Hindu gods in West Africa : Ghanaian devotees of Shiva and Krishna.
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In Hindu Gods in West Africa , Wuaku offers an account of the histories, beliefs and practices of the Hindu Monastery of Africa and the Radha Govinda Temple, two Hindu Temples in Ghana. Using historical material and data from his field work in southern Ghana, Wuaku shows how these two Hindu Temples build their traditions on popular Ghanaian religious notions about the powerful magicality of India's Hindu gods. He explores how Ghanaian soldiers who served in the colonial armies in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma during World War II, Bollywood films, and local magicians, have contributed to the production and the spreading of these cultural ideas. He argues that while Ghanaian worshippers appropriated and deployed the alien Hindu religious world through their own cultural ideas,as they engage Hindu beliefs and rituals in negotiating challenges their own worldviews would change considerably.
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1 online resource (346 pages) :
9789004255715 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
One god, two goddesses, three studies of South Indian cosmology /
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One, God, Two Goddesses presents three studies, one of Tamil myths of the god Murugan and two of goddess rituals: Gangamma in Tirupati and Paiditalli in Vizianagaram, both in Andhra Pradesh. All three essays search for lineaments of the cosmos that these deities inhabit and shape. These cosmoi are characterised by the dynamism of their incessant interior movement. Should they become still, they would die. Deities activate and regenerate such a cosmos. The dynamism of Murugan's cosmos eliminates the chaotic. Through ritual, Gangamma regenerates her cosmos through feminising it. Through ritual, Paiditalli annually re-grows the historic little kingdom of Vizianagaram, regenerating its kingship. All three studies point to the need to rethink cosmology in South India.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004257399 :
1570-078X ;
The European encounter with Hinduism in India /
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"In The European Encounter with Hinduism Jan Peter Schouten offers an account of European travellers coming into contact with the Hindu religion in India. From the thirteenth century on, both traders and missionaries visited India and encountered the exotic world of Hindus and Hinduism. Their travel reports reveal how Europeans gradually increased their knowledge of Hinduism and how they evaluated this foreign religion. Later on, although officials of the colonial administration also studied the languages and culture of India, it was - contrary to what is usually assumed - particularly the many missionaries who made the greatest contribution to the mapping of Hinduism".
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"Originally published in Dutch as Aangenaam kennis te maken : De ontmoeting van Europeanen met het hindoeïsme in India by Uitgeverij Damon, Eindhoven." :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004420076
Religion and conflict attribution : an empirical study of the religious meaning system of Christian, Muslim and Hindu students in Tamil Nadu, India /
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Religion can play a dual role with regard to conflict. It can promote either violence or peace. Religion and Conflict Attribution seeks to clarify the causes of religious conflict as perceived by Christian, Muslim and Hindu college students in Tamil Nadu, India. These students in varying degrees attribute conflict to force-driven causes, namely to coercive power as a means of achieving the economic, political or socio-cultural goals of religious groups. The study reveals how force-driven religious conflict is influenced by prescriptive beliefs like religious practice and mystical experience, and descriptive beliefs such as the interpretation of religious plurality and religiocentrism. It also elaborates on the practical consequences of the salient findings for the educational process.
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1 online resource (xii, 287 pages) : illustrations, color map. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004270862 :
2213-9729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hindu-Buddhist Architecture in Southeast Asia /
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Hinduism and Buddhism have in Southeast Asia prompted impressive architecture, including Angkor Vat and the Borubodur, with a lasting influence on the architecture of the area. This book is the first stylistic history of Hindu-Buddhist architecture in the area from the beginning until today. The contrasts and similarities described between the religious structures of the different countries shed light on the religious history of the area.
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1 online resource (437 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004644960
Belief, Bounty, and Beauty, Rituals around Sacred Trees in India.
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This study is focused on the interaction of material and symbolic values in the domain of sacred trees in India. By presenting samples from 3,000 years of Indian ritual practice, it is shown that in many sacred geographies trees continue to connect the present with the past, the material with the symbolic, and the contemporary ecological with the traditionally sacred. Although in India religion may have become very much a temple cult, its embeddedness in the natural world enhances today's 'green' interpretation of religious traditions. That in environmental matters such religious inspiration may be both successful and highly ambivalent at the same time is the thought-provoking position taken in the final chapters.
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1 online resource. :
9789047415619
Epic Narratives in the Hoysaḷa Temples : The Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Bhāgavata Purāṇa in Haḷebīd, Belūr and Amṛtapura /
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This volume is a detailed exposition of the visual retellings from the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Bhāgavata Purāṇa on specific South Indian Hoysaḷa temples. The first part of the book deals with the Amṛteśvara temple, particularly its narrative panels depicting the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata and Bhāgavata Purāṇa. The text is a résumé of episodes paired with photographs which illustrate and review the visual retellings and explore Indian techniques of visual narrative. Corollary material from other Hoysaḷa temples with narrative reliefs, including new sites, is presented in the second part. There are very few published contextual studies of Indian narrative sculptures, and so the book is a contribution to the documentation of Indian medieval art, examining visual narratives within the context of the Hindu temple. The book is illustrated with 150 photographs.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-271) and index. :
9789004378964 :
0169-8834 ;
The secret Sankara : on multivocality and truth in Sankara's teaching /
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Sankaracharya of the 8th century A.D is considered the greatest philosopher of India up to this day. his teaching of the one and only self has become the most prestigeous expression of the Hindu spirit. Sankara is the author of the Brahmasutrabhasya, the most important text of the school known as Advaita-Vedanta. Sankara teaches of the self by dialogues between a winning exponent and a losing opponent. Up to this day, Sankara's teaching has been invariably identified with the exponent's doctrines. In this book a distinction between the invisible authon and his alleged exponent is offered. Sankara the author is a new intellectual hero different from his exponent. Thus, due to the aforementioned distinction, a new philosophy and theory of freedom emerges, the teaching of Sankara, the author distinguished from his apparent exponent.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004216334 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Role of Divine Grace in the Soteriology of Śaṃkarācārya.
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This volume examines the role of divine grace in the non-dualist soteriology of Śaṃkara. The author argues that grace is an essential but generally overlooked feature in Śaṃkara's enlightenment spirituality. Introductory chapters summarize recent developments in Śaṃkara research, Śaṃkara's epistemology and ontology, ancient Vedāntic teachings on grace, and modern scholarly disagreement about grace in Śaṃkara's Advaita system. The heart of the book consists of two lengthy exegetical chapters examining Śaṃkara's key passages on grace from his dozen genuine works. The final chapter presents for the first time a systematic summary of Śaṃkara's understanding of the operation and necessity of divine grace. This book provides a useful summary of Śaṃkara's system as a whole besides offering a radical revision of the standard understanding of Śaṃkara's soteriology. It also reveals that Śaṃkara was much more indebted in his thinking to his Vedantic predecessors than had hitherto been thought.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379138
Yoga and Yantra : Their Interrelation and Their Significance for Indean Archeology /
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The author asks to what extent a knowledge of the concepts of yoga may prepare the way to a better understanding of Indian archaeology. The yoga at the basis of this study is that which forms the core of the Tantras . In the first chapter the author surveys the system of Tantrik yoga. He then continues with a discussion of the various forms of yantras , that is all the means employed by yogis in their meditational exercises as aids to the concentration of thought. The author provides in-depth studies of ritual objects of the Lamaistic cult in Tibet and Nepal, the sacred cemeteries of Nepal, and pantheons in Java and Bali. See Less
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Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004647138
The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus : Intersections of Hindu Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal /
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In The Brahmo Samaj and its Vaiṣṇava Milieus: Intersections of Hindu Knowledge and Love in Nineteenth Century Bengal , Ankur Barua offers an intellectual history of the motif of religious universalism in the writings of some intellectuals associated with the Brahmo Samaj (founded in 1828). They constructed Hindu worldviews that were simultaneously rooted in some ancient Sanskritic materials and orientated towards contemporary universalist visions with western hues. These constructions were shaped by their dialectical engagements with three groups: members of the Bengali middle classes with sceptical standpoints ('Young Bengal'), Christian missionaries, and Hindu Vaiṣṇava thinkers. In this genealogy of religious universalisms, Barua indicates how certain post-1900 formulations of the universalist compass of Hinduism were being enunciated across Brahmo circles from the 1820s.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004445383
9789004445246
When the Goddess was a Woman Mahabharata Ethnographies-- Essays by Alf Hiltebeitel. Volume 2.
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Explicitly acknowledging its status as a strī-śūdra-veda (a Veda for women and the downtrodden), the Mahābhārata articulates a promise to bring knowledge of right conduct, fundamental ethical, philosophical, and soteriological teachings, and its own grand narrative to all classes of people and all beings. Hiltebeitel shows how the Mahābhārata has more than lived up to this promise at least on the ground in Indian folk traditions. In this three-part volume, he journeys over the overlapping terrains of the south Indian cults of Draupadī (part I) and Kūttāṇṭavar (part II), to explore how the Mahābhārata continues to be such a vital source of meaning, and, in part III, then connects this vital tradition to wider reflections on prehistory, sacrifice, myth, oral epic, and modern theatre. This two volume edition collects nearly three decades of Alf Hiltebeitel's researches into the Indian epic and religious tradition. The two volumes document Hiltebeitel's longstanding fascination with the Sanskrit epics: volume 1 presents a series of appreciative readings of the Mahābhārata (and to a lesser extent, the Rāmāyaṇa), while volume 2 focuses on what Hiltebeitel has called "the underground Mahābhārata," id est, the Mahābhārata as it is still alive in folk and vernacular traditions. Recently re-edited and with a new set of articles completing a trajectory Hiltebeitel established over 30 years ago, this work constitutes a definitive statement from this major scholar. Comprehensive indices, cross-referencing, and an exhaustive bibliography make it an essential reference work. For more information on the first volume please click here .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004216228 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.