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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Hinduism
The Vijayanagara Empire flourished in South India between 1336 and
1565. Conveying the depth and creativity of Hindu religious and
literary expression during that time, Vijayanagara Voices explores
some of the contributions made by poets, singer-saints, and
philosophers. Through translations and discussions of their lives
and times, Jackson presents the voices of these cultural figures
and reflects on the concerns of their era, looking especially into
the vivid images in their works and their legends. He examines how
these images convey both spiritual insights and physical
experiences with memorable candour. The studies also raise
intriguing questions about the empire's origins and its response to
Muslim invaders, its 'Hinduness', and reasons for its ultimate
decline. Vijayanagara Voices is a book about patterns in history,
literature and life in South India. By examining the culture's
archetypal displays, by understanding the culture in its own terms,
and by comparing associated images and ideas from other cultures,
this book offers unique insights into a rich and influential period
in Indian history.
Originally published in 1911, this edition published in 1920, this
text comprises of an excerpt from Carpenter's Adam's Peak to
Elephanta, originally published in 1892, which details his travels
in India and Ceylon. This excerpt in particular details his visit
to a Gnani, or religious wise man, and what he learned of their
ancient wisdom-religion, which would be more recognisable as
Hinduism to a modern reader. This title will be of interest to
students of sociology, anthropology and religious studies.
Autobiography of a Yogi is one of the famous Spiritual Book of the Twentieth Century which is written by Paramahansa Yogananda. In this book he explained memorable findings of the world of saints and yogis and also explained science and miracles, death and resurgence. With soul-satisfying consciousness and endearing wit, he lightens the hidden secrets of life and the world opening our hearts and minds to the happiness, splendour and limitless spiritual capacities that last in the lives of every human being.
This edition has been offered specially from Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, the association established by the writer. The book containing extensive content about all of his desires. Moreover, the book has several high definition pictures. It is a spiritual treasury that will make you understand the meaning of life. Hence this book is real treasure for people who are on a spiritual quest.
In the last few decades, yoga has helped millions of people to
improve their concepts of themselves. Yoga realises that man is not
only the mind, he is body as well. Yoga has been designed in a such
a way that it can complete the process of evolution of the
personality in every possible direction. Kundalini yoga is a part
of the tantric tradition. Even though you may have already been
introduced to yoga, it is necessary to know something about tantra
also. Since the dawn of creation, the tantrics and yogis have
realised that in this physical body there is a potential force. It
is not psychological or transcendental; it is a dynamic potential
force in the material body, and it is called Kundalini. This
Kundalini is the greatest discovery of tantra and yoga. Scientists
have begun to look into this, and a summary of the latest
scientific experiments is included in this book.
Winner, 2021 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences
Winner, 2021 Ruth Benedict Prize, Association for Queer
Anthropology Hijras, one of India's third gendered or trans
populations, have been an enduring presence in the South Asian
imagination-in myth, in ritual, and in everyday life, often
associated in stigmatized forms with begging and sex work. In more
recent years hijras have seen a degree of political emergence as a
moral presence in Indian electoral politics, and with heightened
vulnerability within global health terms as a high-risk population
caught within the AIDS epidemic. Hijras, Lovers, Brothers recounts
two years living with a group of hijras in rural India. In this
riveting ethnography, Vaibhav Saria reveals not just a group of
stigmatized or marginalized others but a way of life composed of
laughter, struggles, and desires that trouble how we read
queerness, kinship, and the psyche. Against easy framings of hijras
that render them marginalized, Saria shows how hijras makes the
normative Indian family possible. The book also shows that
particular practices of hijras, such as refusing to use condoms or
comply with retroviral regimes, reflect not ignorance,
irresponsibility, or illiteracy but rather a specific idiom of
erotic asceticism arising in both Hindu and Islamic traditions.
This idiom suffuses the densely intertwined registers of erotics,
economics, and kinship that inform the everyday lives of hijras and
offer a repertoire of self-fashioning beyond the secular horizons
of public health or queer theory. Engrossingly written and full of
keen insights, the book moves from the small pleasures of the
everyday-laughter, flirting, teasing-to impossible longings,
kinship, and economies of property and substance in order to give a
fuller account of trans lives and of Indian society today.
The Sanskrit Mahabharata (which contains the Bhagavad Gita) is
sorely neglected as a classic - perhaps the classic - of world
literature, and is of particularly timely human importance in
today's globalised and war-torn world. This book is a chronological
survey of the Sanskrit Mahabharata's central royal patriline - a
family tree that is also a list of kings. Brodbeck explores the
importance and implications of patrilineal maintenance within the
royal culture depicted by the text, and shows how patrilineal
memory comes up against the fact that in every generation a wife
must be involved, with the consequent danger that the children
might not sustain the memorial tradition of their paternal family.
The Mahabharata Patriline bridges a gap in text-critical
methodology between the traditional philological approach and more
recent trends in gender and literary theory. Studying the
Mahabharata as an integral literary unit and as a story stretched
over dozens of generations, this book casts particular light on the
events of the more recent generations and suggests that the text's
internal narrators are members of the family whose story they tell.
This comparative study investigates the place of Hindu divorce in
the Indian legal system and considers whether it offers a way out
of a matrimonial crisis situation for women. Using the narratives
of the social actors involved, it poses questions about the
relationship between traditional jurisdictions located in rural
areas and the larger legal culture of towns and cities in India,
and also in the UK and USA. The multidisciplinary approach draws on
research from the social sciences, feminist and legal studies and
will be of interest to students and scholars of law, anthropology
and sociology.
This book is concerned with the argument that religious traditions
are inherently environmentally friendly. Yet in a developing
country such as India, the majority of people cannot afford to put
the 'Earth first' regardless of the extent to which this idea can
be supported by their religious traditions. Does this mean that the
linking of religion and environmental concerns is a strategy more
suited to contexts where people have a level of material security
that enables them to think and act like environmentalists? This
question is approached through a series of case studies from
Britain and India. The book concludes that there is a tension
between the 'romantic' ecological discourse common among many
western activists and scholars, and a more pragmatic approach,
which is often found in India. The adoption of environmental causes
by the Hindu Right in India makes it difficult to distinguish
genuine concern for the environment from the broader politics
surrounding the idea of a Hindu rashtra (nation). This raises a
further level of analysis, which has not been provided in other
studies.
Exploring the philosophical concerns of the nature of self, this
book draws from two of the most influential Indian masters, Sankara
and Santideva. Todd demonstrates that an ethics of altruism is
still possible within a metaphysics which assumes there to be no
independent self. A new ethical model based on the notions of
'flickering consciousness' and 'constructive altruism' is proposed.
By comparing the metaphysics and ethics of Sankara and Santideva,
Todd shows that the methodologies and aims of these Buddhist and
Hindu masters trace remarkably similar cross-cutting paths.
Treating Buddhism and Hinduism with equal respect, this book
compares and reinterprets the Indian material so as to engage with
contemporary Western debates on self and to show that Indian
philosophy is indeed a philosophy of dialogue.
The debates between various Buddhist and Hindu philosophical
systems about the existence, definition and nature of self, occupy
a central place in the history of Indian philosophy and religion.
These debates concern various issues: what 'self' means, whether
the self can be said to exist at all, arguments that can
substantiate any position on this question, how the ordinary
reality of individual persons can be explained, and the
consequences of each position. At a time when comparable issues are
at the forefront of contemporary Western philosophy, in both
analytic and continental traditions (as well as in their
interaction), these classical and medieval Indian debates widen and
globalise such discussions. This book brings to a wider audience
the sophisticated range of positions held by various systems of
thought in classical India.
In the sixteenth century, the saint and scholar Sri Caitanya set in
motion a wave of devotion to Krishna that began in eastern India
and has now found its way around the world. Caitanya taught that
the highest aim of life is to develop selfless love for God
Krishna, the blue-hued cowherd boy who spoke the Bhagavad Gita.
Although only a handful of poetry is attributed to Caitanya, his
devotional theology was expounded and systematized by his followers
in a vast array of poetical, philosophical, and ritual literature.
This book provides a thematic study of Caitanya Vaishnava
philosophy, introducing key thinkers and ideas in the early
tradition, using Sanskrit and Bengali sources that have seldom been
studied in English. The book addresses major areas of the
tradition, including epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics,
and history, and every chapter includes relevant readings from
primary sources.
The Radha Tantra is an anonymous 17th century tantric text from
Bengal. The text offers a lively picture of the meeting of
different religious traditions in 17th century Bengal, since it
presents a Sakta version of the famous Vaisnava story of Radha and
Krsna. This book presents a critically edited text of the Radha
Tantra, based on manuscripts in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, as
well as an annotated translation It is prefaced by an introduction
that situates the text in its social and historical context and
discusses its significance. The introduction also looks at the
composition and metrics, vocabulary and grammar, and contents and
doctrine of the text. It also includes a discussion of the
extensive intertextualities of the Radha Tantra, as well as the
sources used for this edition. The Sanskrit text in Roman
transliteration, following the standard IAST system, is then
presented, followed by an English translation of the text. This
book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Religion,
Tantric Studies and Religious History.
When the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed
power in India in 1998 as the largest party of the National
Democratic Alliance, it soon became evident that it prioritized
educational reforms. Under BJP rule, a reorganization of the
National Council of Educational Research and Training occurred, and
in 2002 four new history textbooks were published. This book
examines the new textbooks which were introduced, considering them
to be integral to the BJP's political agenda. It analyses the ways
in which their narrative and explanatory frameworks defined and
invoked Hindu identity. Employing the concept of
decontextualization, the author argues that notions of Hindu
cultural similarity were conveyed, particularly as the textbooks
paid scarce attention to social, geographical and temporal contexts
in their approaches to Indian history. The book shows that
intrinsic to the textbooks' emphasis on similarity is a systematic
backgrounding of any references to internal lines of division
within the Hindu community. Through a comparison with earlier
textbooks, it sheds light on the contested nature of history
writing in India, especially in terms of nation building and
identity construction. This issue is also highly relevant in India
today due to the electoral success of the BJP in 2014, and the
efforts of the Hindu nationalist organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad
to construct a coherent Hinduism. Arguing that the textbooks
operate according to the BJP's ideology of Hindu cultural
nationalism, this book will be of interest to academics in the
field of South Asian studies, contemporary history, the uses of
history, identity politics and Hindu nationalism.
First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
Study of some 150 Hindu families (and about 1000 persons) living in
Edinburgh, and particularly about the fact that two associations
exist among them, one of which is based on activities at a temple.
This volume focuses on the religious shrine in western India as an
institution of cultural integration in the period spanning 200 BCE
to 800 CE. It presents an analysis of religious architecture at
multiple levels, both temporal and spatial, and distinguishes it as
a ritual instrument that integrates individuals and communities
into a cultural fabric. The work shows how these structures
emphasise on communication with a host of audiences such as the lay
worshipper, the ritual specialist, the royalty and the elite as
well as the artisan and the sculptor. It also examines religious
imagery, inscriptions, traditional lore and Sanskrit literature.
The book will be of special interest to researchers and scholars of
ancient Indian history, Hinduism, religious studies, architecture
and South Asian studies.
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
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.
The state of Goa on India's southwest coast was once the capital of
the Portuguese-Catholic empire in Asia. When Vasco Da Gama arrived
in India in 1498, he mistook Hindus for Christians, but Jesuit
missionaries soon declared war on the alleged idolatry of the
Hindus. Today, Hindus and Catholics assert their own religious
identities, but Hindu village gods and Catholic patron saints
attract worship from members of both religious communities. Through
fresh readings of early Portuguese sources and long-term
ethnographic fieldwork, this study traces the history of
Hindu-Catholic syncretism in Goa and reveals the complex role of
religion at the intersection of colonialism and modernity.
This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and
in regional and sectarian versions of the Ramayana. Contributors
explore in what ways the versions relate to other Ramayana texts as
they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit
in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and
descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative
variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an
analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rama tradition through
time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's
lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of
female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual
variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and
sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these
alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the
Ramayana, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields
of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural
Studies.
Deepak Chopra considers the mystery of our existence and its
significance in our eternal quest for happiness. Who am I? Where
did I come from? Where do I go when I die? "Chopra draws upon the
ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the findings of modern science to
help us understand and experience our true nature, which is a field
of pure consciousness. When we understand our true nature, we begin
to live from the source of true happiness, which is not mere
happiness for this or that reason, but true inner joy. When we know
who we are, we allow the universe to flow through us with
effortless ease, and our lives are infused with power, freedom, and
grace.
The essays presented in this volume constitute a progression from
general considerations related to the 'ethic' (in the geertzian
sense of the word) approach to South Asian cultural productions, to
peculiar and detailed investigations of them. Such a sequence is
meant to develop a renovated and systemic approach, through which
these specific cultural materials should be interpreted: materials
not to be read in isolation, nor with an overemphasised concern for
cultural relativity. Rather, they should be viewed as meaningful
examples of sophisticated intellectual and cultural procedures to
be included into a broader comparative discussion, also in order to
increase the quality and the depth of such debate.
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