"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands--horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power.
"Ashes of Immortality" attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

Tantric traditions in both Buddhism and Hinduism are thriving throughout Asia and in Asian diasporic communities around the world, yet they have been largely ignored by Western scholars until now. This collection of original essays fills this gap by examining the ways in which Tantric Buddhist traditions have changed over time and distance as they have spread across cultural boundaries in Asia. The book is divided into three sections dedicated to South Asia, Central Asia, and East and Southeast Asia. The essays cover such topics as the changing ideal of masculinity in Buddhist literature, the controversy triggered by the transmission of the Indian Buddhist deity Heruka to Tibet in the 10th century, and the evolution of a Chinese Buddhist Tantric tradition in the form of the True Buddha School. The book as a whole addresses complex and contested categories in the field of religious studies, including the concept of syncretism and the various ways that the change and transformation of religious traditions can be described and articulated. The authors, leading scholars in Tantric studies, draw on a wide array of methodologies from the fields of history, anthropology, art history, and sociology. Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation is groundbreaking in its attempt to look past religious, linguistic, and cultural boundaries.

In a book now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy, Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a nineteenth-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. Through extended textual and symbolic analyses of Ramakrishna's censored "secret talk," Kripal demonstrates that the saint's famous ecstatic and visionary experiences were driven by mystico-erotic energies that he neither fully accepted nor understood. The result is a striking new vision of Ramakrishna as a conflicted, homoerotic Tantric mystic that is as complex as it is clear and as sympathetic to the historical Ramakrishna as it is critical of his traditional portraits.
In a substantial new preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics, addresses the controversy the book has generated in India, and traces the genealogy of his work in the history of psychoanalytic discourse on mysticism, Hinduism, and Ramakrishna himself. "Kali's Child" has already proven to be provocative, groundbreaking, and immensely enjoyable.
"Only a few books make such a major contribution to their field that from the moment of publication things are never quite the same again. "Kali's Child" is such a book."--John Stratton Hawley, "History of Religions"
Winner of the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995

The esoteric Hindu traditions of Tantrism have profoundly influenced the development of Indian thought and civilization. Emerging from elements of yoga and wisdom traditions, shamanism, alchemy, eroticism, and folklore, Tantrism began to affect brahmanical Hinduism in the ninth century. Nevertheless, Tantrism and its key historical figures have been ignored by scholars. This accessible work introduces the concepts and practices of Hindu Sakta Tantrism to all those interested in Hinduism and the comparative study of religion.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981), a revered master of the Tantric Nath lineage, is an inspiring example of an ordinary family man who attained complete realization of the Infinite. His words carry a rare potency that can jolt the listener or reader into a profound sense of awareness, which at the same time signifies true freedom -- the freedom from all fear and mental suffering.

In this, the final volume of a trilogy published by Blue Dove Press, Nisargadatta clearly demonstrates that logic and spirituality do not necessarily stand in opposition to one another. In a chapter after which this book has been titled, Nisargadatta relentlessly pursues a logical argument with his visitor to its very end, showing that until there is transcendence of all thought, logic remains fully valid and should be pursued rigorously.

Through shrewd marketing and publicity, Hindu spiritual leaders can play powerful roles in contemporary India as businessmen and government officials. Focusing on the organizations and activities of Hindu ascetics and gurus, the author explores the complex interrelations among religion, the political economy of India and global capitalism. McKean traces the ideological and organizational antecedents to the Hindu nationalist movement. The Indian state's increasing patronage of Hindu institutions makes competition increases its support. Using materials from guru's publications, the press and extensive field research, McKean examines how participation by upper-caste ruling class groups in the Divine Life Society and other Hindu organizations further legitimates their own authority. With a selection of photographs and advertisements showing icons of spirituality used to sell commodities from textiles to cement to comic books, the work illustrates the pervasive presence of Hindu imagery in India's burgeoning market economy. It shows how gurus popularize Hindu nationalism through imagery such as the goddess, Mother India, and her martyred sons and daughters.

South India is a land of many temples and shrines, each of which has preserved a local tradition of myth, folklore, and ritual. As one of the first Western scholars to explore this tradition in detail, David Shulman brings together the stories associated with these sacred sites and places them in the context of the greater Hindu religious tradition.

Originally published in 1980.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

The Virgin Mary has long been the object of both devotional and scholarly interest, and recent years have seen a proliferation of studies on Hindu goddess-worship traditions. Despite the parallels between the two, however, no one has yet undertaken a book-length comparison of these traditions. In Divine Mother, Blessed Mother, Francis Clooney offers the first extended comparative study of Hindu goddesses and the Virgin Mary. Clooney is almost unique in the field of Hindu studies as a Christian theologian with the linguistic and philosophical expertise necessary to produce sophisticated comparative analyses. Building on his previous work in comparative theology, he sheds new light not only on these individual traditions but also on the nature of gender and the divine.

The Ramayana is one of India's foundational epics, and it demonstrates a continuing power to influence social, religious, cultural, and political life. Brought to textual life in Sanskrit by the legendary "first poet," Valmiki, over the ensuing centuries the tale has been recycled with extraordinary adaptability and diversity through the varied cultural heritages of India and other parts of Asia. The basic tale of the Ramayana is continually adapted to new contexts, forms, and media. It is read, recited, sung, danced, and acted in one form or another, and renewed so constantly by changing times and values that it demands constant revaluation.
The Ramayana Revisited presents the latest in Ramayana scholarship. Fourteen leading scholars examine the epic in its myriad contexts throughout South and Southeast Asia. They explore the role the narrative plays in societies as varied as India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. The essays also expand the understanding of the "text" to include non-verbal renditions of the epic, with particular attention to the complex ways such retellings change the way the narrative deals with gender. This volume will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in mythology, Hinduism, Asian studies, and anthropology.

In this multifaceted work, John Carman and Vasudha Narayanan clarify historical developments in South Asian religion and make important contributions to the methodology of textual interpretation and the comparative study of world religions.

For more than 1500 years, from the Indian subcontinent to the islands of the Indonesian archipelago, the temple has embodied and symbolized the Hindu worldview at its deepest level and inspired the greatest architectural and artistic achievements in Hindu Asia. In "The Hindu Temple," considered the standard introduction to the subject, George Michell explains the cultural, religious, and architectural significance of the temple. He illustrates his points with a profusion of photographs, building plans, and drawings of architectural details, making the book a useful guide for travelers to Asia as well as an illuminating text for students of architecture, religion, and Asian civilizations.
Michell's discussion of the meaning and forms of the temple in Hindu society encompasses the awe-inspiring rock-cut temples at Ellora and Elephanta, the soaring superstructures and extraordinary sexual exhibitionism of the sculptures at Khajuraho, and the colossal mortuary temple of Angkor Vat, as well as the tiny iconic shrines that many Hindus wear around their necks and the simple shrines found under trees or near ponds.

The Upanishads represent for the Hindu approximately what the New Testament represents for the Christian.

The earliest of these spiritual treatises, which vary greatly in length, were put down in Sanskrit between 800 and 400 BC. This selection from twelve Upanishads, with its illuminating introduction by Juan Mascaró, whose translation of the Bhagavad Gita is also in the Penguin Classics, reveals the paradoxical variety and unity, the great questions and simple answers, the spiritual wisdom and romantic imagination of these ‘Himalayas of the Soul’.