When Hindu devotional or bhakti traditions welcomed marginalized people-women, low castes, and Dalits-were they promoting social equality? In this book, Jon Keune deftly examines the root of this deceptively simple question. The modern formulation of the bhakti-caste question is what Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar had in mind when he concluded that the saints promoted spiritual equality but did not transform society. While taking Ambedkar's judgment seriously, Jon Keune argues that, when view...

This book explores the key motif of the religious other in devotional (bhakti) literatures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent unmasks processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents.The book reconsiders and challenges inherited notions of the bhakta’s or devotee’s other. Considering the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having an inter-regional impact—as a for...

Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations takes readers on a thoroughly researched and extremely readable journey through Japan's cultural history.This much-anticipated sequel to Roger Davies's best-selling The Japanese Mind provides a comprehensive overview of the religion and philosophy of Japan. This cultural history of Japan explains the diverse cultural traditions that underlie modern Japan and offers readers deep insights...

A great deal of Buddhist literature and scholarly writing about Buddhism of the past 150 years reflects, and indeed constructs, a historically unique modern Buddhism, even while purporting to represent ancient tradition, timeless teaching, or the "essentials" of Buddhism. This literature, Asian as well as Western, weaves together the strands of different traditions to create a novel hybrid that brings Buddhism into alignment with many of the ideologies and sensibilities of the post-Enlight...

Originating in the Atharva Veda, the concept of Indra's Net is a powerful metaphor for interconnectedness. It was transmitted via Buddhism's Avatamsaka Sutra into Western thought, where it now resides at the heart of post-modern discourse. According to this metaphor, nothing ultimately exists separately by itself and all boundaries can be deconstructed. This book invokes Indra's Net to articulate the open architecture, unity and continuity of Hinduism. Seen from this perspective, Hinduism ...

There is a new awakening in India that is challenging the ongoing westernization of the discourse about India. The Battle for Sanskrit seeks to alert traditional scholars of Sanskrit and sanskriti - Indian civilization - concerning an important school of thought that has its base in the US and that has started to dominate the discourse on the cultural, social and political aspects of India. This academic field is called Indology or Sanskrit studies. From their analysis of Sanskrit texts, t...

This book is a brilliant historicisation and scathing critique of many of the dominant concepts by which Indians generally, and north Indian Hindus more specifically, think and live today. Historians, sociologists, political scientists and serious readers who wish to understand how the immediate past has shaped Indias life will value this incisive work of a major historian.

In South India, the categories ‘Brahmin’ and ‘non-Brahmin’ are frequently treated as self-evident, both within contemporary Tamil politics and in mainstream academic discourses. Departing from this political and academic ‘common sense’, the present book historicizes the complex processes by which these categories came into being and acquired political power over the past century. Using archival, regional-language, and unconventional sources, M.S.S. Pandian unsettles the ‘self-evident’ quality...

Diana Dimitrova studies the representation of gender and religion in Hindi drama from its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century until the 1960s - the period when urban proscenium Hindi theatre, which originated under Western influence, matured and thrived. Her focus is on how different religious and mythological models pertaining to women have been reworked in Hindi drama and whether the seven representative dramatists discussed in this book present conservative or libera...

A timely essay collection on the development and influence of secular expressions of Buddhism in the West and beyond.How do secular values impact Buddhism in the modern world? What versions of Buddhism are being transmitted to the West? Is it possible to know whether an interpretation of the Buddha’s words is correct?In this new essay collection, opposing ideas that often define Buddhist communities—secular versus religious, modern versus traditional, Weste...

In the West, the varied body of texts and traditions known as Tantra for more than two centuries has had the capacity to scandalize and shock. For European colonizers, Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries of the Victorian era, Tantra was generally seen as the most degenerate and depraved example of the worst tendencies of the so-called 'Indian mind': a pathological mixture of sensuality and religion that prompted the decline of modern Hinduism. Yet for most contemporary New Age ...

This book compiles some of the finest writings of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) — the nationalist, visionary, poet-philosopher. It reflects the range, depth and outreach of the moral, intellectual and spiritual vision of this versatile and multifaceted genius. It aims at providing, at one place, access to the key concepts, tenets, and the spirit of the extraordinary range of texts authored by him.Although concretely grounded in contemporary times — with its location in a specific socio...