Confucius is a key figure not only in Eastern thought and philosophy but in world history as well. The Analects, the sayings attributed to him, is a classic of world literature. Nonetheless there is a great dispute about how to approach and understand both him and his work. This is the first anthology of critical writings on this crucial and influential work. The contributors come to the Analects from a variety of perspectives - including philosophical, philological, and religious - and address a host of key topics. Rigorous yet highly accessible, the volume will also include a general introduction and an exhaustive bibliography on English-language works on Confucius.

Jarrod L. Whitaker examines the ritualized poetic construction of male identity in the Rgveda, India's oldest Sanskrit text, arguing that an important aspect of early Vedic life was the sustained promotion and embodiment of what it means to be a true man. The Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed primarily to three gods: the deified ritual Fire, Agni; the war god, Indra; and Soma, who is none other than the personification of the sacred beverage soma. The hymns were sung in day-long fire rituals in which poet-priests prepared the sacred drink to empower Indra. The dominant image of Indra is that of a highly glamorized, violent, and powerful Aryan male; the three gods represent the ideals of manhood.
Whitaker finds that the Rgvedic poet-priests employed a fascinating range of poetic and performative strategies--some explicit, others very subtle--to construct their masculine ideology, while justifying it as the most valid way for men to live. Poet-priests naturalized this ideology by encoding it within a man's sense of his body and physical self. Rgvedic ritual rhetoric and practices thus encode specific male roles, especially the role of man as warrior, while embedding these roles in a complex network of social, economic, and political relationships.
Strong Arms and Drinking Strength is the first book in English to examine the relationship between Rgvedic gods, ritual practices, and the identities and expectations placed on men in ancient India."

Originally published in 1927. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Researches into Japanese Buddhism. This book is full of suggestive thought, with the essays on Japanese religious belief calling for particular praise for the earnest spirit in which the subject is approached. Contents Include A Living God. Out of the Street. Notes of a Trip to Kyoto. Dust. About Faces in Japanese Art. Ningyo-No-Haka. In Osaka. Buddhist Allusions in Japanese Folk Song. Nirvana. The Rebirth of Katsuguro. Within the Circle.

Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyavartani is an essential work of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophical literature. Written in an accessible question-and-answer style, it contains Nagarjuna's replies to criticisms of his philosophy of the "Middle Way." The Vigrahavyavartani has been widely cited both in canonical literature and in recent scholarship; it has remained a central text in India, Tibet, China, and Japan, and has attracted the interest of greater and greater numbers of Western readers.
In The Dispeller of Disputes, Jan Westerhoff offers a clear new translation of the Vigrahavyavartani, taking current philological research and all available editions into account, and adding his own insightful philosophical commentary on the text. Crucial manuscript material has been discovered since the earlier translations were written, and Westerhoff draws on this material to produce a study reflecting the most up-to-date research on this text. In his nuanced and incisive commentary, he explains Nagarjuna's arguments, grounds them in historical and textual scholarship, and explicitly connects them to contemporary philosophical concerns.

Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy is the first book in any Western language to explore the composition, language, thought, and early history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), one of the pillars of the Chinese textual, intellectual, and political tradition. In examining the text from multiple disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy challenges the traditional accounts of the nature and formation of the Shangshu and its individual chapters. As it analyzes in detail the central ideas and precepts given voice in the text, it further recasts the Shangshu as a collection of dynamic cultural products that expressed and shaped the political and intellectual discourses of different times and communities. Contributors are: Joachim Gentz, Yegor Grebnev, Magnus Ribbing Gren, Michael Hunter, Martin Kern, Maria Khayutina, Robin McNeal, Dirk Meyer, Yuri Pines, Charles Sanft, David Schaberg, Kai Vogelsang.

Sydney H. Griffith provides a basic overview of Syriac authors that addressed the issue of Islam in their writings. Griffith discusses the major themes and common content of this literature and focuses on the dialogue genre.