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.

Jeaneane Fowler provides a text and detailed commentary on this important Hindu scripture, which is a dialogue between Arjuna the man and Krishna the God. Major Hindu concepts are examined in depth, and the background to the Gita is presented in a comprehensive introduction. Yoga is the key feature of the Gita but it has its own interpretation of what that yoga should be: thus, yoga features not only in each of the pathways of knowledge, desireless action and devotion, but in the way in which the divine is understood. The chapters of the Bhagavad Gita therefore describe Arjunas despondency followed by The Yoga of Sankhya, Action, Knowledge, Renunciation, Meditation, Knowledge and Realization, the Imperishable Brahman, Royal Knowledge and Royal Mystery, Manifestation, the Vision of the Universal Form, Devotion, the Differentiation of the Kshetra and Kshetrajna, the Differentiation of the Three Gunas, the Supreme Purusha, the Differentiation of the Divine and the Demonic, the Differentiation of the Threefold Shraddha and, finally, The Yoga of Liberation and Renunciation. The book also contains detailed notes to the Gita chapters, a Further Reading section, a combined Glossary and Index of Sanskrit Terms, and an Index of English words. The cover of the book is replete with symbolism. Krishna is always represented as blue in colour, hence the colour of the hands in the cover design. The chariot of Krishna and Arjuna is to be seen in the motif at the base, while the triple motif symbolizes the triple paths of the Gita action without desire for results, knowledge and devotion. There are also three strands that make up all phenomena light and radiance, energy, and inertia, as well as three aspects of the divine in the Gita the totally transcendent Absolute, the manifest deity that is also the essence of all things, and the personal God to whom devotion can be given. The main image of Krishna is superimposed on the roots of the ashvattha tree that features in chapter 15: its branches reach down into the earth and its roots ascend upwards and it represents phenomenal existence.

When the colonial slave trade, and then slavery itself, were abolished early in the 19th century, the British empire brazenly set up a new system of trade using Indian rather than African laborers. The new system of "indentured" labor was supposed to be different from slavery because the indenture, or contract, was written for an initial period of five years and involved fixed wages and some specified conditions of work. From the workers' point of view, the one redeeming feature of the system was that most of their workmates spoke their language and came from the same area of India. Because this allowed them to develop some sense of community, by the end of the initial five years most of the Indian laborers chose to stay in the land to which they had been taken. In time that land became the place in which they joined with others to build a new homeland. In this fieldwork-based study, Paul Younger looks at the present day descendents of these workers and their post-indenture societies in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa. He finds that they still cling to the fact that it was an arbitrary British decision that took them there and made the society pluralistic. This plurality seems to require them to search their memory for a distinctive religious tradition that they can pass on to their children. They know that there was a loss of culture involved in their move to these locations and consider it important to recover from that loss. But they are also intensely proud of their new identity, and insist that they have established a new religious tradition in their new homeland. For generations, says Younger, these people had struggled in their situation and now they had come up with a sense of community and purpose and were prepared to make the historical claim that they had developed an appropriate religious tradition for their specific community.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bhandarkar's Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems, first published in 1913, explores the origins of Vaishnavism by examining its sources of religion, aspects of the Mahabharata, and the Cult of Rama. Bhandarkar also discusses Saivism by exploring its origin and development. This text is ideal for students of theology.

Concerned with the process in Hinduism of reinterpreting classical texts and imbuing them with new inspiration. An example par excellence is Hariram Vyas's Ras-pancadhyayi, the earliest known Braj Bhasa version of the five chapters of Bhagavatapurana on Krsna's Dance with the Gopis.

Hinduism is a concise and readable survey of the history of Hinduism, from its origins in the Indus Valley to its increasing popularity in today's Western world. Focusing particularly on the modern period, it provides a valuable introduction to contemporary Hindu beliefs and practices and looks at the ways in which this religion is meeting the challenges of the modern world.

What is 'evil'? What are the ways of overcoming this destructive and morally recalcitrant phenomenon? To what extent is the use of punitive violence tenable? Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution compares the responses of three modern Indian commentators on the Bhagavad-Gita - Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi. The book reveals that some of the central themes in the Bhagavad-Gita were transformed by these intellectuals into categories of modern socio-political thought by reclaiming them from pre-modern debates on ritual and renunciation. Based on canonical texts, this work presents a fascinating account of how the relationship between 'good', 'evil' and retribution is construed against the backdrop of militant nationalism and the development of modern Hinduism. Amid competing constructions of Indian tradition as well as contemporary concerns, it traces the emerging representations of modern Hindu self-consciousness under colonialism, and its very understanding of evil surrounding a textual ethos. Replete with Sanskrit, English, Marathi, and Gujarati sources, this will especially interest scholars of modern Indian history, philosophy, political science, history of religion, and those interested in the Bhagavad-Gita.

Hinduism in the Modern World presents a new and unprecedented attempt to survey the nature, range, and significance of modern and contemporary Hinduism in South Asia and the global diaspora. Organized to reflect the direction of recent scholarly research, this volume breaks with earlier texts on this subject by seeking to overcome a misleading dichotomy between an elite, intellectualist "modern" Hinduism and the rest of what has so often been misleadingly termed "traditional" or "popular" Hinduism. Without neglecting the significance of modern reformist visions of Hinduism, this book reconceptualizes the meaning of "modern Hinduism" both by expanding its content and by situating its expression within a larger framework of history, ethnography, and contemporary critical theory. This volume equips undergraduate readers with the tools necessary to appreciate the richness and diversity of Hinduism as it has developed during the past two centuries.

The book reflects on the discreet influence of Hindutva in situations/places outside or at the margins of its organisational and mobilisational arena, where people denying any commitment to the Sangh Parivar, incidentally, show affinities and parallelisms with its discourse and practice. This study looks at Hindutva's entrenchment not so much as an orchestration from above but more as an outcome of a process that evolves in relation to specific social and cultural milieus. The contributors analyse Hindutva's entrenchment, emphasising on the ethnography of the forms of mediation and/or convergence produced in certain contexts. The 11 case studies highlight three different dynamics of Hindutva's cultural entrenchment. The first section gathers cases where RSS-affiliated organisations have set up specific cultural or artistic programmes at the regional level, involving the meditation of local people whose interest in these programmes does not necessarily mean that they endorse the Hindutva agenda completely. The next deals with convergence and refers to cases where the followers gather around a charismatic personality, whose precepts and practice may bring them towards a closer affinity with the Hindutva programme. The last section deals with the contexts of resistance, where social milieus engaged in opposing Hindutva may, in fact, paradoxically, and even inadvertently, imbibe some of its ideas and practices in order to contest its claims.

Surprising Bedfellows: Hindus and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern India argues that religious and cultural identities in medieval and early modern India were marked by fluid and constantly shifting relationships rather than by the binary model of opposition that is assumed in so much scholarship. Building on the pioneering work of scholars such as Cynthia Talbot and Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, these chapters seek to understand identity perception through romances, historical documents, ballads and historical epics, inscriptions and even architecture. The chapters in this volume urge readers to reconsider the simple and rigid application of categories such as Hindu and Muslim when studying South Asia's medieval and early modern past. It is only by doing this that we can understand the past and, perhaps, help prevent the dangerous rewriting of Indian history.