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.

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.

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 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.

Providing new insights into the contemporary creationist-evolution debates, this book looks at the Hindu cultural-religious traditions of India, the Hindu Dharma traditions. By focusing on the interaction of religion and science in a Hindu context, it offers a global context for understanding contemporary creationist-evolution conflicts and tensions utilizing a critical analysis of Hindu perspectives on these issues. The cultural and political as well as theological nature of these conflicts is illustrated by drawing attention to parallels with contemporary Islamic and Buddhist responses to modern science and Darwinism. The book explores various ancient and classical Hindu models to explain the origin of the universe encompassing creationist as well as evolutionary-but non-Darwinian-interpretations of how we came to be. Complex schemes of cosmic evolution were developed, alongside creationist proofs for the existence of God utilizing distinctly Hindu versions of the design argument. After examining diverse elements of the Hindu Dharmic traditions that laid the groundwork for an ambivalent response to Darwinism when it first became known in India, the book highlights the significance of the colonial context. Analysing critically the question of compatibility between traditional Dharmic theories of knowledge and the epistemological assumptions underlying contemporary scientific methodology, the book raises broad questions regarding the frequently alleged harmony of Hinduism, the eternal Dharma, with modern science, and with Darwinian evolution in particular.

The Sanskrit Mahabharata is one of the greatest works of world literature and pivotal for the understanding of both Hindu traditions and wider society in ancient, medieval and modern South Asia. This book presents a new synthesis of philological, anthropological and cognitive-linguistic method and theory in relation to the study of narrative text by focusing on the form and function of the Mahabharata in the context of early South Asia. Arguing that the combination of structural and thematic features that have helped to establish the enduring cultural centrality of religious narrative in South Asia was first outlined in the text, the book highlights the Mahabharata's complex orientation to the cosmic, social and textual past. The book shows the extent to which narrative is integral to human social life, and more generally the creation and maintenance of religious ideologies. It highlights the contexts of origin and transmission and the cultural function of the Mahabharata in first millennium South Asia and, by extension, in medieval and modern South Asiaby drawing on both textual and epigraphic sources. The book draws attention to what is culturally specific about the origination and transmission of early South Asian narrative and what can be used to enrich our orientation to narrative in human social life more globally.

Devotion is a category of expression in many of the world's religious traditions. This book looks at issues involved in academically interpreting religious devotion, as well as exploring the interpretations of religious devotion made by a sixth century poet, a twelfth century biographer, and present-day festival publics. The book focuses on the female poet-saint Karaikkal Ammaiyar, whose poetry is devotional in nature. It discusses the biography written on the poet six centuries after her lifetime, and suggests ways of interpreting Karaikkal Ammaiyar's poetry without using the categories and events promoted by her biographer, in order to engage her own thoughts as they are communicated through the poetry attributed to her. In the same way that the biographer made the poet 'speak' to his present day, the book looks at how festivals held today make both the poetry and the biography relevant to the present day. By discussing how poetry, story and festival provide distinctive yet overlapping interpretations of the saint, this book reveals the selections and priorities of interpreters in the making of a living tradition. It is an accessible contribution to students and scholars of religion, Indian history and women's studies.

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 Hindu-derived meditation movement, The Art of Living (AOL), founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in Bangalore, has grown into a global organization which claims presence in more than 150 countries. Stephen Jacobs presents the first comprehensive study of AOL as an important transnational movement and an alternative global spirituality. Exploring the nature and characteristics of spirituality in the contemporary global context, Jacobs considers whether alternative spiritualities are primarily concerned with individual wellbeing and can simply be regarded as another consumer product. The book concludes that involvement in movements such as AOL is not necessarily narcissistic but can foster a sense of community and inspire altruistic activity.

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.

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.

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.

The Bhagavad Gita opens with a crisis - Prince Arjuna despairs on the battlefield, unsure if he should fight his kinsmen in a dreadful war. For Easwaran, the Gita's epic battle represents the war in our own hearts and Arjuna's anguish reflects the human condition: torn between opposing forces, confused about how to live. Sri Krishna's timeless guidance, Easwaran argues, can shed light on our dilemmas today. Placing the Gita's teachings in a modern context, Easwaran explores the nature of reality, the illusion of separateness, the search for identity, the meaning of yoga, and how to heal the unconscious. The key message of the Gita is how to resolve our conflicts and live in harmony with the deep unity of life, through the practice of meditation and spiritual disciplines. Sri Krishna doesn't tell Arjuna what to do. He points out the prince's choices, and then leaves it to Arjuna to decide. Easwaran shows us clearly how these teachings still apply - and how, like Arjuna, we must take courage and act wisely if we want our world to thrive.

The R m yana of V lm ki is considered by many contemporary Hindus to be a foundational religious text. But this understanding is in part the result of a transformation of the epic s receptive history, a hermeneutic project which challenged one characterization of the genre of the text, as a work of literary culture, and replaced it with another, as a work of remembered tradition.

This book examines R m yana commentaries, poetic retellings, and praise-poems produced by intellectuals within the r vaisnava order of South India from 1250 to 1600 and shows how these intellectuals reconceptualized R ma s story through the lens of their devotional metaphysics. r vaisnavas applied innovative interpretive techniques to the R m yana, including allegorical reading, " lesa "reading (reading a verse as a "double entendre"), and the application of vernacular performance techniques such as word play, improvisation, repetition, and novel forms of citation. The book is of interest not only to R m yana specialists but also to those engaged with Indian intellectual history, literary studies, and the history of religions."

Judaism's Promise, Meeting The Challenge Of Modernity follows Seymour W. Itzkoff's well-received three-book series, Who Are the Jews? Judaism's Promise, confronts the many revolutions that have reshaped Judaism over the centuries allowing it and its people a path of leadership into the modern world. It takes the writings of the Torah, Holy Scriptures, and Talmud seriously as exemplars of the human search for civilizational and moral intellectuality. The book's basic concern is with the withering of Judaism as a force in contemporary Western civilization. Sadly millions of Jews have left the faith. Others venture forth only hesitantly into a synagogue, now a bastion of fossilized ritual and conspicuous consumption. These millions needed more from the orthodoxy, and this book attempts to show them the way back by giving renewed life to the heritages of Judaism, and, consequently, to its meaning for the modern world. Judaism's Promise argues for a return to the synagogue's originating Hellenistic commitment "to come together" in intellectual and moral study. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan argued, Judaism must once more become in the 20-21st century the civilization that it once represented to the wider world, and not a fossilized ceremonialism.

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

The six volume Psychology ann Religion set of the International Library of Psychology explores the interface between psychology and religion, looking at aspects of religious belief and mysticism as related to the study of human consciousness. Hindu Psychology looks at the relevance of Hindu belief systems and theories of perception for the West.

Hariti is the ancient Indian goddess of childbirth and women healers, known at one time throughout South and Southeast Asia from India to Nepal and Bali. Daughters of Hariti looks at her 'daughters' today, female midwives and healers in many different cultures across the region. It also traces the transformation of childbirth in these cultures under the impact of Western biomedical technology, national and international health policies and the wider factors of social and economic change. The authors ask what can be done to improve the high rates of maternal and infant deaths and illnesses still associated with childbirth in most societies in this area and whether the wholesale replacement of indigenous knowledge by Western biomedical technology is necessarily a good thing.

Theistic Vedanta originated with Ramanuja (1077-1157), who was one of the foremost theologians of Visistadvaita Vedanta and also an initiate of the Srivaisnava sectarian tradition in South India. As devotees of the God Visnu and his consort Sri, the Srivaisnavas established themselves through various processes of legitimation as a powerful sectarian tradition. One of the processes by which the authority of the Srivaisnavas was consolidated was Ramanuja's synthesis of popular Hindu devotionalism with the philosophy of Vedanta. This book demonstrates that by incorporating a text often thought to be of secondary importance - the Visnu Purana (1st-4th CE) - into his reading of the Upanisads, which were the standard of orthodoxy for Vedanta philosophy, Ramanuja was able to interpret Vedanta within the theistic context of Srivaisnavism. Ramanuja was the first Brahmin thinker to incorporate devotional puranas into Vedanta philosophy. His synthetic theology called Visistadvaita (unity-of-the-differenced) wielded tremendous influence over the expansion of Visnu devotionalism in South India and beyond. In this book, the exploration of the exegetical function of this purana in arguments salient to Ramanuja's Vedanta facilitates our understanding of the processes of textual accommodation and reformulation that allow the incorporation of divergent doctrinal claims. Expanding on and reassessing current views on Ramanuja's theology, the book contributes new insights to broader issues in religious studies such as canon expansion, commentarial interpretation, tradition-building, and the comparative study of scripture. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Indian philosophy and Religious Studies.