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.
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
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
Jesus as Guru : the Image of Christ among Hindus and Christians in India.
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People in India form images of Jesus Christ that link up with their own culture. Hindus have given Jesus a place among the teachers and gods of their own religion, seeing in his life something of the wisdom and mysticism that is so central to Hinduism. Christians in India also make use of the concepts provided by Hinduism when they wish to express the meaning of Christ. Thus, in any case, Jesus is-for Hindus and Christians-a guru, a teacher of wisdom who speaks with divine authority. But for many Hindu philosophers and Christian theologians there is much more that can be said about him within the Indian framework. He can be described as an avatara , a divine descent, or linked to the Brahman, the all-encompassing Reality. This study looks at both Hindu and Christian views of Christ, starting with that of the Hindu reformer Rammohan Roy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as well as those of the first Christian theologians of India. The views of Mahatma Gandhi and the monks of the Ramakrishna Mission are discussed, and those of influential Christian schools such as the Ashram movement and dalit theology. Five intermezzos indicate how artists in India portray Jesus Christ.
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1 online resource (323 pages) :
9789401206198 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
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.
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
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
In the presence of Sai Baba : body, city, and memory in a global religious movement /
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The Sai Baba movement, centered on the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), today attracts a global following from Japan to South Africa. Regarded as a divine incarnation, Sathya Sai Baba traces his genealogy to Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918), a mendicant in colonial India identified with various Sufi and devotional genealogies. The movement, thus, has "roots" in Shirdi Sai Baba but as it globalizes, it has developed conjunctions with other religious traditions, New Religious movements, and New Age ideas. This book offers an account of the Sai Baba movement as a pathway for charting the varied cartographies, sensory formations, and cultural memories implicated in urbanization and globalization. It traverses the terrain between social theories for the study of religion and cities ---themselves a product of modernity---and the radical, creative, and unexpected modernity of contemporary religious movements. It is based on ethnographic research carried out in India, Kenya, and the US.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-371) and index. :
9789047433002 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mirʼāt al-quds (Mirror of holiness) : a life of Christ for Emperor Akbar : a commentary on Father Jerome Xavier's text and the miniatures of Cleveland Museum of Art, Acc. numbers 2...
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Emperor Akbar's exceptional interest in Christianity is reflected in many ways. Among these was his commissioning in 1602 of a Life of Christ from his guest, the Jesuit priest Jerome Xavier, thus marking a singular moment in the relations between one of the greatest Muslim rulers and Catholicism. This fascinating text-translated into English for the first time-draws mostly on Biblical and apocryphal sources, but also reveals that in order not to antagonize his Muslim hosts, Father Jerome occasionally made concessions in his work. Of the three illustrated copies, the one used in this study and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art is the most important. Its twenty-seven high-quality miniatures were inspired by the text itself, resulting in unique interpretations of episodes that often do not find parallels in a European context.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004215740 :
0921-0326 ; :
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 ;