The Thiri Rama - or the Great Rama - was written for court performance and is the only known illustrated version of the Ramayana story in Myanmar. Based on palm-leaf manuscripts and scenes carved on over 300 sandstone plaques at a mid-nineteenth-century Buddhist pagoda west of Mandalay in Myanmar, this book presents an original translation of the Thiri Rama rendered in prose. The volume also includes essays on the history and tradition of the Ramayana in Myanmar as well as the cultural context in which the play was performed. It contains many helpful resources, incorporating a glossary and a list of characters and their corresponding personae in Valmiki's Ramayana. With over 250 fascinating visuals and core text contributions by distinguished Burmese scholars, U Thaw Kaung, Tin Maung Kyi, and U Aung Thwin, this book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian culture, literary forms, epics, art and art history, theatre and performance studies, religion, especially those concerned with Hinduism, as well as folklorists.

This book offers a focused examination of the Bengali Vaisnava tradition in its manifold forms in the pivotal context of British colonialism in South Asia. Bringing together scholars from across the disciplines of social and intellectual history, philology, theology, and anthropology to systematically investigate Vaisnavism in colonial Bengal, this book highlights the significant roles-religious, social, and cultural-that a prominent Hindu devotional current played in the lives of wide and diverse sections of colonial Bengali society. Not only does the book thereby enrich our understanding of the history and development of Bengali Vaisnavism, but it also sheds valuable new light on the texture and dynamics of colonial Hinduism beyond the discursive and social-historical parameters of an entrenched Hindu "Renaissance" paradigm. A landmark in the burgeoning field of Bengali Vaisnava studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of modern Hinduism, religion, and colonial South Asian social and intellectual history.

A message of love, compassion and the spiritual unity of
humankind from one of India s visionary teachers

Vivekananda s message gives us hope for the future. His love for humanity gave him the mandate for his message, and his innate purity gave him an irresistible power that nobody could match. The same love that was born as Buddha, the Compassionate One, once again assumed human form as Vivekananda. from the Introduction

At the World s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, a young Hindu monk caused a sensation. At the utterance of his simple opening words Sisters and Brothers of America the audience broke into spontaneous applause for Swami Vivekananda. What followed was a stunning speech about the validity and unity of all religions. In just a little over a century, Vivekananda s message has spread throughout the world.

In this book for spiritual seekers of all faiths and backgrounds, and for all who yearn for solutions to the ideological conflicts that threaten our world, Swami Adiswarananda presents a selection of Vivekananda s most profound and inspiring lectures and an intimate glimpse of his life through newspaper reports from the time, personal reminiscences from disciples and others close to him, and impressions of his life and message from world leaders. A chapter by Swami Nikhilananda, founder of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, offers a fascinating view of Vivekananda s spiritual mission to America a mission that brought the ideals of spiritual freedom and spiritual democracy to the forefront of Western religious thought.

This study focuses on the devices implemented in Classical Indian texts on ritual and language in order to develop a structure of rules in an economic and systematic way. These devices presuppose a spatial approach to ritual and language, one which deals for instance with absences as substitutions within a pre-existing grid, and not as temporal disappearances. In this way, the study reveals a key feature of some among the most influential schools of Indian thought. The sources are Kalpasutra, Vyakarana and Mimamsa, three textual traditions which developed alongside each other, sharing - as the volume shows - common presuppositions and methodologies. The book will be of interest for Sanskritists, scholars of ritual exegesis and of the history of linguistics.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most famous works of Hindu scripture. Among faithful Hindus it is ranked in importance alongside the Vedas and the Upanishads as a key sacred text. The work has been widely translated, with the result that its fame extends well beyond India.
Considering the popularity of this historical epic and the reverent feelings toward it, intellectuals in India have been reluctant to examine the text from a critical standpoint, as scholars in the West have done in regard to the sacred texts of Christianity and Judaism. A glaring exception to this kid-gloves attitude is this iconoclastic examination of the Gita, by journalist and humanist advocate V. R. Narla.
Taking a rationalist, skeptical approach, Narla critiques the Gita on many levels. Among other things, he points out the improbability of the historical events recounted, the logical inconsistencies in the work, and, above all, the retrograde moral perspective represented by the characters. He emphasizes that the long dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and Lord Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu) ends up by condoning violence, even wholesale slaughter. Furthermore, the work extols the Hindu caste system as noble and reinforces superstitions about reincarnation and karma. All of this was anathema to Narla, who spent much of his career working for human rights and critical thinking.
For students of Indian literature in both the East and West, this critical appraisal of a classic Hindu epic will prove enlightening.

Thinking about ultimate reality is becoming increasingly transreligious. This transreligious turn follows inevitably from the discovery of divine truths in multiple traditions. Global communications bring the full range of religious ideas and practices to anyone with access to the internet. Moreover, the growth of the "nones" and those who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" creates a pressing need for theological thinking not bound by prescribed doctrines and fixed rituals. This book responds to this vital need. The chapters in this volume each examine the claim that if the aim of theology is to know and articulate all we can about the divine reality, and if revelations, enlightenments, and insights into that reality are not limited to a single tradition, then what is called for is a theology without confessional restrictions. In other words, a Theology Without Walls. To ground the project in examples, the volume provides emerging models of transreligious inquiry. It also includes sympathetic critics who raise valid concerns that such a theology must face. This is a book that will be of urgent interest to theologians, religious studies scholars, and philosophers of religion. It will be especially suitable for those interested in comparative theology, inter-religious and interfaith understanding, new trends in constructive theology, normative religious studies, and global philosophy of religion.

Samkara (c.700 CE) has been regarded by many as the most authoritative Hindu thinker of all time. A great Indian Vedantin brahmin, Samkara was primarily a commentator on the sacred texts of the Vedas and a teacher in the Advaitin teaching line. This book serves as an introduction to Samkara's thought which takes this as a central theme. The author develops an innovative approach based on Samkara's ways of interpreting sacred texts and creatively examines the profound interrelationship between sacred text, content and method in Samkara's thought. The main focus of the book is on Samkara's teaching method. This method is, for Samkara, based on the Upanishads' own; it is to be employed by Advaitin teachers to draw pupils skilfully towards that realisation which is beyond all words. Consequently, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Indian philosophy, but to all those interested in the relation between language and that which is held to transcend it.

This volume makes a contribution to understanding pilgrimage, not as a transient activity at the margins of daily life, but as an event grounded firmly in the physical, symbolic and social experience of the everyday world. The vital relationship between pilgrimage and society is explored via a focus on a specific pilgrimage - the Kanwar pilgrimage of Bihar and Jharkhand in India and the southeast Terai of Nepal. The rising popularity of this old but relatively unknown pilgrimage is striking and reflects profound changes in caste, class and gender relation ships, subjectivity and notions of work in a modern economy. Through the lens of pilgrimage and pilgrims, the book explores the everyday context of life in parts of rural Bihar and southeast Nepal, questions about agency and desire in Hinduism, and the meaning given to symbolic life in a changing world. This requires an integrative approach looking beyond the performance of the pilgrimage to the historical, economic and social-cultural context. The volume underscores the role of popular and local history in understanding the life and popularity of a complex phenomenon, such as the pilgrimage today. Equal importance is given to the geography and climatic conditions, for natural rhythms such as that of rains, rivers, planetary movements, were and still are, intimately entwined with the agricultural, socio-economic and ritual cycles. The particular experience of the world that this engenders and its relationship to the pilgrimage is described through the active voice of the pilgrims and descriptions of rites, some new and many fast disappearing. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Scholars of religion have always been fascinated by asceticism. Some have even regarded this radical way of life-- the withdrawal from the world, combined with practices that seriously affect basic bodily needs, up to extreme forms of self-mortification --as the ultimate form of a true religious quest. This view is rooted in hagiographic descriptions of prominent ascetics and in other literary accounts that praise the ascetic life-style. Scholars have often overlooked, however, that in the history of religions ascetic beliefs and practices have also been strongly criticized, by followers of the same religious tradition as well as by outsiders. The respective sources provide sufficient evidence of such critical strands but surprisingly as yet no attempt has been made to analyze this criticism of asceticism systematically. This book is a first attempt of filling this gap. Ten studies present cases from both Asian and European traditions: classical and medieval Hinduism, early and contemporary Buddhism in South and East Asia, European antiquity, early and medieval Christianity, and 19th/20th century Aryan religion. Focusing on the critics of asceticism, their motives, their arguments, and the targets of their critique, these studies provide a broad range of issues for comparison. They suggest that the critique of asceticism is based on a worldview differing from and competing with the ascetic worldview, often in one and the same historical context. The book demonstrates that examining the critics of asceticism helps understand better the complexity of religious traditions and their cultural contexts. The comparative analysis, moreover, shows that the criticism of asceticism reflects areligious worldview as significant and widespread in the history of religions as asceticism itself is.

Shakti's New Voice is the first comprehensive study of Anandmurti Gurumaa, a widely popular contemporary female guru from north India known for offering spiritual teachings and music on satellite television and the Internet. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and religious-historical research-as well as unexpected and unprecedented outsider contact with the guru-Angela Rudert offers an intimate portrait of "Gurumaa" that will be of interest to the guru's admirers as well as to scholars. To examine Gurumaa's innovation, Rudert turns to examples drawn from fieldwork research in the guru's ashram and from other locations in India and in the United States. These examples specifically discuss Gurumaa's religious pluralism, her gender activism, and her embrace of new media, in order to illuminate elements of continuity and change within the time-honored South Asian tradition of guru-bhakti, devotion to the guru. Raised in a Sikh family, educated in a Catholic convent school and understood to have attained her enlightenment in Vrindavan, the famous Hindu pilgrimage site of Lord Krishna's divine play, Gurumaa refuses identification with any particular religious tradition, or "ism," yet her teachings draw from many. She speaks strongly, often harshly, about contemporary issues of gender inequality, while calling for women's empowerment, and she has established a non-governmental organization called Shakti to promote girls' education in India. In the case of Anandmurti Gurumaa and those spiritual seekers in her fold, innovations and re-interpretations of tradition come from within the pluralistic setting of Indian religiosity, while they exist and act within a global religious milieu.

Indian art, increasingly popular in the west, cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of the religious and philosophical background. This book, first published in 1985, covers all aspects of Hindu iconography, and explains that its roots lie far back in the style of prehistoric art. The dictionary demonstrates the rich profusion of cults, divinities, symbols, sects and philosophical views encompassed by the Hindu religious tradition.

Drawing on insights from Indian intellectual tradition, this book examines the conception of dharma by Jaimini in his Mimamsasutras, assessing its contemporary relevance, particularly within ritual scholarship. Presenting a hermeneutical re-reading of the text, it investigates the theme of the relationship between subjectivity and tradition in the discussion of dharma, bringing it into conversation with contemporary discourses on ritual. The primary argument offered is that Jaimini's conception of dharma can be read as a philosophy of Vedic practice, centred on the enjoinment of the subject, whose stages of transformation possess the structure of a hermeneutic tradition. Offering both substantive and methodological insights into the contentions within the contemporary study of ritual, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Hindu studies, ritual studies, Asian religion, and South Asian studies.

This book, first published in 1933, was the first text on the general Hindu attitude to art. It sums up under the wider title of the Hindu view of art all such considerations - religious, philosophic, sociological, aesthetic and technical - as might be helpful for the understanding of Indian art.

This book, first published in 1968, is a collection of twenty-five lectures by Swami Prabhavananda, the outstanding scholar and translator of Hindu scriptures. They present a direct and pragmatic approach to spiritual life, and a clear guide to Hinduism.

This book, first published in 1957, was the first in English to provide a full and clear introduction to one of the most significant of Indian gods, and stresses his supreme role in Indian religion and art. The book relates the full Krishna story, explaining his role in Indian religion, and traces the history of Krishna in Indian painting. There are 39 plates of Indian pictures, each accompanied by a commentary by the author, revealing a wealth of subtle and poetic detail.

The main sources for an understanding of classical Hindu law are the Sanskrit treatises on religious and legal duties, known as the Dharma stras. In this collection of his major studies in the field, Ludo Rocher presents analytical and interpretive essays on a wide range of topics, from general themes such as the nature of Hindu law and Anglo-Hindu law to technical matters including word studies and text criticism. Rocher's deep engagement with the language and worldview of the authors in the Dharma stra tradition yields distinctive and corrective contributions to the field, which are informed by knowledge both of the Indian grammatical tradition and of Roman and civil law. Davis's introduction presents an interpretative account of Rocher's many contributions to the field, organized around the themes that recur in his work, and examines his key advances, both methodological and substantive. Comparisons and contrasts between Rocher's ideas and those of his Indological colleagues serve to place him in the context of a scholarly tradition, while Rocher's fundamental view that the Dharma stra is first and foremost a scholarly and scholastic tradition, rather than a practical legal one, is also explored. This invaluable collection serves both as summary review of the ideas of Rocher, a leading authority in the field, and as a critical evaluation of the impact of these ideas on the present study of law and Indology.

Hinduism and Christianity are different in structure and approach - but have a great deal in common in matters relating to ethics. This book, first published in 1969, is the first systematic and detailed work which attempts to bring out both the differences and similarities. The author selects some of the fundamental problems of philosophical ethics, such as the moral law - its authority and sources, moral effort and human freedom, moral failure and responsibility - and explores the respective answers of Hinduism and Christianity.

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 fabr

What is the Bhagavad-Gita? Is it just a religious text? When was it composed? How relevant is it to the modern world? This book answers these foundational questions and goes beyond. It critically examines the Bhagavad-Gita in terms of its liberal, humanist and inclusive appeal, bringing out its significance for the present times and novel applicati

In Kali in Bengali Lives, Suchitra Samanta examines Bengalis' personal narratives of Kali devotion in the Bhakti tradition. These personal experiences, including miraculous encounters, reflect on broader understandings of divine power. Where the revelatory experience has long been validated in Indian epistemology, the devotees' own interpretive framework provides continuity within a paradigm of devotion and of the miraculous experience as intuitive insight (anubhuti) into a larger truth. Through these unique insights, the miraculous experience is felt in its emotional power, remembered, and reflected upon. The narratives speak to how the meaning of a religious figure, Kali, becomes personally significant and ultimately transformative of the devotee's self.

The aim of this book is to persuade the reader that the Indian caste system is not the isolated phenomenon it is often thought to be. But a species of a very widespread genus. Not being an isolated phenomenon, it cannot be understood in isolation; it will merely be misunderstood. More than once it will be shown in these pages how localised specialism leads why from the truth and comparative study returns to it. Comparison also saves time by cutting the tangled knots which controversy ties round texts.