The poetry emanating from the bhakti tradition of devotional love in India has been both a religious expression and a form of resistance to hierarchies of caste, gender, and colonialism. Some scholars have read this art form through the lens of resistance and reform, but others have responded that imposing an interpretive framework on these poems fails to appreciate their authentic expressions of devotion. This book argues that these declarations of love and piety can simultaneously represent efforts towards emancipation at the spiritual, political, and social level. This book, through a close study of Nalini (1911), a Malayalam lyric poem, as well as other poems, authored by Mahakavi Kumaran Asan (1873-1924), a low-caste Kerala poet, demonstrates how Asan employed a theme of love among humans during the modern period in Kerala that was grounded in the native South Indian bhakti understanding of love of the deity. Asan believed that personal religious freedom comes from devotion to the deity, and that love for humans must emanate from love of the deity. In showing how devotional religious expression also served as a resistance movement, this study provides new perspective on an understudied area of the colonial period. Bringing to light an under-explored medium, in both religious and artistic terms, this book will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, Hindu studies, and religion and literature, as well as academics with an interest in Indian culture.

Imagining Hinduism examines how Hinduism has been defined, interpreted and manufactured through Western categorizations, from the foreign interventions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Orientalists and missionaries to the present day. Sugirtharajah argues that ever since early Orientalists 'discovered' the ancient Sanskrit texts and the Hindu 'golden age', the West has nurtured a complex and ambivalent fascination with Hinduism, ranging from romantic admiration to ridicule. At the same time, Hindu discourse has drawn upon Orientalist representations in order to redefine Hindu identity.
As the first comprehensive work to bring postcolonial critique to the study of Hinduism, this is essential reading for a full understanding of Hinduism.

The East-West dialogue increasingly seeks to compare and clarify contrasting views on the nature of consciousness. For the Eastern liberatory models, where a nondual view of consciousness is primary, the challenge lies in articulating how consciousness and the manifold contents of consciousness are singular. Western empirical science, on the other hand, must provide a convincing account of how consciousness arises from matter. By placing the theories of Jung and Patanjali in dialogue with one another, Consciousness in Jung and Patanjali illuminates significant differences between dual and nondual psychological theory and teases apart the essential discernments that theoreticians must make between epistemic states and ontic beliefs. Patanjali's Classical Yoga, one of the six orthodox Hindu philosophies, is a classic of Eastern and world thought. Patanjali teaches that notions of a separate egoic "I" are little more than forms of mistaken identity that we experience in our attempts to take ownership of consciousness. Carl Jung's depth psychology, which remains deeply influential to psychologists, religious scholars, and artists alike, argues that ego-consciousness developed out of the unconscious over the course of evolution. By exploring the work of key theoreticians from both schools of thought, particularly those whose ideas are derived from an integration of theory and practice, Whitney explores the extent to which the seemingly irremediable split between Jung and Patanjali's ontological beliefs can in fact be reconciled. This thorough and insightful work will be essential reading for academics, theoreticians, and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy of science, and consciousness studies. It will also appeal to those interested in the East-West psychological and philosophical dialogue.

Winner of the Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies Prize (2013/2014) from the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The Gita is a central text in Hindu traditions, and commentaries on it express a range of philosophical-theological positions. Two of the most significant commentaries are by Sankara, the founder of the Advaita or Non-Dualist system of Vedic thought and by Ramanuja, the founder of the Visistadvaita or Qualified Non-Dualist system. Their commentaries offer rich resources for the conceptualization and understanding of divine reality, the human self, being, the relationship between God and human, and the moral psychology of action and devotion. This book approaches their commentaries through a study of the interaction between the abstract atman (self) and the richer conception of the human person. While closely reading the Sanskrit commentaries, Ram-Prasad develops reconstructions of each philosophical-theological system, drawing relevant and illuminating comparisons with contemporary Christian theology and Western philosophy.

This is the fascinating biography, first published in 1985, of the remarkable Bengali religious leader Swami Pranavananda who lived in the turbulent years of the early twentieth century. The story of his life has to some extent been eclipsed by the struggle for Indian independence, but his extraordinary personal qualities, his determined asceticism, his high ideals of social service and commitment to Hindu solidarity all serve to set him apart from his contemporaries and entitle him to be better known by political and religious historians of the period.

Yoga, karma, meditation, guru--these terms, once obscure, are now a part of the American lexicon. Combining Hinduism with Western concepts and values, a new hybrid form of religion has developed in the United States over the past century. In Transcendent in America, Lola Williamson traces the history of various Hindu-inspired movements in America, and argues that together they constitute a discrete category of religious practice, a distinct and identifiable form of new religion.

Williamson provides an overview of the emergence of these movements through examining exchanges between Indian Hindus and American intellectuals such as Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and illuminates how Protestant traditions of inner experience paved the way for Hindu-style movements' acceptance in the West.

Williamson focuses on three movements--Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga--as representative of the larger of phenomenon of Hindu-inspired meditation movements. She provides a window into the beliefs and practices of followers of these movements by offering concrete examples from their words and experiences that shed light on their world view, lifestyle, and relationship with their gurus. Drawing on scholarly research, numerous interviews, and decades of personal experience with Hindu-style practices, Williamson makes a convincing case that Hindu-inspired meditation movements are distinct from both immigrant Hinduism and other forms of Asian-influenced or "New Age" groups.

Faced with unrelenting stresses from daily news, relationships, health, and financial conditions, and unsatisfied with the temporary and side-effect-riddled relief that pharmaceuticals provide, millions are finding measures of peace and positive energy through mindful breathing practices. In this book, Stanislav Grof, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Sonia Gilbert, Sheldon Kramer, Ilse Middendorf, Michael Sky, Puran Bair, and other well-known experts and international workshop leaders take up a wide range of Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern breathing practices, describing the historical development of these techniques and philosophies, and providing examples of modern practices, stories of healing, and specific exercises for application.

In Integrative Spirituality, Patrick J. Mahaffey elucidates spirituality as a developmental process that is enhanced by integrating the teachings and practices of multiple religious traditions, Jungian depth psychology, and contemplative yoga. In the postmodern world of religious pluralism, Mahaffey compellingly argues that each of us must fashion a unique path to wholeness which integrates aspects of life and of the self that have become disconnected and disowned. Integrative Spirituality uniquely conjoins four components: exemplary religious pluralists from three traditions, individuation, the forms of contemplative Hindu yoga that have been successfully transmitted to the West, and a presentation of two models for integrating psychological growth and spiritual awakening. The book presents pioneering practitioners in each field who exemplify how we may fashion our own approach to integrating both spiritual awakening and psychological development and delineates an array of spiritual practices that integrate the somatic, psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual aspects of life. Ultimately, Mahaffey contends that integrative spirituality is a mode of being that fully embraces the divinity inherent in each of us and in the world. Integrative Spirituality will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, transpersonal and Jungian psychology, and religious studies and contemplative education. It will also be of interest to analytical and depth psychologists in practice and in training, and to anyone seeking a greater understanding of spirituality, psychological growth, religious traditions, individuation, and contemplative yoga.

In Indian mythological texts like the Mahabharata and Ramayana, there are recurrent tales about gleaners. The practice of "gleaning" in India had more to do with the house-less forest life than with residential village or urban life or with gathering residual post-harvest grains from cultivated fields. Gleaning can be seen a metaphor for the Mahabharata poets' art: an art that could have included their manner of gleaning what they made the leftovers (what they found useful) from many preexistent texts into Vyasa's "entire thought"-including oral texts and possibly written ones, such as philosophical debates and stories. This book explores the notion of non-violence in the epic Mahabharata. In examining gleaning as an ecological and spiritual philosophy nurtured as much by hospitality codes as by eating practices, the author analyses the merits and limitations of the 9th century Kashmiri aesthetician Anandavardhana that the dominant aesthetic sentiment or rasa of the Mahabharata is shanta (peace). Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent reading of the Mahabharata via the Bhagavad Gita are also studied. This book by one of the leaders in Mahabharata studies is of interest to scholars of South Asian Literary Studies, Religious Studies as well as Peace Studies, South Asian Anthropology and History.

Sanskrit Debate: Vasubandhu's 'Vimsatika' versus Kumarila's 'Niralambanavada' illustrates the rules and regulations of classical Indian debate literature (pramanasastra) by introducing new translations of two Sanskrit texts composed in antithesis to each other's tradition of thought and practice. In the third century CE, Vasubandhu, a Buddhist philosopher-monk, proposed that the entire world of lived experience is a matter of mind only through his Vimsatika (Twenty Verses). In the seventh century CE, Kumarila, a Hindu philosopher-priest, composed Niralambanavada (Non-Sensory Limit Debate) to establish the objective reality of objects by refuting Vasubandhu's claim that objects experienced in waking life are not different from objects experienced in dreams. Kumarila rigorously employs formal rules and regulations of Indian logic and debate to demonstrate that Vasubandhu's assertion is totally irrational and incoherent. Vimsatika ranks among the world's most misunderstood texts but Kumarila's historic refutation allows Vimsatika to be read in its own text-historical context. This compelling, radically revolutionary re-reading of Vimsatika delineates a hermeneutic of humor indispensable to discerning its medicinal message. In Vimsatika, Vasubandhu employs the form of professional Sanskrit logic and debate as a guise and a ruse to ridicule the entire enterprise of Indian philosophy. Vasubandhu critiques all Indian theories of epistemology and ontology and claims that both how we know and what we know are acts of the imagination.

Jarrod L. Whitaker examines the ritualized poetic construction of male identity in the Rgveda, India's oldest Sanskrit text, arguing that an important aspect of early Vedic life was the sustained promotion and embodiment of what it means to be a true man. The Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed primarily to three gods: the deified ritual Fire, Agni; the war god, Indra; and Soma, who is none other than the personification of the sacred beverage soma. The hymns were sung in day-long fire rituals in which poet-priests prepared the sacred drink to empower Indra. The dominant image of Indra is that of a highly glamorized, violent, and powerful Aryan male; the three gods represent the ideals of manhood.
Whitaker finds that the Rgvedic poet-priests employed a fascinating range of poetic and performative strategies--some explicit, others very subtle--to construct their masculine ideology, while justifying it as the most valid way for men to live. Poet-priests naturalized this ideology by encoding it within a man's sense of his body and physical self. Rgvedic ritual rhetoric and practices thus encode specific male roles, especially the role of man as warrior, while embedding these roles in a complex network of social, economic, and political relationships.
Strong Arms and Drinking Strength is the first book in English to examine the relationship between Rgvedic gods, ritual practices, and the identities and expectations placed on men in ancient India."

In the early sixteenth century, a charismatic Bengali Brahmin, Visvambhara Misra, inspired communities of worshipers in Bengal, Orissa, and Vraja with his teachings. Misra took the ascetic name Krsna Caitanya, and his devotees quickly came to believe he was divine. The spiritual descendents of these initial followers today comprise the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement, one of the most vibrant religious groups in all of South Asia.
In The Final Word, Tony Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish. The answer, he argues, can be found in a brilliant Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographical exercise: the Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasasa Kaviraja. Written some seventy-five years after Caitanya's passing, Krsnadasa's text gathered and synthesized the divergent theological perspectives and ritual practices that had proliferated during and after Caitanya's life. It has since become the devotional standard of the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement.
The text's power, Stewart argues, derives from its sophisticated use of rhetoric. The Caitanya Caritamrta persuades its readers covertly, appearing to defer its arrogated authority to Caitanya himself. Though the text started out as a hagiography like so many others-an index of appropriate beliefs and ritual practices that points the way to salvation-its influence has grown far beyond that. Over the centuries it has become an icon, a metonym of the tradition itself. On occasion today it can even be seen worshiped alongside images of Krsna and Caitanya on altars in Bengal.
In tracing the origins, literary techniques, and dissemination of the Caitanya Caritamrta, Stewart has unlocked the history of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas, explaining the improbable unity of a dynamic religious group.

Hindu and Christian debates over the meanings, motivations, and modalities of 'conversion' provide the central connecting theme running through this book. It focuses on the reasons offered by both sides to defend or oppose the possibility of these cross-border movements, and shows how these reasons form part of a wider constellation of ideas, concepts, and practices of the Christian and the Hindu worlds. The book draws upon several historical case-studies of Christian missionaries and of Hindus who encountered these missionaries. By analysing some of the complex negotiations, intersections, and conflicts between Hindus and Christians over the question of 'conversion', it demonstrates that these encounters revolve around three main contested themes. Firstly, who can properly 'speak for the convert'? Secondly, how is 'tolerating' the religious other connected to an appraisal of the other's viewpoints which may be held to be incorrect, inadequate, or incomplete? Finally, what is, in fact, the 'true Religion'? The book demonstrates that it is necessary to wrestle with these questions for an adequate understanding of the Hindu and Christian debates over 'conversion.' Questioning what 'conversion' precisely is, and why it has been such a volatile issue on India's political-legal landscape, the book will be a useful contribution to studies of Hinduism, Christianity and Asian Religion and Philosophy.

Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation explores Hinduism and the distinction between the secular and religious on a global scale. According to Ranganathan, a careful philosophical study of Hinduism reveals it as the microcosm of philosophical disagreements with Indian resources, across a variety of topics, including: ethics, logic, the philosophy of thought, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. This analysis offers an original and fresh diagnosis of studying Hinduism, colonialism, and a global rise of hyper-nationalism, as well as the frequent acrimony between scholars and practitioners of Hindu traditions. This text is appropriate for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on Hinduism, and Indian philosophy, and can be used as an advanced introduction to the problems of philosophy with South Asian resources.

In Yoga and the Luminous, a book that emerges from more than thirty years of practice, study, and reflection, Christopher Key Chapple addresses the need for an accessible explanation of Yoga's difficult philosophy and its applications in daily life. Yoga practice takes an individual on an inward journey, and through Yoga, one enters a rarefied state of consciousness, a transparency and luminosity described by its great philosopher Patanjali as being "like a clear jewel." Exploring Yoga through the prism of practice, Chapple begins with a historical overview of the many Yogic traditions in Indian religions. He continues with Yoga practice and the philosophy of Sāmkhya, and then, in step-by-step fashion, he brings the reader to an understanding of the ethics of Yoga, the role of movement and breath, and the processes of concentration and meditation. Finally, building on the root metaphor of luminosity and light, Chapple explains the applications of Yoga in daily life.

The Mahavidyas are the representative Tantric feminine pantheon consisting of ten goddesses. It is formed by divergent religious strands and elements: the matr and yogini worship, the cult of Kali and Tripurasundari, Vajrayana Buddhism, Jain Vidyadevis, Saiva and Vaisnava faith, Srividya, the Brahmanical strand of Puranic traditions, etc. This volume is the first attempt to explore the historical process, through which these traditions culminated in the Mahavidya cult and the goddesses with different origins and contradictory attributes were brought into a cluster, with special reference to socio-political changes in the lower Ganga and Brahmaputra Valley between the 9th and 15th centuries CE. Based on a close analysis of Puranas, Tantras and inscriptional evidence, and on extensive field research on archaeological remains as well as sacred sites, Jae-Eun Shin discusses the two trajectories of the Mahavidyas in eastern Sakta traditions. Each led to the systematization of Dasamahavidyas in a specific way: one, as ten manifestations of Durga upholding dharma in the cosmic dimension, and the other, as ten mandalic goddesses bearing magical powers in the actual sacred site. Their attributes and characteristics have neither been static nor monolithic, and the mode of worship prescribed for them has changed in a dialectical religious process between Brahmanical and Tantric traditions of the region. This is the definitive work for anyone seeking to understand goddess cults of South Asia in general and the history of eastern Sakta traditions in particular. To aid study, the volume includes images, diagrams and maps. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The Great Goddess, in her various puranic and tantric forms, is often figured as sitting on a corpse which is identified as Shiva-as-shava (God Shiva, the consort of the Devi and an iconic representation of the Absolute without attributes, the Nirguna Brahman). Hence, most of the existing critical works and ethnographic studies on Shaktism and the tantras have focused on the theological and symbolic paraphernalia of the corpses which operate as the asanas (seats) of the Devi in her various iconographies. This book explores the figurations of the Goddess as corpse in several Hindu puranic and Shakta-tantric texts, popular practices, folk belief systems, legends and various other cultural phenomena based on this motif. It deals with a more intricate and fundamental issue than existing works on the subject: how and why is the Devi - herself - figured as a corpse in the Shakta texts, belief systems and folk practices associated with the tantras? The issues which have been raised in this book include: how does death become a complement to life within this religious epistemology? How does one learn to live with death, thereby lending new definitions and new epistemic and existential dimensions to life and death? And what is the relation between death and gender within this kind of figuration of the Goddess as death and dead body? Analysing multiple mythic narratives, hymns and scriptural texts where the Devi herself is said to take the form of the Shava (the corpse) as well as the Shakti who animates dead matter, this book focuses not only on the concept of the theological equivalence of the Shava (Shiva as corpse) and the Shakti (Energy) in tantras but also on the status of the Divine Mother as the Great Bridge between the apparently irreconcilable opposites, the mediatrix between Spirit and Matter, death and life, existence-in-stasis and existence-in-kinesis. This book makes an important contribution to the fields of Hindu Studies, Goddess Spirituality, South Asian Religions, Women and Religion, India, Studies in Shaktism and Tantra, Cross-cultural Religious Studies, Gender Studies, Postcolonial Spirituality and Ecofeminism.

The historical shift from Vedic traditions to post-Vedic bhakti (devotional) traditions is accompanied by a shift from abstract, translocal notions of divinity to particularized, localized notions of divinity and a corresponding shift from aniconic to iconic traditions and from temporary sacrificial arenas to established temple sites. In Bhakti and Embodiment Barbara Holdrege argues that the various transformations that characterize this historical shift are a direct consequence of newly emerging discourses of the body in bhakti traditions in which constructions of divine embodiment proliferate, celebrating the notion that a deity, while remaining translocal, can appear in manifold corporeal forms in different times and different localities on different planes of existence. Holdrege suggests that an exploration of the connections between bhakti and embodiment is critical not only to illuminating the distinctive transformations that characterize the emergence of bhakti traditions but also to understanding the myriad forms that bhakti has historically assumed up to the present time. This study is concerned more specifically with the multileveled models of embodiment and systems of bodily practices through which divine bodies and devotional bodies are fashioned in Krsna bhakti traditions and focuses in particular on two case studies: the Bhagavata Purana, the consummate textual monument to Vaisnava bhakti, which expresses a distinctive form of passionate and ecstatic bhakti that is distinguished by its embodied nature; and the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, an important bhakti tradition inspired by the Bengali leader Caitanya in the sixteenth century, which articulates a robust discourse of embodiment pertaining to the divine bodies of Krsna and the devotional bodies of Krsna bhaktas that is grounded in the canonical authority of the Bhagavata Purana.

Includes a range of voices - such as women and Hindus in the diaspora - which are often excluded or given short shrift in other textbooks, so that readers are provided with a more comprehensive overview of the tradition. Explores both the commonalities and differences between the various aspects of Hindu traditions to introduce students to their complexity and diversity. Explores the rise of Hindu nationalism and other developments of the 21st Century to ensure that this is the most up-to-date introduction to Hinduism available.

See the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

aEloquently written. . . . Highly Recommended.a--"G.R. Thursby, Choice"

aLongtime Hare Krishna observer Rochford shows that devotees, formerly known for their public chanting and controversial fundraising practices, have largely moved out of the temples, taken jobs, and established nuclear families. Using survey data and extensive interviews, Rochford investigates the attitudes of the original members' children (some of whom suffered abuse in the early Hare Krishna schools), the changing roles of women, differing modes of affiliation with the organization, and the increasing influence of Indian Hindu immigrants in what is formally known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). His findings are generally clear and convincing, and he lets the devotees speak for themselves in frequent quotes. . . . This story of accommodation within a movement that forged its identity through strict rejection of secular culture provides valuable insight into how new religions evolve.a
--"Publishers Weekly"

"Burke Rochford is the most notable scholarly interpreter of Krishna Consciousness in America, and Hare Krishna Transformed is the most insightful and informative book written on the organizational evolution of the movement."
--David G. Bromley, Virginia Commonwealth University

Most widely known for its adherents chanting "Hare Krishna" and distributing religious literature on the streets of American cities, the Hare Krishna movement was founded in New York City in 1965 by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Formally known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON, it is based on theHindu Vedic scriptures and is a Western outgrowth of a popular yoga tradition which began in the 16th century.

In its first generation ISKCON actively deterred marriage and the nuclear family, denigrated women, and viewed the raising of children as a distraction from devotees' spiritual responsibilities. Yet since the death of its founder in 1977, there has been a growing women's rights movement and also a highly publicized child abuse scandal. Most strikingly, this movement has transformed into one that now embraces the nuclear family and is more accepting of both women and children, steps taken out of necessity to sustain itself as a religious movement into the next generation. At the same time, it is now struggling to contend with the consequences of its recent outreach into the India-born American Hindu community.

Based on three decades of in-depth research and participant observation, Hare Krishna Transformed explores dramatic changes in this new religious movement over the course of two generations from its founding.

It is by fitting the world into neatly defined boxes that Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain philosophers were able to gain unparalleled insights into the nature of reality, God, language and thought itself. Such categories aimed to encompass the universe, the mind and the divine within an all-encompassing system, from linguistics to epistemology, logic and metaphysics, theology and the nature of reality. Shedding light on the way in which Indian philosophical traditions crafted an elaborate picture of the world, this book brings Indian thinkers into dialogue with modern philosophy and global concerns. For those interested in philosophical traditions in general, this book will establish a foundation for further comparative perspectives on philosophy. For those concerned with the understanding of Indic culture, it will provide a platform for the continued renaissance of research into India's rich philosophical traditions.

Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging focuses on the Heraka, a religious reform movement, and its impact on the Zeme, a Naga tribe, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. Drawing upon critical studies of religion, cultural/ethnic identity, and nationalism, archival research in both India and Britain, and fieldwork in Assam, the book initiates new grounds for understanding the evolving notions of reform and identity in the emergence of a Heraka religion. Arkotong Longkumer argues that reform and identity are dynamically inter-related and linked to the revitalisation and negotiation of both tradition legitimising indigeneity, and change legitimising reform. The results have deepened, yet challenged, not only prevailing views of the Western construction of the category religion but also understandings of how marginalised communities use collective historical imagination to inspire self-identification through the discourse of religion. In conclusion, this book argues for a re-evaluation of the way in which multi-religious traditions interact to reshape identities and belongings.