Dharma is central to all the major religious traditions which originated on the Indian subcontinent. Such is its importance that these traditions cannot adequately be understood apart from it. Often translated as "ethics," "religion," "law," or "social order," dharma possesses elements of each of these but is not confined to any single category familiar to Western thought. Neither is it the straightforward equivalent of what many in the West might usually consider to be "a philosophy". This much-needed analysis of the history and heritage of dharma shows that it is instead a multi-faceted religious force, or paradigm, that has defined and that continues to shape the different cultures and civilizations of South Asia in a whole multitude of forms, organizing many aspects of life. Experts in the fields of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh studies here bring fresh insights to dharma in terms both of its distinctiveness and its commonality as these are expressed across, and between, the several religions of the subcontinent. Exploring ethics, practice, history and social and gender issues, the contributors engage critically with some prevalent and often problematic interpretations of dharma, and point to new ways of appreciating these traditions in a manner that is appropriate to and thoroughly consistent with their varied internal debates, practices and self-representations.

Living Mantra is an anthropology of mantra-experience among Hindu-tantric practitioners. In ancient Indian doctrine and legends, mantras perceived by rishis (seers) invoke deities and have transformative powers. Adopting a methodology that combines scholarship and practice, Mani Rao discovers a continuing tradition of visionaries (rishis/seers) and revelations in south India's Andhra-Telangana. Both deeply researched and replete with fascinating narratives, the book reformulates the poetics of mantra-practice as it probes practical questions. Can one know if a vision is real or imagined? Is vision visual? Are deity-visions mediated by culture? If mantras are effective, what is the role of devotion? Are mantras language? Living Mantra interrogates not only theoretical questions, but also those a practitioner would ask: how does one choose a deity, for example, or what might bind one to a guru? Rao breaks fresh ground in redirecting attention to the moments that precede systematization and canon-formation, showing how authoritative sources are formed.

This book presents contemporary scholarship on the Yoga Sutra. It revisits Patanjali's philosophy by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary concerns across a variety of topics and perspectives. Questions regarding the role of the body in the practice of classical yoga, the debate between the realistic or idealistic interpretation of the text, the relation between Yoga and other Indian philosophical schools, the use of imagination in the pursuit of self-knowledge, the interplay between consciousness and nature, the possibilities and limitations of using it as a therapeutic philosophy, the science of meditation, and overcoming our fear of death probe the many dimensions that this text continues to offer for thought and reflection.

In recent decades there has been a rising interest among scholars of Hinduism and Judaism in engaging in the comparative studies of these ancient traditions. Academic interests have also been inspired by the rise of interreligious dialogue by the respective religious leaders. Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu-Jewish Philosophy and Religion represents a significant contribution to this emerging field, offering an examination of a wide range of topics and a rich diversity of perspectives and methodologies within each tradition, and underscoring significant affinities in textual practices, ritual purity, sacrifice, ethics and theology. Dharma refers to a Hindu term indicating law, duty, religion, morality, justice and order, and the collective body of Dharma is called Dharma-shastra. Halacha is the Hebrew term designating the Jewish spiritual path, comprising the collective body of Jewish religious laws, ethics and rituals. Although there are strong parallels between Hinduism and Judaism in topics such as textual practices and mystical experience, the link between these two religious systems, i.e. Dharma and Halacha, is especially compelling and provides a framework for the comparative study of these two traditions. The book begins with an introduction to Hindu-Jewish comparative studies and recent interreligious encounters. Part I of the book titled "Ritual and Sacrifice," encompasses the themes of sacrifice, holiness, and worship. Part II titled "Ethics," is devoted to comparing ethical systems in both traditions, highlighting the manifold ways in which the sacred is embodied in the mundane. Part III of the book titled "Theology," addresses common themes and phenomena in spiritual leadership, as well as textual metaphors for mystical and visionary experiences in Hinduism and Judaism. The epilogue offers a retrospective on Hindu-Jewish encounters, mapping historic as well as contemporary academic initiatives and collaborations.

In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that various patterns of amicability and antipathy have been generated towards Muslims over the last six hundred years and these patterns emerge at dynamic intersections between Hindu self-understandings and social shifts on contested landscapes. The core of the book is a set of translations of the Bengali writings of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), and Annada Shankar Ray (1904-2002). Their lives were deeply interwoven with some Hindu-Muslim synthetic ideas and subjectivities, and these involvements are articulated throughout their writings which provide multiple vignettes of contemporary modes of amity and antagonism. Barua argues that the characterization of relations between Hindus and Muslims either in terms of an implacable hostility or of an unfragmented peace is historically inaccurate, for these relations were modulated by a shifting array of socio-economic and socio-political parameters. It is within these contexts that Rabindranath, Nazrul, and Annada Shankar are developing their thoughts on Hindus and Muslims through the prisms of religious humanism and universalism.

GOD and JESUS (JE'SU) have given me numerous Visions, Revelations, 'BANDS OF LOVE' from Heaven, (some of the many 'Bands Of Love' I included in this book) countless Blessings, and much more. JESUS Appeared to me in the year 2000 dressed as a KING! Father God had me spend five days in a Cenacle in the year 2004, where much occurred through Divine Intervention - Father and Jesus had me visit a Nursing Home often. Jesus brought Homeless people into my life; one of whom Jesus healed, when doctors told this woman that she would never walk again. Jesus revealed Heaven to me -

Music and Temple Ritual in South India: Performing for Siva explores the musical practices of the periya melam, a South Indian instrumental temple ensemble of professional musicians. The book is much more than a rich and vivid ethnographic description of a local tradition. It also develops a comprehensive and original analytical model, in which music and performance are understood as both situated and creative practices and where the fluid relationship between humans and non-humans, in this case divine beings, is truly taken into consideration.

Narasimha is one of the least studied major deities of Hinduism. Furthermore, there are limited studies of the history, thought, and literature of middle India. Lavanya Vemsani redresses this by exploring a range of primary sources, including classical Sanskrit texts (puranas and epics), and regional accounts (sthalapuranas), which include texts, artistic compositions, and oral folk stories in the regional languages of Telugu, Oriya, and Kannada. She also examines the historical context as well as contemporary practice. Moving beyond the stereotypical classifications applied to sources of Hinduism, this unique study dedicates chapters to each region of middle India bringing together literary, religious, and cultural practices to comprehensively understand the religion of Middle India (Madhya Desha). Incorporating lived religion and textual data, this book offers a rich contribution to Hindu studies and Indian studies in general, and Vaishnava Studies and regional Hinduism in particular.

This extraordinary treatise explores parallel passages from the Bible and the Hindu scriptures to reveal the essential unity of all religions. Swami Sri Yukteswar is renowned as the revered guru of the great pioneer of yoga in the West, Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi). In this remarkable work - composed in the year 1894 at the request of the great Indian sage, Mahavatar Babaji - Sri Yukteswar outlines the universal path that every human being must travel to enlightenment.

This extraordinary treatise explores parallel passages from the Bible and the Hindu scriptures to reveal the essential unity of all religions. Swami Sri Yukteswar is renowned as the revered guru of the great pioneer of yoga in the West, Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography of a Yogi). In this remarkable work - composed in the year 1894 at the request of the great Indian sage, Mahavatar Babaji - Sri Yukteswar outlines the universal path that every human being must travel to enlightenment.

This is a Comprehensive Survey of the Bhakti Movement as it sprang in South India to spread across the subcontinent in independent and multifarious manifestations yet marked with amazing commonalities. Spanning a period of 11 centuries starting from the 6th CE, the movement encompassed in its sweep a vast range of dimensions; Social, political, economic, religious, cultural, linguistic, ethical and philosophical. Among the multifarious movements which contributed to the formation of India and its Culture, the Bhakti was undoubtedly the most pervasive and persistent, says the author. Besides its sweep and depth, what proved most remarkable about the movement was that it arose almost everywhere from the masses who belonged to the lowest class and castes. Though spirituality was its leitmotif, Bhakti proved to be a stirring song of the subaltern in their varied expressions of resistance and revolt. A seemingly conservative phenomenon became a potent weapon against entrenched hierarchies of orthodoxy and oppression, in a wonderful dialectical expression. This qualifies Bhakti movement to be reckoned on a par with European renaissance as it marked a massive upsurge in the societal value system to directly impact a range of fields like arts, politics, culture or religion. Even as he takes note of the elements of reactionary revivalism that also marked the Bhakti movement, the author convincingly argues that those of renaissance and progress far outweighed the former.

The volume deals with the witness and the service of Protestants and Protestant churches in all nations and contexts and sketches Protestantism as a global renewal movement. It is active in the setting of all 171 nations with a non-Protestant religious or secular majority, and in the 28 Protestant majority nations. Protestantism wants to make all people 'mature' and all societies 'responsible.' It made the Bible the most translated book on earth and provided more songs and hymns than any other religion or movement. About 10 % of the world population is Protestant. But the impact of Protestantism on world culture is larger than 10 %. The book highlights the significance of Protestant Noble Peace Prize winners and martyrs. Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are the most influential Protestants in the post-war period. Protestants dream of a universal language, a universal statement of faith, and a universal hymn.

From the Wolfson History Prize-winning author of The Man on Devil's Island, the definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Few thinkers have had so enduring an impact on both Eastern and Western life as Swami Vivekananda, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Westerners to yoga and the universalist school of Hinduism called Vedanta. His teachings fostered a more tolerant form of mainstream spirituality in Europe and North America and forever changed the Western relationship to meditation and spirituality. Guru to the World traces Vivekananda's transformation from son of a Calcutta-based attorney into saffron-robed ascetic. At the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, he fascinated audiences with teachings from Hinduism, Western esoteric spirituality, physics, and the sciences of the mind, in the process advocating a more inclusive conception of religion and expounding the evils of colonialism. Vivekananda won many disciples, most prominently the Irish activist Margaret Noble, who disseminated his ideas in the face of much disdain for the wisdom of a "subject race." At home, he challenged the notion that religion was antithetical to nationalist goals, arguing that Hinduism was intimately connected with Indian identity. Ruth Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda's thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East-West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas.

While Indian visual culture and Tantric images have drawn wide attention, the culture of images, particularly that of the divine images, is broadly misunderstood. This book is the first to systematically address the hermeneutic and philosophical aspects of visualizing images in Tantric practices. While examining the issues of embodiment and emotion, this volume initiates a discourse on image-consciousness, imagination, memory, and recall. The main objective of this book is to explore the meaning of the opaque Tantric forms, and with this, the text aims to introduce visual language to discourse. Language of Images is the result of a long and sustained engagement with Tantric practitioners and philosophical and exegetical texts. Due to its synthetic approach of utilizing multiple ways to read cultural artifacts, this work stands alone in its attempt to unravel the esoteric domains of Tantric practice by means of addressing the culture of visualization.

One of the most dramatic and surprising developments of the last twenty years was the proliferation of aggressive political movements linked to religion. This book examines the interplay of religion and politics in predominantly Hindu India, Islamic Pakistan, and Buddhist Sri Lanka. This collection of studies by internationally known scholars challenges traditional stereotypes and interpretations of South Asian religion and politics and provides a multidisciplinary perspective on contemporary conflicts. While the focus of the work is on Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka, the arguments advanced by the authors are useful for understanding recent developments in religion and politics around the world. An informative introduction overviews the link between religion and political conflict in South Asia and offers a framework and synopsis of the chapters that follow. These are grouped into three parts by nationality. The chapters on India examine recent elections and the growth of militant Hinduism, the impact of caste relations on socio-economic conditions, and the problems of Muslims as the largest religious minority in India. The chapters on Pakistan explore how political and economic changes led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism; the historical relationship among gender, nationalism, and the Islamic state; and the evolution of a capitalist social system in an Islamic nation. The chapters on Sri Lanka explain the role of Buddhist myth in justifying political oppression, the conflict between the ideal of Buddhist pacifism and the reality of political violence, and the impact of race, class, and gender on political conflict. Political scientists, historians, and religion scholars will find this study a timely and valuable addition to their libraries.

A first and coherent enquiry on vernacular religions across Monsoon Asia and critically questioning why they have been frequently alienated in the elitist discourse of mainstream Indic religions.

Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint's influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation transcends routine scholarly discussions about sainthood, cultures of worship, religious objects, Hinduism and Islam. Shirdi Sai Baba's presence conveys inspiration and healing energies and he accepted the entreaties of people of all castes and creeds, offering an alternative to communal ideologies of his time - and the present. Considerations of Shirdi Sai Baba's milieux of devotional praxis situate and localize debates about the meaning of nation and religion, past and present, urbanization, and class identity in transitions from colonial to postcolonial/global South Asia. The book expands the boundaries of the study of Shirdi Sai Baba and makes important contributions to South Asia Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Global Studies, Urban Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Inter-Asian Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Cultural Geography.

The West has drawn upon Hinduism on a wide scale, from hatha yoga and meditation techniques, to popular culture in music and fashion, yet studies to date have only looked tangentially at the contribution of Hinduism to the counter-culture of the 1960s. Hinduism and the 1960s looks at the youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the way in which it was influenced by Hinduism and Indian culture. It examines the origins of the 1960s counter-culture in the Beat movement of the 1950s, and their interest in eastern religion, notably Zen. When the Beatles visited India to study transcendental meditation, there was a rapid expansion in interest in Hinduism. Young people were already heading east on the so-called 'Hippie Trail', looking for spiritual enlightenment and an escape from the material lifestyle of the west. Paul Oliver examines the lifestyle which they adopted, from living in ashrams to experimenting with drugs, sexual liberation, ayurvedic medicine and yoga. Ultimately, Hinduism and the 1960s analyses the interaction between Hinduism and the west, and the way in which each affected the other.Finally, the book discusses the ways in which contemporary western society has learned from the ancient religion of Hinduism, and incorporated such teachings as yoga, meditation and a natural holistic lifestyle, into daily life. Each chapter contains a chapter summary and further reading guidance, and a glossary is included at the end of the book, making this ideal reading for courses on Hinduism, Indian religions, and religion and popular cultur

This book expands the current axiology of theism literature by assessing the axiological status of alternative conceptions of God and the divine. To date, most of the literature on the axiology of theism focuses almost exclusively on the axiological status of theism and atheism. Specifically, it focuses almost entirely on monotheism, typically Judeo-Christian conceptions of God, and atheism, usually construed as ontological naturalism. This volume features essays from prominent philosophers of religion, ethicists, and metaphysicians addressing the value impact of alternative views such as ultimism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, and idealism. Additionally, it reflects a wider trend in analytic philosophy of religion to broaden its scope beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition. Value Beyond Monotheism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in the philosophy of religion, ethics, and metaphysics.

1) This is the first comprehensive book on Mauritian Hinduism. 2) It contains a rich ethnographic study of the changing Mauritian society. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of religion, Hinduism, social anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, diaspora studies, sociology of religion and African studies.