Between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banaras, the iconic Hindu center in northern India that is often described as the oldest living city in the world, was reconstructed materially as well as imaginatively, and embellished with temples, monasteries, mansions, and ghats (riverfront fortress-palaces). Banaras's refurbished sacred landscape became the subject of pilgrimage maps and its spectacular riverfront was depicted in panoramas and described in travelogues. In Banaras Reconstructed, Madhuri Desai examines the confluences, as well as the tensions, that have shaped this complex and remarkable city. In so doing, she raises issues central to historical as well as contemporary Indian identity and delves into larger questions about religious urban environments in South Asia.

Tantra has been defined as "a mystical philosophy" and as "an unorthodox religious tendency." Both definitions are incomplete. While Tantra has mystical, philosophical and religious aspects it is, above all, a technique of action - a system of physical, mental and spiritual disciple incorporating meditation, yoga, and sacramental worship in the widest sense of the phrase. This system has one purpose: the transformation of the individual - his or her rebirth to a new existence, . There is no "tantric faith" to be accepted or rejected on the bases of thought and emotion. tantrics make the same claim as Western magicians: "if you follow a certain course of action you will be led back to the roots of your own identity and will learn the truth about yourself and the universe you inhabit." Tantra of Westerners is a complete theoretical and practical guide to the Way of Action, covering the concepts of pleasure and pain, power and passivity, esoteric physiology, Tantra and Qabalism, right-hand and left-hand Tantra, tantric ritual for westerners and the arousal of kundalini - the serpent power, . Francis King (1934-1994) was a well known authority on magick, mysticism and religion. His books includes Ritual Magic in England and The Magical World of Aleister Crowley.

Savoring God is a comparative study that examines the creative interaction of poetry and theology in two mystical poems central to the Christian and the Hindu traditions, the sixteenth-century Spanish Cantico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by Saint John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rasa Lila (Dance of Love), which originated in the oral tradition. Alongside the poems, Gloria Maite Hernandez examines theological commentaries on the texts: the Comentarios, written by Saint John of the Cross on his own poem, and the foundational commentary on the Rasa Lila by Sridhara Svami as well as commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jiva Gosvami, from the Gaudiya Vaisnava school, and other Gaudiya theologians. The phrase "savoring God" conveys the Spanish gustar a Dios (to savor God) and the Sanskrit madhura bhakti rasa (the sweet savor of divine love). In the Christian and Hindu commentaries these two concepts describe a way of approaching the poems that is simultaneously vulnerable to the emotions evoked by the poetical imagery and responsive to its theological demands. While "savoring" does not mean the precisely the same thing to the Christian and the Hindu theologians, Hernandez demonstrates that both traditions interpret the term to suggest poetry's power in mediating an encounter with the divine.

"The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance."
--Willis G. Regier, "The Chronicle Review"

"No effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience."
--"The Times Higher Education Supplement"

"The Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot. . . . Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes."
--"New Criterion"

"Published in the geek-chic format."
--"BookForum"

"Very few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs."
--"Tricycle"

aNow an ambitious new publishing project, the Clay Sanskrit Library brings together leading Sanskrit translators and scholars of Indology from around the world to celebrate in translating the beauty and range of classical Sanskrit literature. . . . Published as smart green hardbacks that are small enough to fit into a jeans pocket, the volumes are meant to satisfy both the scholar and the lay reader. Each volume has a transliteration of the original Sanskrit texton the left-hand page and an English translation on the right, as also a helpful introduction and notes. Alongside definitive translations of the great Indian epics -- 30 or so volumes will be devoted to the Maha-bharat itself -- Clay Sanskrit Library makes available to the English-speaking reader many other delights: The earthy verse of Bhartri-hari, the pungent satire of Jayanta Bhatta and the roving narratives of Dandin, among others. All these writers belong properly not just to Indian literature, but to world literature.a
--"LiveMint"

aThe Clay Sanskrit Library has recently set out to change the scene by making available well-translated dual-language (English and Sanskrit) editions of popular Sanskritic texts for the public.a
--"Namarupa"

After Bhishma is cut down at the end of the previous book of the "Maha-bharata," the book which bears his name, Duryodhana selects Drona as leader of his forces. Drona accepts the honor with Bhishma's blessing, despite his ongoing personal conflicts as mentor to both the Pandava and Kaurava heroes in their youth. The fighting rages on, with heavy losses on both sides. Furious and frustrated, Duryodhana accuses Drona of collaborating with the enemy, but he replies that as long as Arjuna is on the field, the Pandavas will remain invincible. When Arjuna is finally diverted from the main action of the battle, Yudhi-shthira entrusts Arjuna's son Abhimanyu with the task of making a breach in the Kaurava formation. Abhimanyu rampages through Drona's army, but at last is cornered by several Kaurava warriors and finally killed by Jayad-ratha.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and othertitles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

This edited volume seeks to build a scholarly discourse about how Hinduism is being defined, reformed, and rearticulated in the digital era and how these changes are impacting the way Hindus view their own religious identities. It seeks to interrogate how digital Hinduism has been shaped in response to the dominant framing of the religion, which has often relied on postcolonial narratives devoid of context and an overemphasis on the geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent post-partition. From this perspective, this volume challenges previous frameworks of how Hinduism has been studied, particularly in the West, where Marxist and Orientalist approaches are often ill-fitting paradigms to understanding Hinduism. This volume engages with and critiques some of these approaches while also enriching existing models of research within media studies, ethnography, cultural studies, and religion.

Hindu and Greek mythologies teem with stories of women and men who are doubled, who double themselves, who are seduced by gods doubling as mortals, whose bodies are split or divided. In "Splitting the Difference, " the renowned scholar of mythology Wendy Doniger recounts and compares a vast range of these tales from ancient Greece and India, with occasional recourse to more recent "double features" from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" to "Face/Off."
Myth, Doniger argues, responds to the complexities of the human condition by multiplying or splitting its characters into unequal parts, and these sloughed and cloven selves animate mythology's prodigious plots of sexuality and mortality. Doniger's comparisons show that ultimately differences in gender are more significant than differences in culture; Greek and Indian stories of doubled women resemble each other more than they do tales of doubled men in the same culture. In casting Hindu and Greek mythologies as shadows of each other, Doniger shows that culture is sometimes but the shadow of gender.

This volume contains a critical edition, English translation and essays on the initial section of the Kasikavrtti (7th c. CE), the oldest complete commentary on the Astadhyayi of Panini.

Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-84) was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in nineteenth-century Bengal. A religious leader and social reformer, his universalist interpretation of Hinduism found mass appeal in India, and generated considerable interest in Britain. His ideas on British imperial rule, religion and spirituality, global history, universalism and modernity were all influential, and his visit to England made him a celebrity. Many Britons regarded him as a prophet of world-historical significance. Keshab was the subject of extreme adulation and vehement criticism. Accounts tell of large crowds prostrating themselves before him, believing him to be an avatar. Yet he died with relatively few followers, his reputation in both India and Britain largely ruined. As a representative of India, Keshab became emblematic of broad concerns regarding Hinduism and Christianity, science and faith, India and the British Empire. This innovative study explores the transnational historical forces that shaped Keshab's life and work. It offers an alternative religious history of empire, characterised by intercultural dialogue and religious syncretism. A fascinating and often tragic portrait of Keshab's experience of the imperial world, and the ways in which he carried meaning for his contemporaries.

This is the first critical edition in transcription with facing English translation of a medieval Sanskrit text that is known in most parts of India, especially in Bengal. The Krsnakarnamrta ("Nectar to the Ears of Krishna") is a devotional anthology of stanzas in praise of the youthful Krishna, "the dark blue boy," "Lord of Life," lover of the milkmaids in Indian legend, and an incarnation of the great God Vishnu. Of its importance there can be no doubt: for many devout Indians it is a Book of Common Prayer, whose short and ardent hymns to the Lord Krishna come frequently and familiarly to mind. Frances Wilson here provides a masterly English translation of this moving expression of religious adoration. Collating over seventy manuscripts, she has established an authoritative Sanskrit text, including its literary and critical history. In the full introduction, she discusses the legends that have arisen about its author, the mysterious L&#299lasuka Bilvamangala. Medieval Sanskrit studies have in the past been much neglected by European scholars. In breaking free of the classical traditions of Sanskrit philology, Wilson has produced a work that is of profound relevance to the study of Indian civilization today.

This innovative book offers a dynamic analysis of Hinduism in the perspective of Western notions of modernity. After reviewing definitions of modernity and Hinduism and looking at modernity in India, the author considers Hinduism in relation to Islam and the West. The second half of the book presents key aspects of Hinduism, ancient and modern, in the light of their contrast with modernity.

The scope of the book is extremely broad, covering topics such as Orientalism, women, goddesses, gods, and the central problem of contemporary Hinduism - the rise of Hindu nationalism.

The book will be of interest not only to students of Hinduism but also to all those interested in the sociology of religion more broadly, and indeed everyone interested in the conjunction of modernity and tradition.

The appearance of "religion" as a category describing a set of practices and beliefs allegedly an aspect of all cultures dates only from the modern period, emerging as Europe expanded trade abroad and established its first colonial relations in the 17th and 18th centuries. The invention of Hinduism can be seen in the encounter between modernity's greatest colonial power, Britain, and the jewel of her imperial crown, India. This encounter was deeply shaded by the articulation and development of the concept of "religion," and it produced the now common idea that Hinduism is a religion. The Bengal Presidency, home of Calcutta - the capital of colonial India and center of economic gravity in the eastern hemisphere - emerged as the locus of ongoing and direct contact between Indians and colonial officials, journalists, and missionaries. Drawing on a large body of previously untapped literature, including documents from the Church Missionary Society and Bengali newspapers, Brian Pennington offers a fascinating portrait of the process by which "Hinduism" came into being. He argues against the common idea that the modern construction of religion in colonial India was simply a fabrication of Western Orientalists and missionaries. Rather, he says, it involved the active agency and engagement of Indian authors as well, who interacted, argued, and responded to British authors over key religious issues such as image-worship, sati, tolerance, and conversion. Pennington retells the story of Christians' and Hindus' reception of each other in the early 19th century in a way that takes seriously the power of their religious worldviews to shape the encounter itself and help to produce the very religions that colonialism thought it "discovered." While post-colonial theory can illuminate issues of power and domination, he demonstrates, history of religions reminds us of the continuing importance of the sacred and spiritual dimensions of the peoples under colonial rule.

The Arthasastra is the foundational text of Indic political thought and ancient India's most important treatise on statecraft and governance. It is traditionally believed that politics in ancient India was ruled by religion; that kings strove to fulfil their sacred duty; and that sovereignty was circumscribed by the sacred law of dharma. Mark McClish's systematic and thorough evaluation of the Arthasastra's early history shows that these ideas only came to prominence in the statecraft tradition late in the classical period. With a thorough chronological exploration, he demonstrates that the text originally espoused a political philosophy characterized by empiricism and pragmatism, ignoring the mandate of dharma altogether. The political theology of dharma was incorporated when the text was redacted in the late classical period, which obscured the existence of an independent political tradition in ancient India altogether and reinforced the erroneous notion that ancient India was ruled by religion, not politics.

If by monotheism we mean the idea of a single transcendent God who creates the universe out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), as in the Abrahamic religions, then that is not found in the history of Hinduism. But if we mean a supreme, transcendent deity who impels the universe, sustains it and ultimately destroys it before causing it to emerge once again, who is the ultimate source of all other gods who are her or his emanations, then this idea does develop within that history. It is a Hindu monotheism and its nature that is the topic of this Element.

Ishita Pande's innovative study provides a dual biography of India's path-breaking Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and of 'age' itself as a key category of identity for upholding the rule of law, and for governing intimate life in late colonial India. Through a reading of legislative assembly debates, legal cases, government reports, propaganda literature, Hindi novels and sexological tracts, Pande tells a wide-ranging story about the importance of debates over child protection to India's coming of age. By tracing the history of age in colonial India she illuminates the role of law in sculpting modern subjects, demonstrating how seemingly natural age-based exclusions and understandings of legal minority became the alibi for other political exclusions and the minoritization of entire communities in colonial India. In doing so, Pande highlights how childhood as a political category was fundamental not just to ideas of sexual norms and domestic life, but also to the conceptualisation of citizenship and India as a nation in this formative period.

The Upanisads is the Hindu equivalent of the Christian New Testament. It is a collection of spritual treatises written in Sanskirt between 800 and 400 BCE. Typically an Upanisad recounts one or more sessions of teaching, often setting each within the story of how it came to be taught. These 13 texts, the principal Upanisads, are devoted to understanding the inner meaning of the religion: they explicate its crucial doctrines - rebirth, the law of karma, the means of conquering death and of achieving detachment, equilibrium and spiritual bliss. They emphasise the perennial search for true knowledge. This translation and selection offers a full and comprehensive text.

'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times 'Who?' - or 'ka' - is the question that runs through Roberto Calasso's retelling of the stories of the minds and gods of India; the primordial question that continues to haunt human existence. From the Rigveda to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata to the life of Buddha, this book delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature to re-imagine the ancient Indian myths and how they resonate through space and time. 'The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written' Wendy Doniger 'Dazzling, complex, utterly original ... Ka is his masterpiece' Sunday Times

The Fundamentalism Project
Edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby
Around the world, fundamentalist movements are profoundly
affecting the way we live. Misinformation and misperception
about fundamentalism exacerbate conflicts at home and abroad.
Yet policymakers, journalists, students, and others have
lacked any comprehensive resource on the explosive phenomenon
of fundamentalism. Now the Fundamentalism Project has
assembled an international team of scholars for a multivolume
assessment of the history, scope, sources, character, and
impact of fundamentalist movements within the world's major
religious traditions.
"Fundamentalisms and Society" shows how fundamentalist
movements have influenced human relations, education, women's
rights, and scientific research in over a dozen nations and
within the traditions of Islam, Judaism, Christianity,
Buddhism, and Hinduism. Drawn from the fields of
anthropology, sociology, history of religion, and history of
science, the contributors cover topics such as the
educational structures of Hindu revivalism, women in
fundamentalist Iran and Pakistan, and the creationist cosmos
of Protestant fundamentalism. In a concluding essay, William
H. McNeill situates contemporary fundamentalisms within a
world historical context.
The Fundamentalism Project, Volume 2
Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby direct the
Fundamentalism Project. Marty, the Fairfax M. Cone
Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Modern
Christianity at the University of Chicago, is the senior
editor of the "Christian Century" and the author of
numerousbooks, including the multivolume "Modern American "
"Religion," also published by the University of
Chicago Press. Appleby, a research associate at the
University of Chicago, is the author of ""Church and "
"Age Unite!" The Modernist Impulse in American "
"Catholicism."

Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest influencers in the world, was himself influenced by trailblazing thinkers and writers like Tolstoy, Ruskin, Thoreau, and others-each one contributing significantly to his moral and spiritual development. Yet only a few people know the most consequential person to have played a pivotal role in the making of the Mahatma: Shrimad Rajchandra. About the unparalleled influence of this person, Gandhi himself wrote: "I have met many a religious leader or teacher... and I must say that no one else ever made on me the impression that Raychandbhai did." Uma Majmudar, digging deep into the original Gujarati writings of both Gandhi and Rajchandra, explores this important relationship and unfolds the unique impact of Rajchandra's teachings and contributions upon Gandhi. The volume examines the contents and significance of their intimate spiritual discussions, letters, questions and answers. In this book, Dr. Majmudar brings to the forefront the scarcely known but critically important facts of how Rajchandra "molded Gandhi's inner self, his character, his life, thoughts and actions." This Jain zaveri (jeweller)-cum-spiritual seeker became Gandhi's most trusted friend, as well as an exemplary mentor and "refuge in spiritual crisis."

It has become increasingly clear that an adequate understanding of the contemporary processes of social, cultural, and religious change is contingent on an appreciation of the growing impact of social media. Utilising results of an unprecedented global study, this volume explores the ways in which young adults in seven different countries engage with digital and social media in religiously significant ways. Presenting and analysing the findings of the global research project Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG), an international panel of contributors shed new light on the impact of social media and its associated technologies on young people's religiosities, worldviews, and values. Case studies from China, Finland, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Poland, and Turkey are used to demonstrate how these developments are progressing, not just in the West, but across the world. This book is unique in that it presents a truly macroscopic perspective on trends in religion amongst young adults. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in religious studies, digital media, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, theology and youth studies.

The anonymous pre-Gangesa Navya-Nyaya treatise Upadhidarpana (UD) deals exclusively with the so-called upadhi, a key concept in the Navya-Nyaya theory of inference. The present volume contains the first published edition and translation of the only extant manuscript of the UD. Numerous notes have been added to the translation in order to elucidate the contents and to give a clue to the historical context, as regards authors, works, and philosophical doctrines that are referenced in the UD. Moreover, an extensive introductory chapter provides new insights into relations between the Navya-Nyaya doctrine of upadhi and modern logical theories such as John L. Pollock's theory of defeasible reasoning and property theories, especially property adaptations of well-founded and non-well-founded set theories. A very intriguing aspect of the UD is the author's attempt to define all candidate upadhis by means of a "general defining characteristic" (samanyalaksana) which is a property of itself. He advocates a non-well-founded property concept and distances himself from what is communis opinio in Nyaya, viz. that self-dependence (atmasraya) is a kind of absurdity. No such discussion concerning the problem of foundation in the Navya-Nyaya logic of property and location is to be found in the later Upadhivada of Gangesa's Tattavacintamani.

The fifth and most popular book of the Ramayana of Valmiki, Sundara recounts the adventures of the monkey hero Hanuman leaping across the ocean to the island citadel of Lanka. Once there, he scours the city for the abducted Princess Sita. The poet vividly describes the opulence of the court of the demon king, Ravana, the beauty of his harem, and the hideous deformity of Sita's wardresses. After witnessing Sita's stern rejection of Ravana's blandishments, Hanuman reveals himself to the princess, shows her Rama's signet ring as proof of identity, and offers to carry her back to Rama.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Tantra occupies an odd position in Western understandings of Hindu spirituality. Its relationship to sex has made its name instantly recognizable, but this emphasis on sex has obscured its philosophical concerns and ritual practices, to say nothing of its overall importance to Hindu religious life. This book offers a clear, well-grounded overview of Tantra that offers substantial new insights for scholars and practitioners. Andre Padoux opens by detailing the history of Tantra, including its origins, founding texts, and major beliefs. The second part of the book delves more deeply into key concepts like the tantric body, mysticism, sex, mantras, sacred geography, and iconography, while the final part considers the practice of Tantra today, both in India and in the West. The result is an authoritative account of Tantra's history and present place in the world, suitable for beginners and longtime practitioners alike.