A detailed historical anthropology of Ayodhya, which argues that religious values "can" reflect political and economic processes.

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.

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.

Despite the history that divides them, Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity have much in common. In The Human Icon, Christine Mangala Frost explores how both religions seek to realise the divine potential of every human being, and the differences in their approach. Frost, who has experienced both the extraordinary riches and the all-too-human failings of Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity from the inside, is perfectly placed to examine the convergences and divergences between the two faiths. Inspired by a desire to clear up the misunderstandings that exist between the two, The Human Icon is a study in how two faiths, superficially dissimilar, can nevertheless find meeting points everywhere. The powerful intellectual and spiritual patristic traditions of Orthodox Christianity offer a rare tool for revitalising too-often stalled dialogue with Hinduism and present the chance for a broader and more diverse understanding of the oldest religion in the world. Tracing the long history of Orthodox Christianity in India, from the Thomas Christians of ancient times to the distinctive theology of Paulos Mar Gregorios and the Kottayam School, Frost explores the impact of Hindu thought on Indian Christianity and considers the potential for confluence. With a breadth of interest that spans Hindu bhakti, Orthodox devotional theology, Vedanta and theosis, as well as meditational Yoga and hesychastic prayer, Frost offers a fresh perspective on how the devotees of both faiths approach the ideal of divinisation, and presents a thoughtful, modern methodology for a dialogue of life.

"A marvellous introductory text, well-organized and clearly written. The renditions of stories are readable and engaging." --Edward T. Gilday, Bowdoin College

Reciting the Goddess is the first book-length study of Nepal's goddess Svasthani and the popular Svasthanivratakatha textual tradition. In the centuries following its origin as a simple local legend in the sixteenth century, the Svasthanivratakatha developed into a comprehensive Purana text that is still widely celebrated today among Nepal's Hindus with an annual month-long recitation. Jessica Birkenholtz uses the Svasthanivratakatha as a medium through which to view the ways in which political and cultural shifts among Nepal's ruling elite were taken up by the general public. Drawing on both archival and ethnographic research, the book examines Svasthani and the Svasthanivratakatha within the shifting literary, linguistic, religious, cultural, and political contexts of medieval and modern Nepal from the sixteenth century to the present. It also explores both the complementary and contentious relationships between Nepal's heterogeneous Newar Hindu and high-caste hill Hindu communities, and those of Nepal as a Hindu kingdom vis-a-vis Hindu India. Reciting the Goddess brings the Svasthani devotional tradition to light as a new case study in the discussion of the making of Hindu religious identity and practice in Nepal and South Asia.

The Mahabharata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction. This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic's problematisation of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary approaches, the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahabharata, including those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical and political ramifications for contemporary times. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender, South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahabharata.

This is a timely introduction to the poetry and prose of the renowned Indian guru, Sri H. W. L. Poonja. These wise and deeply spiritual selections are from the "Satsangs", or "Truths", recorded in Poonja's comprehensive The Truth Is, and they distill the essence of his teachings into a shorter, more portable collection.

This is the first critical edition in transcription with facing English translation of a medieval Sanskrit text that is known in most parts of India, especially in Bengal. The Krsnakarnamrta ("Nectar to the Ears of Krishna") is a devotional anthology of stanzas in praise of the youthful Krishna, "the dark blue boy," "Lord of Life," lover of the milkmaids in Indian legend, and an incarnation of the great God Vishnu. Of its importance there can be no doubt: for many devout Indians it is a Book of Common Prayer, whose short and ardent hymns to the Lord Krishna come frequently and familiarly to mind. Frances Wilson here provides a masterly English translation of this moving expression of religious adoration. Collating over seventy manuscripts, she has established an authoritative Sanskrit text, including its literary and critical history. In the full introduction, she discusses the legends that have arisen about its author, the mysterious L&#299lasuka Bilvamangala. Medieval Sanskrit studies have in the past been much neglected by European scholars. In breaking free of the classical traditions of Sanskrit philology, Wilson has produced a work that is of profound relevance to the study of Indian civilization today.

With historical-critical analysis and dialogical even-handedness, the essays of this book re-assess the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda, forged at a time of colonial suppression, from the vantage point of socially-engaged religion at a time of global dislocations and international inequities. Due to the complexity of Vivekananda as a historical figure on the cusp of late modernity with its vast transformations, few works offer a contemporary, multi-vocal, nuanced, academic examination of his liberative vision and legacy in the way that this volume does. It brings together North American, European, British, and Indian scholars associated with a broad array of humanistic disciplines towards critical-constructive, contextually-sensitive reflections on one of the most important thinkers and theologians of the modern era.

The fifth and most popular book of the Ramayana of Valmiki, Sundara recounts the adventures of the monkey hero Hanuman leaping across the ocean to the island citadel of Lanka. Once there, he scours the city for the abducted Princess Sita. The poet vividly describes the opulence of the court of the demon king, Ravana, the beauty of his harem, and the hideous deformity of Sita's wardresses. After witnessing Sita's stern rejection of Ravana's blandishments, Hanuman reveals himself to the princess, shows her Rama's signet ring as proof of identity, and offers to carry her back to Rama.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Religious texts are not stable objects, passed down unchanged through generations. The way in which religious communities receive their scriptures changes over time and in different social contexts. This book considers religious reading through a study of the Pushtimarg, a Hindu community whose devotional practices and community identity have developed in close relationship with Varta Sahitya (Chronicle Literature), a genre of Hindi prose hagiography written during the 17th century. Through hagiographies that narrate the relationships between the deity Krishna and the Pushtimarg's early leaders and their disciples, these hagiographies provide community history, theology, vicarious epiphany, and models of devotion. While steeped in the social world of early-modern north India, these texts have continued to be immensely popular among generations of modern devotees, whose techniques of reading and exegesis allow them to maintain the narratives as primary guides for devotional living in Gujarat-the western state of India where the Pushtimarg thrives today. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with close readings of Hindi and Gujarati texts, the book examines how members of the community engage with the hagiographies through recitation and dialogue in temples and homes, through commentary and translation in print publications and on the Internet, and even through debates in courts of law. The book argues that these acts of "reading" inform and are informed by both intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and also by politically potent disputes over matters such as temple governance. By studying the texts themselves, as well as the social contexts of their reading, Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism provides a distinct example of how changing class, regional, and gender identities continue to shape interpretations of a scriptural canon, and how, in turn, these interpretations influence ongoing projects of self and community fashioning.

This is the fourth volume of a translation of India's most beloved and influential epic tale--the Ramayana of Valmiki. As befits its position at the center of the work, Volume IV presents the hero Rama at the turning point of his fortunes. Having previously lost first his kingship and then his wife, he now forms an alliance with the monkey prince, Sugriva. Rama needs the monkeys to help him find his abducted wife, Sita, and they do finally discover where her abductor has taken her. But first Rama must agree to secure for his new ally the throne of the monkey kingdom by eliminating the reigning king, Sugriva's detested elder brother, Valin. The tragic rivalry between the two monkey brothers is in sharp contrast to Rama's affectionate relationship with his own brothers and forms a self-contained episode within the larger story of Rama's adventures. This volume continues the translation of the critical edition of the Valmiki Ramayana, a version considerably reduced from the vulgate on which all previous translations were based. It is accompanied by extensive notes on the original Sanskrit text and on several untranslated early Sanskrit commentaries.

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.

What role do pre-modern religious traditions play in the formation of modern secular identities? In Unforgetting Chaitanya, Varuni Bhatia examines late-nineteenth-century transformations of Vaishnavism-a vibrant and multifaceted religious tradition emanating from the Krishna devotee Chaitnaya (1486-1533)-in Bengal. Drawing on an extensive body of hitherto unexamined archival material, Bhatia finds that both Vaishnava modernizers and secular voices among the educated middle-class invoked Chaitanya, portraying him simultaneously as a local hero, a Hindu reformer, and as God almighty. She argues that these claims should be understood in relation to efforts to recover a "pure" Bengali culture and history at a time of rising anti-colonial sentiment. In the late nineteenth century, debates around questions of authenticity appeared prominently in the Bengali public sphere. These debates went on for years, even decades, causing unbridgeable rifts in personal friendships and tarnishing reputations of established scholars. Underlying them was the question of "true" Bengali Vaishnavism and its role in the long-term constitution of Bengali culture and society. Who was an authentic Vaishnava? Many authors excluded those groups and communities whose practices they found unacceptable according to their definition of Vaishnava authenticity. At stake in these discourses, argues Bhatia, was the nature and composition of an indigenously-derived modernity inscribed through what she calls the politics of authenticity. It allowed an influential section of Hindu Bengalis to excavate their own explicitly Hindu past in order to find a people's history, a religious reformer, a casteless Hindu sect, the richest examples of Bengali literature, and a sophisticated expression of monotheistic religion.

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.

A collection of more than 50 talks on the vast range of inspiring and universal truths that have captivated millions in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Readers will find these talks alive with the unique blend of all-embracing wisdom, encouragement, and love for humanity that have made the author one of our era's most revered and trusted guides to the spiritual life.

A collection of more than 50 talks on the vast range of inspiring and universal truths that have captivated millions in Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Readers will find these talks alive with the unique blend of all-embracing wisdom, encouragement, and love for humanity that have made the author one of our era's most revered and trusted guides to the spiritual life.

Hinduism cannot be understood without the Great Goddess and the goddess-orientated Sakta traditions. The Goddess pervades Hinduism at all levels, from aniconic village deities to high-caste pan-Hindu goddesses to esoteric, tantric goddesses. Nevertheless, the highly influential tantric forms of South Asian goddess worship have only recently begun to draw scholarly attention. This book addresses the increasing interest in the Great Goddess and the tantric traditions of India by exploring the history, doctrine and practices of the Sakta tantric traditions. The highly influential tantric forms of South Asian goddess worship form a major part of what is known as 'Saktism', and is often considered one of the major branches of Hinduism next to Saivism, Vaisnavism and Smartism. Saktism is, however, less clearly defined than the other major branches, and the book looks at the texts of the Sakta traditions that constitute the primary sources for gaining insights into the Sakta religious imaginative, ritual practices and history. It provides an historical exploration of distinctive Indian ways of imagining God as Goddess, and surveys the important origins and developments within Sakta history, practice and doctrine in its diversity. Bringing together contributions from some of the foremost scholars in the field of tantric studies, the book provides a platform for the continued research into Hindu goddesses, yoga, and tantra for those interested in understanding the religion and culture in South Asia.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that during the last century, most especially during and since the 1960s, the language of spirituality has become one of the most significant ways in which the sacred has come to be understood and judged in the West, and, increasingly, elsewhere. Whether it is true that 'spirituality' has eclipsed 'religion' in Western settings remains debatable. What is incontestable is that the language of spirituality, together with practices (most noticeably spiritual, complementary, and alternative medicine), has become a major feature of the sacred dimensions of contemporary modernity. Equally incontestably, spirituality is a growing force in all those developing countries where its presence is increasingly felt among the cosmopolitan elite, and where spiritual forms of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine are thriving. This new four-volume Major Work collection from Routledge provides a coherent compilation of landmark texts which cannot be ignored by those intent on making sense of what is happening to the sacred as spirituality-more exactly what is taken to be spirituality-develops as an increasingly important lingua franca, series of practices, and as a humanistic ethicality.