of Narsinha
Mehta, one of the most renowned saint-poets of medieval India and
the most celebrated bhakti (devotion) poet from Gujarat, whose
songs and sacred biography formed a vital source of moral
inspiration for Gandhi. Exploring manuscripts, medieval texts,
Gandhi's more obscure writings, and performances in multiple
religious and non-religious contexts, including modern popular
media, Shukla-Bhatt shows that the songs and sacred narratives
associated with the saint-poet have been sculpted by performers and
audiences into a popular source of moral inspiration.
Drawing on the Indian concept of bhakti-rasa (devotion as nectar),
Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat reveals that the sustained popularity of
the songs and narratives over five centuries, often across
religious boundaries and now beyond devotional contexts in modern
media, is the result of their combination of inclusive religious
messages and aesthetic appeal in performance. Taking as an example
Gandhi's perception of the songs and stories as vital cultural
resources for social reconstruction, the book suggests that when
religion acquires the form of popular culture, it becomes a widely
accessible platform for communication among diverse groups.
Shukla-Bhatt expands upon the scholarship on the embodied and
public dimension of bhakti through detailed analysis of multiple
public venues of performance and commentary, including YouTube
videos.
This study provides a vivid picture of the Narasinha tradition, and
will be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to understand the
power of religious performative traditions in popular media.
In Reclaiming Jihad: A Qur'anic Critique of Terrorism, ElSayed Amin
presents a detailed critique of institutional and legal definitions
of terrorism. He engages the Qur'an exegetical tradition, both
classical and contemporary, to critique key verses of the Qur'an
that have been misread to establish violence as a relational norm
between Muslims and non-Muslims. This pioneering work is a
sustained scholarly attempt to separate Islamic jihad, as well as
the notion of armed deterrence, from modern terrorism through the
examination of the 9/11 terrorism attacks, and it proposes legal
proscriptions for terrorism from the Qur'an, on the basis of its
political, social and psychological impacts.
Written in the early eighth century, the "Kojiki" is considered
Japan's first literary and historical work. A compilation of myths,
legends, songs, and genealogies, it recounts the birth of Japan's
islands, reflecting the origins of Japanese civilization and future
Shinto practice. The "Kojiki" provides insight into the lifestyle,
religious beliefs, politics, and history of early Japan, and for
centuries has shaped the nation's view of its past. This innovative
rendition conveys the rich appeal of the "Kojiki" to a general
readership by translating the names of characters to clarify their
contribution to the narrative while also translating place names to
give a vivid sense of the landscape the characters inhabit, as well
as an understanding of where such places are today. Gustav Heldt's
expert organization reflects the text's original sentence structure
and repetitive rhythms, enhancing the reader's appreciation for its
sophisticated style of storytelling.
An accessible and accurate translation of the Quran that offers a
rigorous analysis of its theological, metaphysical, historical, and
geographical teachings and backgrounds, and includes extensive
study notes, special introductions by experts in the field, and is
edited by a top modern Islamic scholar, respected in both the West
and the Islamic world. Drawn from a wide range of traditional
Islamic commentaries, including Sunni and Shia sources, and from
legal, theological, and mystical texts, The Study Quran conveys the
enduring spiritual power of the Quran and offers a thorough
scholarly understanding of this holy text. Beautifully packaged
with a rich, attractive two-color layout, this magnificent volume
includes essays by 15 contributors, maps, useful notes and
annotations in an easy-to-read two-column format, a timeline of
historical events, and helpful indices. With The Study Quran, both
scholars and lay readers can explore the deeper spiritual meaning
of the Quran, examine the grammar of difficult sections, and
explore legal and ritual teachings, ethics, theology, sacred
history, and the importance of various passages in Muslim life.
With an introduction by its general editor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
here is a nearly 2,000-page, continuous discussion of the entire
Quran that provides a comprehensive picture of how this sacred work
has been read by Muslims for over 1,400 years.
Muslim Qur'anic interpretation today is beset by tensions. Tensions
between localising and globalising forces; tensions between
hierarchical and egalitarian social ideals; and tensions between
the quest for new approaches and the claim for authority raised by
defenders of exegetical traditions. It is this complex web of power
structures, local as well as global, that this book seeks to
elucidate. This book provides a fresh perspective on present-day
Qur'anic interpretations by analysing the historical, social and
political dimensions in which they take place, the ways in which
they are performed and the media through which they are
transmitted. Besides discussing the persistence of exegetical
traditions and the emergence of new paradigms, it examines the
structural conditions in which these processes occur. Languages,
nation states, global human rights discourses and intra-Islamic
divisions all shape the nature of interpretive endeavours and
frequently fuel conflicts over the correct understanding of the
Qur'an. This book contains more than twenty detailed case studies
of recent Qur'anic interpretations, based on translated texts that
cover a variety of languages, regions, media, genres, approaches,
authors and target groups. They are integrated into the chapters,
bring their arguments to life and stimulate fundamental reflections
on the authority of the text and the authority of its interpreters.
From the early years of the Common Era to 1700, Indian
intellectuals explored with unparalleled subtlety the place of
emotion in art. Their investigations led to the deconstruction of
art's formal structures and broader inquiries into the pleasure of
tragic tales. Rasa, or taste, was the word they chose to describe
art's aesthetics, and their passionate effort to pin down these
phenomena became its own remarkable act of creation. This book is
the first in any language to follow the evolution of rasa from its
origins in dramaturgical thought-a concept for the stage-to its
flourishing in literary thought-a concept for the page. A Rasa
Reader incorporates primary texts by every significant thinker on
classical Indian aesthetics, many never translated before. The
arrangement of the selections captures the intellectual dynamism
that has powered this debate for centuries. Headnotes explain the
meaning and significance of each text, a comprehensive introduction
summarizes major threads in intellectual-historical terms, and
critical endnotes and an extensive bibliography add further depth
to the selections. The Sanskrit theory of emotion in art is one of
the most sophisticated in the ancient world, a precursor of the
work being done today by critics and philosophers of aesthetics. A
Rasa Reader's conceptual detail, historical precision, and clarity
will appeal to any scholar interested in a full portrait of global
intellectual development. A Rasa Reader is the inaugural book in
the Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought series,
edited by Sheldon Pollock. These text-based books guide readers
through the most important forms of classical Indian thought, from
epistemology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics to astral science, yoga,
and medicine. Each volume provides fresh translations of key works,
headnotes to contextualize selections, a comprehensive analysis of
major lines of development within the discipline, and exegetical
and text-critical endnotes, as well as a bibliography. Designed for
comparativists and interested general readers, Historical
Sourcebooks is also a great resource for advanced scholars seeking
authoritative commentary on challenging works.
The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies innovatively combines the ways
in which scholars from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychology,
religious studies, literary studies, history, sociology,
anthropology, political science, and economics have integrated the
study of Sikhism within a wide range of critical and postcolonial
perspectives on the nature of religion, violence, gender,
ethno-nationalism, and revisionist historiography. A number of
essays within this collection also provide a more practical
dimension, written by artists and practitioners of the tradition.
The handbook is divided into eight thematic sections that explore
different 'expressions' of Sikhism. Historical, literary,
ideological, institutional, and artistic expressions are considered
in turn, followed by discussion of Sikhs in the Diaspora, and of
caste and gender in the Panth. Each section begins with an essay by
a prominent scholar in the field, providing an overview of the
topic. Further essays provide detail and further treat the fluid,
multivocal nature of both the Sikh past and the present. The
handbook concludes with a section considering future directions in
Sikh Studies.
In Deuteronomy and the Judaean Diaspora Ernest Nicholson challenges
the widely accepted view that Deuteronomy was the 'book of the law'
described in 2 Kings 22-3 as the basis of king Josiah's cultic
reformation in 621 BCE. He argues that the notice in this narrative
that Josiah abolished the rural, local altars throughout Judah and
supposedly relocated their priests to Jerusalem is based upon a
misreading. Rather, he contends, Deuteronomy derived from thinkers
and writers who lived among the Judaean exiles in Babylonia in the
sixth century, and in significant ways represents a break with
pre-exilic Israelite religion occasioned by the urgent need to
confront the challenges to national identity and cultural survival
of the Judaean Diaspora community. Leading features of the book
such as its zealous monolatry, its self-presentation as
'scripture', its concept of the relationship with God as covenanted
choice, its pervasive fear of religious encroachment, its character
as 'oppositional' literature-these and other themes of the book
suggest such a provenance. Issues arising include, for example,
information from Babylonian sources, some of it new, about the
Judaean exiles, how Israel is characterised in the book, kingship,
evidence of the emergence of a body of prophetic 'scripture'. Two
final chapters examine the 'Deuteronomistic History' (Joshua-2
Kings) and show that (contrary to some interpretations) it is not
'historiography' such as is represented by, for example, Herodotus'
Histories, and that theodicy rather than an interest in the past as
a field of critical study best describes its genre.
The nature and reliability of the ancient sources are among the
most important issues in the scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It is noteworthy, therefore, that scholars have grown increasingly
skeptical about the value of these materials for reconstructing the
life of the Teacher of Righteousness. Travis B. Williams' study is
designed to address this new perspective and its implications for
historical inquiry. He offers an important corrective to popular
conceptions of history and memory by introducing memory theory as a
means of informing historical investigation. Charting a new
methodological course in Dead Sea Scrolls research, Williams
reveals that properly representing the past requires an explanation
of how the mnemonic evidence found in the relevant sources could
have developed from a historical progression that began with the
Teacher. His book represents the first attempt in Dead Sea Scrolls
scholarship to integrate history and memory in a comprehensive way.
The "Platform Sutra" comprises a wide range of important
Chan/Zen Buddhist teachings. Purported to contain the autobiography
and sermons of Huineng (638--713), the legendary Sixth Patriarch of
Chan, the sutra has been popular among monastics and the educated
elite for centuries. The first study of its kind in English, this
volume offers essays that introduce the history and ideas of the
sutra to a general audience and interpret its practices. Leading
specialists on Buddhism discuss the text's historical background
and its vaunted legacy in Chinese culture.
Incorporating recent scholarship and theory, chapters include an
overview of Chinese Buddhism, the crucial role of the "Platform
Sutra "in the Chan tradition, and the dynamics of Huineng's
biography. They probe the sutra's key philosophical arguments, its
paradoxical teachings about transmission, and its position on
ordination and other institutions. The book includes a character
glossary and extensive bibliography, with helpful references for
students, general readers, and specialists throughout. The editors
and contributors are among the most respected scholars in the study
of Buddhism, and they assess the place of the "Platform Sutra" in
the broader context of Chinese thought, opening the text to all
readers interested in Asian culture, literature, spirituality, and
religion.
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