Featuring chapters by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this is a comprehensive reference guide to Hindu Studies. "The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies" offers the definitive guide to Hinduism and study in this area. This book covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Seventeen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, valuably, how the various topics intersect through detailed reading paths. Featuring a series of indispensible research tools, including a detailed list of resources, chronology and diagrams summarizing content, this is the essential reference tool for anyone working in Hindu Studies. "The Continuum Companions series" is a major series of single volume companions to key research fields in the humanities aimed at postgraduate students, scholars and libraries. Each companion offers a comprehensive reference resource giving an overview of key topics, research areas, new directions and a manageable guide to beginning or developing research in the field. A distinctive feature of these series is that each companion provides practical guidance on advanced study and research in the field, including research methods and subject-specific resources.

This fascinating and innovative book explores the relationship between the philosophical underpinnings of Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism and the experiential journey of spiritual practitioners. Taking the perspective of the questioning student, the author highlights the experiential deconstructive processes that are ignited when students' "everyday" dualistic thought structures are challenged by the non-dual nature of these teachings and practices. Although Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism are ontologically different, this unique study shows that in the dynamics of the practice situation they are phenomenologically similar. Distinctive in scope and approach Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism: Deconstructive Modes of Spiritual Inquiry examines Advaita and Zen as living practice traditions in which foundational non-dual philosophies are shown "in action" in contemporary Western practice situations thus linking abstract philosophical tenets to concrete living experience. As such it takes an important step toward bridging the gap between scholarly analysis and the experiential reality of these spiritual practices. >

Here, in one compact volume, is the episode of the great Hindu epic the Mahabharata known as The Message of the Master or the Song of God, in which Krishna reveals himself to be a god and expounds on the duties of the warrior, the prince, and all those who wish to follow in the path of the divine. This 1907 volume is a compilation of the best English translations available at the turn of the 20th century edited by one of the most influential thinkers of the early New Age movement known as New Thought, which was intensely interested in all manner of spirituality and serves as a succinct introduction to Hindu philosophy. A beloved guide to living a fulfilling life, this is essential reading for those interested in global religion and comparative mythology.American writer WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON (1862 1932) aka Theron Q. Dumont was born in Baltimore and had built up a successful law practice in Pennsylvania before professional burnout led him to the religious New Thought movement. He served as editor of the popular magazine New Thought from 1901 to 1905, and as editor of the journal Advanced Thought from 1916 to 1919. He authored dozens of New Thought books including Arcane Formula or Mental Alchemy and Vril, or Vital Magnetism under numerous pseudonyms, some of which are likely still unknown today.

Many persons have written the Mantras, Stotras, Stuti, Chalisa and Aarti in English but this is the first time that they have been written in English rhyme. The Author, Munindra Misra has covered the most popular Hindu Gods and Goddesses and thus made it easier for people to comprehend the meaning and also appreciate the same in rhyme. The Deities covered are Lord Ganesh, Lord Shiv, Lord Vishnu, Lord Krishna, Lord Ram, Lord Hanuman, Lord Shani, Ma Gayatri, Ma Durga, Ma Laxmi, Ma Mahakali, Ma Saraswati, Ma Ganga and Ma Santoshi and others. A general understanding of each deity has also been written by the author in English rhyme as a primer to each Deity.

Recent years have seen an explosion in the scholarship on the religious experiences of women. The contributors to this volume believe that more sophisticated studies at higher levels of theoretical analysis are now needed. Their essays involve the close reading of situations in which women are given or denied authority in ritual and interpretive situations. This approach involves not only how women are represented by Indian texts, but several other perspectives: how the particular strategies of debate about women are carried on, how women are depicted as negotiating certain kinds of authority, and how women might resist particular kings of traditional authority in certain colonial and post-colonial situations. Including new work by such scholars as Stephanie Jamison, Vasudha Narayanan, and Ann Grozdins Gold, this collection will set a new benchmark for feminist studies of Hinduism.

In Narmadaparikrama. Circumambulation of the Narmada River Jurgen Neuss offers for the first time a comprehensive study of the Narmadaparikrama, a singular Hindu pilgrimage, which comprises the complete circumambulation of the Central Indian river Narmada. Following a brief general introduction, the first part of the book comprises a text-historical analysis of the Sanskrit texts which are traditionally regarded as the basis for this rite. The second part represents a synoptic translation of two modern pilgrims' handbooks in Hindi, which link the mythological place names of the Sanskrit texts with actual geographical locations. Part three consists of synopses of available Sanskrit source texts, and the concluding part summarizes the many-fold findings and results of the study in thematically arranged maps.

This excellent book represents one of the first and best presentations of Eastern wisdom in the English language. It concerns ancient Hindu traditions and the Yogic practice of observing and regulating the breath. We begin with an admission that Western students are often confused by what exactly Yoga is, and what it is meant to accomplish. Stereotypes of the yogi as spindly, dirty and disheveled men commonly seen sitting in fixed posture at a roadside or marketplace abound. Yet these dismissive images serve only to neglect the spiritual substance and ancient wisdom of yogi science. Seeking to dispel the negative stereotypes and present the vivid truth, Atkinson discusses the multiple schools of yoga and their general purpose. Some emphasize control over the body's motions, while others favor inner development of the spirit. Several however emphasize the control of the breath; and it a practical explanation of this that Atkinson relays in the remaining fifteen chapters of this book.

Ren Gunon's Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines can serve as an introduction to all his later works-especially those which, like Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, The Symbolism of the Cross, The Multiple States of the Being, and Studies in Hinduism, expound the more profound aspects of metaphysical doctrines in greater detail. In Part I Guenon clears away certain ingrained prejudices inherited from the 'Renaissance', with its adulation of the Greco-Roman culture and its compensating depreciation-both deliberate and instinctive-of other civilizations. In Part II he establishes the fundamental distinctions between various modes of thought and brings out the real nature of metaphysical or universal knowledge-an understanding of which is the first condition for the personal realization of that 'Knowledge' which partakes of the Absolute. Words like 'religion', 'philosophy', 'symbolism', 'mysticism', and 'superstition', are here given a precise meaning. Part III presents a more detailed examination of the Hindu doctrine and its applications at different levels, leading up to the Vedanta, which constitutes its metaphysical essence. Lastly, Part IV resumes the task of clearing away current misconceptions, but is this time concerned not with the West itself, but with distortions of the Hindu doctrines that have arisen as a result of attempts to read into them, or to graft onto them, modern Western conceptions. The concluding chapter lays down the essential conditions for any genuine understanding between East and West, which can only come through the work of those who have attained, at least in some degree, to the realization of 'wisdom uncreate'-that intellective, suprarational knowledge called in the East jana, and in the West gnosis.

Translating Kali's Feast is an interdisciplinary study of the Goddess Kali bringing together ethnography and literature within the theoretical framework of translation studies. The idea for the book grew out of the experience and fieldwork of the authors, who lived with Indo-Caribbean devotees of the Hindu Goddess in Guyana. Using a variety of discursive forms including oral history and testimony, field notes, songs, stories, poems, literary essays, photographic illustrations, and personal and theoretical reflections, it explores the cultural, aesthetic and spiritual aspects of the Goddess in a diasporic and cross-cultural context. With reference to critical and cultural theorists including Walter Benjamin and Julia Kristeva, the possibilities offered by Kali (and other manifestations of the Goddess) as the site of translation are discussed in the works of such writers as Wilson Harris, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan. The book articulates perspectives on the experience of living through displacement and change while probing the processes of translation involved in literature and ethnography and postulating links between 'rite' and 'write,' Hindu 'leela' and creole 'play.'

The translator's idea of rendering the Upanishads into clear simple English, accessible to Occidental readers, had its origin in a visit paid to a Boston friend in 1909. The gentleman, then battling with a fatal malady, took from his library shelf a translation of the Upanishads and, opening it, expressed deep regret that the obscure and unfamiliar form shut from him what he felt to be profound and vital teaching. The desire to unlock the closed doors of this ancient treasure house, awakened at that time, led to a series of classes on the Upanishads at The Vedanta Centre of Boston during its early days in St. Botolph Street. The translation and commentary then given were trans-cribed and, after studious revision, were published in the Centre's monthly magazine, "The Message of the East," in 1913 and 1914.. Still further revision has brought it to its present form.