Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a r...

Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric...

This book examines the notion of a law of obligations as a conceptual category in itself; and, in doing this, it presents the foundational material in a context that draws on some comparative and theoretical ideas while, at the same time, emphasising the special characteristics of the common law.The book is specifically designed to act as an introduction to the legal research skills of reasoning and method. It also looks at the foundations of civil liability in a way that emphasise...

This book provides a strong introduction to the principal domains of legal knowledge by examining a structured list of legal maxims, many originating in medieval Roman and canon law. Oriented by historical and methodological approaches, it explores legal thought and reasoning through a comparative lens.Geoffrey Samuel explains the differences between common law and civil continental traditions, outlining preceding works on regulae iuris across the centuries. With an emphas...

This Short Introduction looks at judging and reasoning from three perspectives: what legal reasoning has been; what legal reasoning is from the view of judges and jurists; and what legal reasoning is from the view of a social scientist epistemologist or humanities specialist.Geoffrey Samuel begins by identifying the main institutional focal points of legal reasoning (ius, regulae iuris, Interpretatio, utilitas and actiones). While examining legal reasonin...

‘'Rethinking’' legal reasoning seems a bold aim given the large amount of literature devoted to this topic. In this thought-provoking book, Geoffrey Samuel proposes a different way of approaching legal reasoning by examining the topic through the context of legal knowledge (epistemology). What is it to have knowledge of legal reasoning?At a more specific level the pursuit of this understanding is conducted through posing a number of questions that are founded on different approache...

This book seeks to question the widely held assumption in Europe that to have knowledge of law is simply to have knowledge of rules. There is a knowledge dimension beyond the symbolic which reaches right into the way facts are perceived, constructed and deconstructed. In support of this thesis the book examines, generally, the question of what it is to have knowledge of law; and this examination embraces not just the conceptual foundations, methods, taxonomy and theories used by jurists. I...

This short book on comparative law theory and method is designed primarily for postgraduate research students whose work involves comparison between legal systems. It is, accordingly, a book on research methods, although it will also be of relevance to all students (undergraduate and postgraduate) taking courses in comparative law and to academics entering the field of comparison. The substance of the book has been developed over many years of teaching general theory of comparative law, pr...

Meditation has flourished in different parts of the world ever since the foundations of the great civilizations were laid. It played a vital role in the formation of Asian cultures that trace much of their heritage to ancient India and China. This volume brings together for the first time studies of the major traditions of Asian meditation as well as material on scientific approaches to meditation. It delves deeply into the individual traditions while viewing each of them from a global per...

This thought-provoking book opens up a distinctive and original framework of analysis of the relationship between legal methodologies and the social and human sciences. Rich in implications both for comparative legal theory and for the understanding of legal reasoning in practice, it adopts a critical epistemological perspective by enlarging the focus of comparative legal studies and allowing for a much-needed decentering of conventional approaches to law across cultures and disciplines.

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The six volumes in the Black Wings series, from which these "Best of" tales are selected, stand as a monument to H. P. Lovecraft's incalculable and unassailable influence on contemporary weird fiction, and so the time seemed right for a retrospective volume that exhibits the choicest items from the series. The task of selection was not a simple or straightforward one, for every tale in the series had some claim to be chosen; let it then be said that this volume does not contain necessarily...