An important, provocative and original work, of great interest to Indian scholars, historians of religions, psychologists and historians of ideas, but accessible also to the cultivated reader. Even if one does not always agree with the author's interpretation, one cannot but admire her vast and precise learning, her splendid translations and exegesis of so many, and so different, Sanskrit texts, and her uninhibited, brilliant, and witty prose.--Mircea Eliade, University of Chicago
This is . . . a book which is as rich in detail as the carvings of the great Hindu temples. It shares with them a delight in the interplay of myth and mundane experience, and above all an empathy with the Hindu preoccupation with the meaning of human existence in all its complexity.--G. M. Carstairs, Times Literary Supplement

An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism, third edition, offers a comprehensive study of a contemporary form of Hinduism. Begun as a revival and reform movement in India 200 years ago, it has now become one of the fastest growing and most prominent forms of Hinduism. The Swaminarayan Hindu transnational network of temples and institutions is expanding in India, East Africa, the UK, USA, Australasia, and in other African and Asian cities. The devotion, rituals, and discipline taught by its founder, Sahajanand Swami (1781-1830) and elaborated by current leaders in major festivals, diverse media, and over the Internet, help preserve ethnic and religious identity in many modern cultural and political contexts. Swaminarayan Hinduism, here described through its history, divisions, leaders, theology and practices, provides valuable case studies of contemporary Hinduism, religion, migrants, and transnationalism. This new edition includes up-to-date information about growth, geographic expansion, leadership transitions, and impact of Swaminarayan institutions in India and abroad.

Hadimba is a primary village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a rural area known as the Land of Gods. As the book shows, Hadimba is a goddess whose vitality reveals itself in her devotees' rapidly changing encounters with local and far from local players, powers, and ideas. These include invading royal forces, colonial forms of knowledge, and more recently the onslaught of modernity, capitalism, tourism, and ecological change. Hadimba has provided her worshipers with discursive, ritual, and ideological arenas within which they reflect on, debate, give meaning to, and sometimes resist these changing realities, and she herself has been transformed in the process. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials gathered in the region from 2009 to 2017, The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess is rich with myths and tales, accounts of dramatic rituals and festivals, and descriptions of everyday life in the celebrated but remote Kullu Valley. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of Hadimba from the ground up, or rather, from the center out, portraying the goddess in varying contexts that radiate outward from her temple to local, regional, national, and indeed global spheres. The result is an important contribution to the study of Indian village goddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

"Mystical Prayers of Poetic Beauty" - In the tradition of the great lyric mystics of all religions, Paramahansa Yogananda's "Whispers from Eternity" offers a window on the devotional experience of ecstasy. Sharing prayers and affirmations directly inspired by his high state of God-communion, this beloved spiritual master helps modern seekers achieve their own mystical relationship with the Divine. Now with a contemporary new look, these universal prayers and prose poems offer daily inspiration for seekers of all faiths. A uniquely devotional offering in the spirit of Yogananda's best-selling "Metaphysical Meditations," this popular collection will inspire a new legion of readers seeking a nonsectarian, experiential relationship with God.

Each card in this deck highlights a particular deity in the Hindu pantheon and provides corresponding mantras, meditations, prayers and blessings. These cards reveal a who's who in the spiritual world, and identify which roles particular gods and goddesses play in the universe. For greater intelligence, petition Saraswati or for the removal of obstacles, invoke the presence of Ganesh by chanting his mantra.

In thirteenth-century Maharashtra, a new vernacular literature emerged to challenge the hegemony of Sanskrit, a language largely restricted to men of high caste. In a vivid and accessible idiom, this new Marathi literature inaugurated a public debate over the ethics of social difference grounded in the idiom of everyday life. The arguments of vernacular intellectuals pushed the question of social inclusion into ever-wider social realms, spearheading the development of a nascent premodern public sphere that valorized the quotidian world in sociopolitical terms. The Quotidian Revolution examines this pivotal moment of vernacularization in Indian literature, religion, and public life by investigating courtly donative Marathi inscriptions alongside the first extant texts of Marathi literature: the Lilacaritra (1278) and the Jnanesvari (1290). Novetzke revisits the influence of Chakradhar (c. 1194), the founder of the Mahanubhav religion, and Jnandev (c. 1271), who became a major figure of the Varkari religion, to observe how these avant-garde and worldly elites pursued a radical intervention into the social questions and ethics of the age. Drawing on political anthropology and contemporary theories of social justice, religion, and the public sphere, The Quotidian Revolution explores the specific circumstances of this new discourse oriented around everyday life and its lasting legacy: widening the space of public debate in a way that presages key aspects of Indian modernity and democracy.

Hinduism has become a vital 'other' for Judaism over the past decades. The book surveys the history of the relationship from historical to contemporary times, from travellers to religious leadership. It explores the potential enrichment for Jewish theology and spirituality, as well as the challenges for Jewish identity.

Die Beitrage in diesem Sammelband dokumentieren die heutige Diskussion um das Heilige, ein nach wie vor unerledigtes Problem der Religionswissenschaft. Sie wurden auf zwei verschiedenen Veranstaltungen prasentiert: einerseits auf dem Panel "Das Heilige als Problem in der Religionswissenschaft: Fragen und Perspektiven" der 31. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung fur Religionswissenschaft in Goettingen im September 2013, andererseits auf dem Symposium "Die Diskussion um das Heilige: alte Fragen - neue Antworten" an der Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt am Main im November 2013. Es geht um drei Themenbereiche: das Werk Rudolf Ottos, Anwendung der Kategorie des Heiligen in der Religionsforschung sowie die theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit der Kategorie des Heiligen.

The 19th century was a pioneering age for vernacular texts in India. Vernacular writings became popular for making the 'first' interventions of their kind, written by Indians for Indians, and establishing new genres such as the novel. The Subhedar's Son, an award-winning Marathi novel, was written in 1895 and published by the Bombay Tract and Book Society. The novel comprises overlapping personal and political trajectories.The author, The Rev. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, inscribed multiple viewpoints into his narrative, including that of his own father, the Shankar Nana (1819-1884), a Brahmin who was one of the early converts of the Church Missionary Society in Western India and served the CMS and the Anglican Church in various capacities for many years. Apart from Shankar Nana's conversion-story, Sawarkar provides readers with a blueprint of what a Brahminical journey towards Christian conversion encompassed, while describing his personal background of having lived a Christian life as a product of both Brahminism and Christianity. He in effect attempts to deconstruct Brahmanism through Christianity and as a Christian he claims Brahmin roots, with the aim of combatting the stigma of Christian conversion. Contextualized by the history of Maharashtra's early missions and the specificities of individual conversions, the novel allows modern researchers to appreciate the particularity of regional and vernacular Indian Christianity. This culturally-specific Christianity spurred the production of Christian vernacular print culture, associating 'being Marathi' with broader and more universal frameworks of Christianity. But this new genre also produced nativist forms of Christian devotion and piety. Deepra Dandekar introduces this annotated translation of The Subhedar's Son, with: an examination of the Church Missionary Society's socio- political context; a biography of Shankar Nana gleaned from archival sources; a brief summary of Sawarkar's biography; and an analysis of the multiple political opinions framing the book. An appendix contains a transcription of Shankar Nana's Christian witness.

As yoga gains popularity across the U.S., many people are becoming interested in its traditional Vedic roots. While Buddhist meditation is well represented on bookshelves, there has been little Vedantic philosophy written in lay terms until now. Author David Frawley guides readers through the challenges of cultivating awareness, calming the mind, and practicing meditation according to Vedanta and Hinduism. He examines how cultural knowledge systems in the West lead individuals to disillusionment, and speaks about how meditation can aid in understanding the true nature of one's thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Frawley explores meditation support practices such as yoga, mantras, kundalini, and pranayama, as well as the role of gurus, and concludes with a short, more technical essay on self-inquiry.

This fascinating new study traces traditions and memories relating to the twelfth-century Indian ruler Prithviraj Chauhan; a Hindu king who was defeated and overthrown during the conquest of Northern India by Muslim armies from Afghanistan. Surveying a wealth of narratives that span more than 800 years, Cynthia Talbot explores the reasons why he is remembered, and by whom. In modern times, the Chauhan king has been referred to as 'the last Hindu emperor', because Muslim rule prevailed for centuries following his defeat. Despite being overthrown, however, his name and story have evolved over time into a historical symbol of India's martial valor. The Last Hindu Emperor sheds new light on the enduring importance of heroic histories in Indian culture and the extraordinary ability of historical memory to transform the hero of a clan into the hero of a community, and finally a nation.

A collection of more than 50 talks on the vast range of inspiring and universal truths that have captivated millions in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Readers will find these talks alive with the unique blend of all-embracing wisdom, encouragement, and love for humanity that have made the author one of our era's most revered and trusted guides to the spiritual life.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Hindu Pluralism, Elaine M. Fisher complicates the traditional scholarly narrative of the unification of Hinduism. By calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term "sectarianism," Fisher's work excavates the pluralistic textures of precolonial Hinduism in the centuries prior to British intervention. Drawing on previously unpublished sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu, Fisher argues that the performance of plural religious identities in public space in Indian early modernity paved the way for the emergence of a distinctively non-Western form of religious pluralism. This work provides a critical resource for understanding how Hinduism developed in the early modern period, a crucial era that set the tenor for religion's role in public life in India through the present day.

Early Tantric Medicine looks at a traditional medical system that flourished over 1,000 years ago in India. The Garuda Tantras had a powerful influence on traditional medicine for snakebite, and some of their practices remain popular to this day. Snakebite may sound like a rare and exotic phenomenon, but in India it is a problem that affects 1.4 million people every year and results in over 45,000 deaths. Michael Slouber offers a close examination of the Garuda Tantras, which were deemed lost until the author himself discovered numerous ancient titles surviving in Sanskrit manuscripts written on fragile palm-leaves. The volume brings to life this rich tradition in which knowledge and faith are harnessed in complex visualizations accompanied by secret mantras to an array of gods and goddesses; this religious system is combined with herbal medicine and a fascinating mix of lore on snakes, astrology, and healing. The book's appendices include an accurate, yet readable translation of ten chapters of the most significant Tantric medical text to be recovered: the Kriyakalagunottara. Also included is a critical edition based on the surviving Nepalese manuscripts.

In this work, Brian Philip Dunn focuses on the embodiment theology of the South Indian theologian, A. J. Appasamy (1891-1975). Appasamy developed what he called a 'bhakti' (devotional) approach to Christian theology, bringing his own primary text, the Gospel of John, into comparative interaction with the writings of the Hindu philosopher and theologian, Ramanuja. Dunn's exposition here is of Appasamy's distinctive adaptation of Ramanuja's 'Body of God' analogy and its application to a bhakti reading of John's Gospel. He argues throughout for the need to locate and understand theological language as embedded and embodied within the narrative and praxis of tradition and, for Appasamy and Ramanuja, in their respective Anglican and Srivaisnava settings. Responding to Appasamy, Dunn proposes that the primary Johannine referent for divine embodiment is the temple and considers recent scholarship on Johannine 'temple Christology' in light of Srivaisnava conceptions of the temple and the temple deity. He then offers a constructive reading of the text as a temple procession, a heuristic device that can be newly considered in both comparative and devotional contexts today.

The rise, fall, and modern resurgence of an enigmatic book revered by yoga enthusiasts around the world Consisting of fewer than two hundred verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice-except it isn't. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic status only in the course of the past forty years. David Gordon White retraces the strange and circuitous journey of this confounding work from its ancient origins to today, bringing to life the improbable cast of characters whose interpretations and misappropriations of the Yoga Sutra led to its revered place in contemporary popular culture.

This is the second volume of a translation of India's most beloved and influential epic saga, the monumental R?m?ya?a of V?lm?ki. Of the seven sections of this great Sanskrit masterpiece, the Ayodhyak???a is the most human, and it remains one of the best introductions to the social and political values of traditional India. This readable translation is accompanied by commentary that elucidates the various problems of the text--philological, aesthetic, and cultural. The annotations make extensive use of the numerous commentaries on the R?m?ya?a composed in medieval India. The substantial introduction supplies a historical context for the poem and a critical reading that explores its literary and ideological components.

A richly illustrated tapestry of interwoven studies spanning some six thousand years of history, Daemons Are Forever is at once a record of archaic contacts and transactions between humans and protean spirit beings--daemons--and an account of exchanges, among human populations, of the science of spirit beings: daemon-ology. Since the time of the Indo-European migrations, and especially following the opening of the Silk Road, a common daemonological vernacular has been shared among populations ranging from East and South Asia to Northern Europe. In this virtuoso work of historical sleuthing, David Gordon White recovers the trajectories of both the "inner demons" cohabiting the bodies of their human hosts and the "outer daemons" that those same humans recognized each time they encountered them in their enchanted haunts: sylvan pools, sites of geothermal eruptions, and dark forest groves. Along the way, he invites his readers to reconsider the potential and promise of the historical method in religious studies, suggesting that a "connected histories" approach to Eurasian daemonology may serve as a model for restoring history to its proper place, at the heart of the history of religions discipline.

Mr. Heimsath presents here an intellectual history of the social reform movement among Hindus in India in the century between Ram Mohun Roy and Gandhi. Treating separately each major province in which reform movements flourished, he shows the many ways in which social reform was effected. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Today in the West, scientists and philosophers, mystics and seekers of higher consciousness are intensively searching for means of releasing the vital energy (kundalini) that lies latent in each of us. Tantra, which does not deny the body, but harnesses its energies and powers for spiritual growth, is the most detailed and authoritative teaching of this kind in existence. In "Kundalini: The Arousal of the Inner Energy," Ajit Mookerjee writes of the core experience of Tantra, the process in which the energy is awakened and rises throughout the energy centers (chakras) to unite with Pure Consciousness at the crown of the head.
- The author drew on an extensive range of original manuscript sources for both the text an the magnificent illustrations found throughout the book.
- "Kundalini: The Arousal of the Inner Energy" examines the modern accounts of the kundalini experience, both Eastern and Western, and describes the findings of the clinical studies and research so far undertaken in the West.