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Boekbespreking Religion

Absent Mother God of the West

A Kali Lover’s Journey into Christianity
and Judaism, Rowman & Littlefield 2015

Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

The author draws on her personal religious experiences and devotion to the Goddess Kali as a starting point to reflect on the absence of a Divine Feminine in Christianity and Judaism. We discuss the psychological and spiritual implications of that absence, along with discussing phenomena such as the Black Madonna and the Shekhinah in Jewish mysticism. This book is about the missing Divine Feminine in Christianity and Judaism chronicles, a personal as well as an academic quest of an Indian woman who grew up with Kali and myriad other goddesses. The book examines how the Divine Feminine was erased from the western consciousness and how it led to an exclusive spiritually patriarchal monotheism with serious consequences for both women’s and men’s psychological and spiritual identity. While colonial, proselytizing and patriarchal ways have denied the divinity inherent in the female of the species, a recent upsurge of body-centric practices like Yoga and innumerable books about old and new goddesses reveal a deep seated mother hunger in the western consciousness. Written from a practicing Hindu/Buddhist perspective, this book looks at the curious phenomenon called the Black Madonna that appears in Europe and also examines mystical figures like Shekhinah in Jewish mysticism.

The Indian Diaspora

Hindus and Sikhs in Australia
Manticore Press 2019

Jayant B. Bapat, Purushottama Bilimoria, Philip Hughes

Since the late 1990s, the Indian community in Australia has grown faster than any other immigrant community. The Indian Diaspora has made substantial contributions to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious diversity within Australia. The growth of Hinduism and Sikhism through gurus, temples, yoga and rituals of many kind has brought new colours, images, customs and practices to the profile of Australian religion, and the Australian landscape more widely. At the same time, Hinduism and Sikhism have themselves been transformed as Hindus and Sikhs from different parts of India as well as Fiji, Malaysia and other parts of the world have come together to establish a pan-Indian ethos. Hindus and Sikhs here have also interacted with other sectors of the Australian population and with religions from the Western world. This is the theme of this book, it covers the theory of diaspora, the historical development of the Indian communities in Australia since the late 19th century to the present times, current practices and statistical profiles of Hindus and Sikhs in Australia, and interactions between Hindus and Sikhs with the wider Australian community. There are case-studies of the Indian students and women in the Australian community, of Indian communities in Melbourne and South Australia, and of temple building and the Sikh gurdwara.

Anti-Christian Violence in India

Cornell University Press 2020

Chad M. Bauman

Does religion cause violent conflict and if so, does it cause conflict any more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, and with particular attention to the 2007-08 riots in Kandhamal, Odisha, this book examines religious violence and how it pertains to broader aspects of humanity. Is “religious” conflict sui generis, or is it merely one species of inter-group conflict? Why and how might violence become an attractive option for religious actors? What explains the increase in religious violence over the last twenty to thirty years? Integrating theories of anti-Christian violence focused on politics, economics, and proselytization, the book additionally weaves in recent theory about globalization, and in particular the forms of resistance against Western secular modernity that globalization periodically helps provoke. With such theories in mind, Bauman explores the nature of anti-Christian violence in India, contending that resistance to secular modernities is, in fact, an important but often overlooked reason behind Hindu attacks on Christians. Intensifying the widespread Hindu tendency to think of religion in ethnic rather than universal terms, the ideology of Hindutva explicitly rejects both the secular privatization of religion and the separability of religions from the communities that incubate them. And so, with provocative and original analysis, Bauman questions whether anti-Christian violence in contemporary India is really about religion, in the narrowest sense, or rather a manifestation of broader concerns, among some Hindus, about the Western socio-political order with which they associate global Christianity.

The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations

Routledge 2020

Chad M. Bauman and Mischelle Voss Roberts

The tension between the two historical realities, Hinduism as an ancient Indian religion and Christianity as a religion associated with foreign power and colonialism, continues to animate Hindu-Christian relations today. On the one hand the book describes a rich history of amicable, productive, even sometimes syncretic Hindu-Christian encounters. On the other, this handbook equally attends to historical and contemporary moments of tension, conflict, and violence between Hindus and Christians. The handbook explores how the study of Hindu-Christian relations has been and ought to be done, the history of Hindu-Christian relations through key interactions, ethnographic reflections on current dynamics of Hindu-Christian exchange, important key thinkers, and topics in comparative theology, ultimately providing a framework for further debates in the area.

Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions

Routledge 2020

Knut A. Jacobsen

This book presents critical research, overviews and case studies on religion in historical South Asia and in the seven nation states of contemporary South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Chapters by an international set of experts analyse formative developments, roots, changes and transformations, religious practices and ideas, identities, relations, territorialisation, and globalisation in historical and contemporary South Asia. The Handbook is divided into two parts which firstly analyse historical South Asian religions and their developments and secondly contemporary South Asia religions that are influenced by both religious pluralism and their close connection to nation states and their ideological power. Contributors argue that religion has been used as a tool for creating nations as well as majorities within those nations in South Asia despite, and as response to, their enormous diversity, in particular religious diversity. The handbook explores these diversities and tensions, historical developments and the present situation across religious traditions by utilising an array of approaches and from the point of view of various academic disciplines. Drawing together a remarkable collection of leading and emerging scholars, this handbook is an invaluable research tool and will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of Asian religion, religion in context and South Asian religions.

Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab

Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of
Knowledge 1880-1947, Palgrave Macmillan 2020

Michale P. Brunner

This book explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India. As a case study, it focuses on the hitherto untold colonial history of Khalsa College, Amritsar, a pioneering and highly influential educational institution founded in the British Indian province of Punjab in 1892 by the religious minority community of the Sikhs. Addressing topics such as politics, religion, rural development, militarism or physical education, the study shows how Sikh educationalists and activists made use of and “localised” communal, imperial, national and transnational discourses and knowledge. Their modernist visions and schemes transcended both imperialist and mainstream nationalist frameworks and networks. In its quest to educate the modern Sikh - scientific, practical, disciplined and physically fit - the college navigated between very local and global claims, opportunities and contingencies, mirroring modernity's ambivalent simultaneity of universalism and particularism.

Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics

Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics

Why and How Deep Learning Still Matters
University of Virginia Press 2019

Francis X. Clooney

We live in an era of unprecedented growth in knowledge. Never before has there been so great an availability of and access to information in both print and online. Yet as opportunities to educate ourselves have greatly increased, our time for reading has significantly diminished. And when we do read, we rarely have the patience to read in the slow, sustained fashion that great books require if we are to be truly transformed by them. In this book the author argues that our increasing inability to read in a concerted manner is particularly notable in the realm of religion, where the proliferation of information detracts from the learning of practices that require slow and patient reading. Although awareness of the world's many religions is at an all-time high, deep knowledge of the various traditions has suffered, Clooney challenges this trend by considering six classic Hindu and Christian texts dealing with ritual and law, catechesis and doctrine, and devotion and religious participation, showing how, in distinctive ways, such texts instruct, teach truth, and draw willing readers to participate in the realities they are learning. Through readings of these seminal scriptural and theological texts, he reveals the rewards of a more spiritually transformative mode of reading and how individuals and communities can achieve it.

Religious Tolerance

A History
Harper Collins 2019

Arvind Sharma

Religion has become a vital element in identity politics globally after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States of America. And so the question of how religious tolerance may be secured in the modern world can no longer be avoided. Can religious tolerance be placed on a firmer footing by finding grounds for it within the different faiths themselves? This book addresses that question. In this book Sharma examines Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism and Shinto - whose followers together cover over two-thirds of the globe - to identify instances of tolerance in the history of each of these to help the discussion proceed on the basis of historical facts. This is a timely book - the first of its kind in scope and ambition.

The Muhammad Avatara

Salvation History, Translation and the Making of
Bengali Islam, Oxford University Press 2021

Ayesha A. Irani

The book reveals the powerful role of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal. Its focus is on examining the magnificent seventeenth-century Nabīvamsa of Saiyad Sultān, who lived in Arakanese-controlled Chittagong to affirm the power of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal. Drawing upon the Arabo-Persian Tales of the Prophets genre, the Nabīvamsa (“The Lineage of the Prophet”) retells the life of the Prophet Muhammad for the first time to Bengalis in their mother-tongue. Saiyad Sultān lived in Arakanese-controlled Chittagong, in a period when Gauriya Vaisnava missionary activity was at its zenith. This book delineates the challenges faced by the author in articulating the pre-eminence of Islam and its Arabian prophet in a place land where multiple religious affiliations were common, and when Gaurīya Vaisnava missionary activity was at its zenith. Sultān played a pioneering role in setting into motion various lexical, literary, performative, theological, and, ultimately, ideological processes that led to the establishment of a distinctively Bengali Islam in East Bengal, while yet shaping a distinctively Bengali Islam. At the heart of this transformation of a people and their culture lay the persuasiveness of translation to refresh salvation history for a people on a new Islamic frontier. The Nabīvamsa not only kindled a veritable translation movement of Arabo Persian Islamic literature into Bangla, but established the grammar of creative translation that was to become canonical for this regional tradition. This text-critical study lays bare the sophisticated strategies of translation used by a prominent early modern Muslim Bengali intellectual to invite others to his faith.

The Science of Satyug

Class, Charisma and Vedic Revivalism in the
All World Gayatri Pariwar, Suny Press 2021

Daniel Heifertz

The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement. The All World Gayatri Pariwar is a modern religious movement that enjoys wide popularity in North India, particularly among the many STEM workers who joined after becoming disillusioned with their lucrative but unfulfilling private-sector careers. Founded in the mid-twentieth century, the Gayatri Pariwar works to popularize practices inspired by ancient religious texts and breaks with convention by framing these practices as the foundation of a universal spirituality. The movement appeals to science in its advocacy of these practices, claiming that they have medical benefits that constitute proof that rational people around the world should find persuasive. Should these practices become sufficiently widespread, the belief is that humanity will enter a new satyug, or “golden age.” The book focuses on how religion and science are objects of intense emotion that help to constitute identities. Weaving engaging ethnographic anecdotes together with readings of Gayatri Pariwar literature, Heifetz interprets this material in light of classic and contemporary theory. The result is a significant contribution to current conversations about the globalized middle classes and the entanglement of religion and science that will appeal to anyone interested in understanding these aspects of life in modern India.

World Religions Reader

Understanding Our Religious World
Robinest 2020

Thomas Robinson and Hillary Rodrigues

This book designed as an introductory reader for a World Religions course, provides key texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Shintoism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, along with a chapter on ancient religions of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian worlds. There are 125 passages, 33 symbols, 22 photos, 10 Quick Facts pages, 7 audio clips, and links to hundreds of audio files of technical terms related to the study of religion. Each textual selection has an introduction and footnotes to help the reader understand the context of the passage.

Sikhs in the Deccan and North-East India

Taylor & Francis 2018

Birinder Pal Singh

This book is a major intervention in the understanding of the dynamics of internal migration in South Asia. It traces the historical roots of certain migrant Sikh communities to the south and north-east India; chronicles their social, religious and economic practices; and examines peculiar identity formations. This first-of-its-kind empirical study examines the socio-economic conditions of Sikhs in the Deccan and the North-East who are believed to be the descendants of the soldiers in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s army despatched to the two regions in the early nineteenth century. It draws on extensive ethnographic accounts to present the social realities of the different communities, including language, religion, culture, occupation, caste, marriage and kinship, and agency. It also questions the idea of Sikh homogeneity that many within the community have come to believe in, while revealing both differences and similarities. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, migration and diaspora studies, religion, especially Sikh studies, cultural studies, as well as the Sikh diaspora worldwide.

Bhante Saranapala on Kindness

The Urban Buddhist Monk
New Books Network 2021

Bhante Saranapala

What does wisdom have to do with kindness? This podcast features words of wisdom form Bhante Saranapala, also known as The Urban Buddhist Monk. An International Monk, Teacher, and Speaker, Bhante is the Founder and President of Canada: A Mindful and Kind Nation, he teaches loving-kindness meditation and offers private consultation and public speaking.

Regional Communities of Devotion in South Asia

Insiders, Outsiders and
Interlopers, Routledge 2019

Gil Ben-Herut and Jon Keune

This book explores the key motif of the religious Other in devotional (bhakti) literatures and practices from across the Indian subcontinent. The primary aim of this book is to reconsider and challenge inherited notions of the bhakta's or devotee's Other and unmask processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents. The book considers the ways in which bhakti might be conceived as having an inter-regional impact - as a force, discourse, network, mythology, ethic - while critically engaging with extant scholarly narratives about what bhakti is and tracing when and how those narratives have been used. The sheer diversity of South Asia's devotional traditions renders them an especially rich resource for examining social and religious fault lines, thereby furthering scholarly understanding of how communalism and sectarianism originate and develop on local or regional levels, with wider geographic implications. Bringing together studies from a subcontinent-wide variety of linguistic, geographical, and historical frames for the first time, this book will be an important contribution to the literature on bhakti, and it will be of interest to scholars of South Asian Religion and Asian Religion.

Teaching Buddhist Studies Online

A Discussion with Kate Hatmann
New Books Network 2021

Kate Hartmann

The author is Director of Buddhist Studies Online, a new educational platform providing coursework on the history, philosophy, and practices of Buddhism. Founded in 2021 by Seth Powell as a sister institute to Yogic Studies, this book provides accessible, affordable, and high-quality courses for the broader community interested in learning more about Buddhism in a non-sectarian way. It aims to bridge the gap between widespread interest in meditation and other aspects of Buddhist traditions and the all-too-often inaccessible research of the academy. The mission of BSO is discussed, the surprising role the NBN podcast played in BSO's origin story, and growing landscape of public-facing teaching and scholarship. How should scholars think about how to address multiple publics? How can they make their research and teaching available and meaningful to popular audiences while still being academically grounded and responsible? How do platforms like BSO fit into the larger landscape of lineage-based Buddhist teachers, mindfulness coaches, and orientalizing discourses about Asian religions? Kate and Raj draw on their respective experiences with BSO and the School of Indian Wisdom in this wide-ranging conversation about what it means to be a scholar in this exciting new era of the humanities.

Brian Carwana on World Religions

Executive Director of Encounter World
Religions, New Books Network 2021

Brian Carwana

Why study World Religions? This podcast features words of wisdom from Dr. Brian Carawana, Executive Director of Encounter World Religions who advocates for widespread religious literacy. We learn core insights the author has arrived at having avidly studying and taught the world’s religions for over 20 years.

Muslim Communities and Cultures of the Himalayas

Conceptualizing the Global
Ummah, Routledge 2020

Jacqueline Fewkes and Megan Adamson Sijapati

This book explores individual perspectives and specific iterations of Muslim community, Muslim practice and experience of Islam in the Himalayan region as well as the concept of the general Islamic community the Ummah. A multidisciplinary analysis of Muslim communities and historical and contemporary Islamicate traditions, the book shows how Muslims understand and mobilize regional identities and religious expressions. Moreover, it assesses regional interactions, the ways in which institutions shape Muslim practices in specific areas and investigates the notion of the Himalayas as an Islamic space. The book suggests that the regional focus on the Himalayas provides a site of both geographic and cultural crossroads where Muslim community is simultaneously constituted at multiple social levels. As a result, chapters document a wide range of local, national, and global interests while maintaining a focus on individual perspectives, moments in time, and localized experiences. This book draws attention to the cultural, social, artistic, and political diversity of the Himalaya beyond the better-understood and frequently documented religio-cultural expressions of the region.

Everyday Shi’ism in South Asia

John Wiley & Sons 2021

Karen G. Ruffle

This book is an introduction to the everyday life and cultural memory of Shi’i women and men, focusing on the religious worlds of both individuals and communities at particular historical moments and places in the Indian subcontinent. Ruffle draws upon an array primary sources, images, and ethnographic data to present topical case studies offering broad snapshots Shi'i life as well as microscopic analyses of ritual practices, material objects, architectural and artistic forms, and more. Focusing exclusively on South Asian Shi'ism, an area mostly ignored by contemporary scholars who focus on the Arab lands of Iran and Iraq, the author shifts readers’ analytical focus from the center of Islam to its periphery. Ruffle provides new perspectives on the diverse ways that the Shi’a intersect with not only South Asian religious culture and history, but also the wider Islamic humanistic tradition.

Ruth Roth on the Wisdom of the Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Women Priests of
Canada, New Books Network 2021

Ruth Roth

What wisdom does the Roman Catholic Church hold for our modern world? Can it become more inclusive? Join us as we speak to Ruth Roth, a Roman Catholic Woman Priest, who was ordained by a Bishop of the Church as part of one such effort.

Malleable Mara

Transformations of a Buddhist
Symbol of Evil, Suny Press 2020

Michael Nichols

This is the first book to examine the development of the figure of Māra, who appears across Buddhist traditions as a personification of death and desire. Portrayed as a combination of god and demon, Māra serves as a key antagonist to the Buddha, his followers, and Buddhist teaching in general. From ancient India to later Buddhist thought in East Asia to more recent representations in Western culture and media, Māra has been used to satirize Hindu divinities, taken the form of wrathful Tibetan gods, communicated psychoanalytic tropes, and appeared as a villain in episodes of Doctor Who.

Print and the Urdu Public

Muslims, Newspapers and Urban Life in Colonial India
Oxford University Press 2020

Megan Eaton Robb

In early twentieth century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins of society became a key player in Urdu journalism. Published in the isolated market town of Bijnor, Madinah grew to hold influence across North India and the Punjab while navigating complex issues of religious and political identity. The author uses the previously unexamined perspective of the Madinah to consider Urdu print publics and urban life in South Asia. Through a discursive and material analysis of Madinah, the book explores how Muslims who had settled in ancestral qasbahs, or small towns, used newspapers to facilitate a new public consciousness. The book demonstrates how Madinah connected the Urdu newspaper conversation both explicitly and implicitly with Muslim identity and delineated the boundaries of a Muslim public conversation in a way that emphasized rootedness to local politics and small urban spaces. The case study of this influential but understudied newspaper reveals how a network of journalists with substantial ties to qasbahs produced a discourse self-consciously alternative to the Western-influenced, secularized cities. Robb augments the analysis with evidence from contemporary Urdu, English, and Hindi papers, government records, private diaries, private library holdings, ethnographic interviews, and training materials for newspaper printers. This thoroughly researched volume recovers the erasure of qasbah voices and proclaims the importance of space and time in definitions of the public sphere in South Asia. Print and the Urdu Public demonstrates how an Urdu newspaper published from the margins became central to the Muslim public constituted in the first half of the twentieth century.

Translating Wisdom

Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early
Modern South Asia, University of California Press 2020

Shankar Nair

During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. The book reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha - an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent - Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past but also its present. This interview is one of 3 interviews related to an upcoming American Academy of Religion “New Books in Hindu Studies” academic panel.

Religious Studies Today

New Books Network 2021

Amir Hussain

Listen in as Balkaran speaks with Hussain about his scholarship on Muslims in America, his work as the Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2011-2015), his role as the Vice President of the American Academy of Religion, and overall trends in the field of Religious Studies.

Being Black and Buddhist

New Books Network 2021

Pamela Ayo Yetunde

What does it mean to be black and Buddhist, and what does that have to do with Life Wisdom? This episode of Life Wisdom features the dynamic work of Yetunde, Pastoral Counsellor, Co-Founder of Centre of the Heart, Buddhist Justice Reporter and co-editor of Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom.

Perspectives on Reincarnation
Hindu, Christian, Scientific    
MDPI Books 2019
Jeffery D. Long

What happens after you die? The book brings together fascinating theological and religious studies perspectives on a controversial yet pervasive idea: reincarnation. An estimated 1 on 5 Americans subscribe to this belief, despite their religious background. Why is this? What are the philosophical, spiritual, pragmatic merits of subscribing to reincarnation? What about the pitfalls? Does believing in reincarnation counter Christian teachings? Is it a uniquely Hindu practice? Join us as we explore these and other questions with Dr. Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College (PA) and editor of this book.

Endless Song
Tiruvaymoli
Penguin 2019
Archana Venkatesan

This is an exquisite translation of the Tiruvaymoli (sacred utterance), a brilliant 1102-verse ninth century tamil poem celebrating the poet Nammalvar’s mystical quest for union with his supreme lord, the Hindu great god Visnu. In this interview we discuss the sophisticated structure and profound content of the Tiruvaymoli, along with the translator’s own transformative journey rending into English the meaning, emotion, cadence and kaleidoscopic brilliance proper to this Tamil masterpiece.

The Other Rama
Matricide and Genocide in the Mythology
of Parasurama, Suny Press 2020
Brian Collins

The book examines a fascinating, understudied figure appearing in Sanskrit narrative texts: Parasurāma, i.e., “Rāma with the Axe”. Though he is counted as among the ten avatāras of Visnu, his biography is quite grisly: Parasurāma is best known for decapitating his own mother and launching a genocidal campaign to annihilate twenty-one generations of the warrior caste. Why do ancient Sanskrit mythmakers elevate such an arguably transgressive and antisocial figure to so exalted a religious status? The book explores this question by undertaking analysis of the Parasurāma myth cycle using the methods of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis.

The Subhedar’s Son
A Narrative of Brahmin-Christian Conversion from Nineteenth
Century Maharashtra, Oxford University Press 2019
Deepra Dandekar

This book is a translation and study of an award-winning Marathi biographical novel written in 1895 by Rev. Dinkar Shankar Sawarkar, who writes about his own father, Rev. Shankar Nana (1819-1884). Nana, a Brahmin, was among the early Christian converts of the Church Missionary Society in Western India. The Subhedar's Son provides a fascinating insight into Brahmanical-Christian conversions of the era, along with attitudes surrounding such conversions. In this podcast, we interview Deepra Dandeka and Sawarkar’s own great-grand-daughter about this text and its important context.

Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir
Oxford University Press 2019
Hamsa Stainton

This book explores the relationship between “poetry” and “prayer” in South Asia through close examination of the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir from the eighth century onwards. Beyond charting the history and features of the stotra genre, Stainton presents the first sustained study of the Stutikusumāñjali, an important work dedicated to the god Siva, one bearing witness to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. Poetry as Prayer illumines how these Saiva poets integrate poetics, theology and devotion in the production of usage of Sanskrit hymns, and more broadly expands our understanding Hindu bhakti itself.

Hinduism in America
Bloomsbury Academic 2020
Jeffery D. Long

Long traces two worlds that converge - that of Hindu immigrants to America who strive to preserve their traditions in a foreign land, and that of American spiritual seekers who turn to Hindu practices and ideas. Long explores the influence of concepts such as karma, rebirth, meditation and yoga on the American consciousness, along with Hindu temples in America.

The Jewel of Annual Astrology
A Translation of Balabhadra’s
Hayanaratna, Brill 2020
Martin Gansten

We speak with Gansten on his groundbreaking edition and translation of Balabhadra's Hāyanaratna (1649), the first-ever scholarly volume on Sanskritized Perso-Arabic (Tājika) astrology. In addition to speaking about this work, we dive into the perplexing world of Indian astrology.

The Audacious Raconteur
Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial
India Cornell University Press 2020
Leela Prasad

Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? This book argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress “audacious raconteurs”: skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. The book tells the stories of four Indian narrators who lived in colonial India: a Goan Catholic ayah, a Telugu lawyer from the Raju community, a Tamil brahmin archaeologist, and a librarian from the medara (basket-weavers) caste. These four Indian narrators, through their vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism, dismantle the ideological bulwark of colonialism - colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge.

White Utopias
The Religious Exoticism of Transformational
Festivals, University of California Press Press 2020
Amanda J. Lucia

Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. The author shows how these festivals operate as religious institutions for “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) communities. Whereas previous research into SBNR practices and New Age religion has not addressed the predominantly white makeup of these communities, White Utopias examines the complicated, often contradictory relationships with race at these events, presenting an engrossing ethnography of SBNR practices. Lucia contends that participants create temporary utopias through their shared commitments to spiritual growth and human connection. But they also participate in religious exoticism by adopting Indigenous and Indic spiritualities, a practice that ultimately renders them exclusive, white utopias. Focusing on yoga's role in disseminating SBNR values, Lucia offers new ways of comprehending transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.

Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World
Bloomsbury Academic 2020
Leah Elizabeth Comeau

This book contributes new methods for the study and interpretation of material religion found within literary landscapes. The poets of Hindu devotion are known for their intimate celebration of deities, and while verses over a thousand years old are still treasured, translated, and performed, little attention has been paid to the evocative sensorial worlds referenced by these literary compositions. This book offers a material interpretation of an understudied poem that defined an entire genre of South Asian literature - Tirukkovaiyar - the 9th century Tamil poem dedicated to Shiva. The poetry of Tamil South India invites travel across real and imagined geography, naming royal patrons, ancient temple towns, and natural landscapes. Comeau locates the materiality of devotion to Shiva in a world unique to the South Indian vernacular and yet captivating to audiences across time, place and tradition.

Digital Hinduism
Routledge 2019
Xenia Zeiler

Digital Religion does not simply refer to religion as it is carried out online, but more broadly studies how digital media interrelate with religious practice and belief. Zeiler's book explores and consequentially studies how Hinduism is expressed in the digital sphere and how Hindus utilise digital media. Highlighting digital Hinduism and including case studies with foci on India, Asia and the global Hindu diaspora, this book features contributions from an interdisciplinary and international panel of academics. The chapters focus on specific case studies, which in summary exemplify the wide variety and diversity of what constitutes Digital Hinduism today. Applying methods and research questions from various disciplinary backgrounds appropriate to the study of religion and digital culture, such as Religious Studies, South Asian Studies, Anthropology and Media and Communication Studies, this book is vital reading for any scholar interested in the relationship between religion and the digital world.

Pandemic Perspectives: Working Remotely
A Discussion with Raj Balkaran
New Books Network 2021
Raj Balkaran

In this episode you’ll hear about: the benefits and challenges of working remotely, being alt-ac, Hindu Studies, founding an online school, and the pandemic shutdowns in Canada. Our guest is a prolific independent scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. Having taught comparative religion and mythology at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies for a decade, he now Tutors at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies where he also serves on the Centre’s Curriculum Development Board. Alongside his academic training, he has received extensive spiritual training as part of an oral tradition dedicated to the transmission of Indian wisdom teachings. Integrating his academic and spiritual training, he has founded the online School of Indian Wisdom where he designs and delivers original online courses centered on the practical life wisdom to be found in the philosophical, mythological and spiritual traditions of ancient India. Beyond teaching and research, Dr. Balkaran runs a thriving life consulting practice and hosts the New Books in Indian Religions podcast.

Bhaktimarga Swami on Devotion
ISKCON Leader
New Books Network 2021
Bhaktimarga Swami

What does it mean to be a Swami? This podcast features words of wisdom from ISKCON Leader Bhaktimarga Swami. In drawing from his ISKCON journey which began in 1973, we broach topics of devotion, detachment, and surrender.

Religion and Myth in the Marvel Cinametic Universe
McFarland 2021
Michael D. Nichols

Breaking box office records, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved an unparalleled level of success with fans across the world, raising the films to a higher level of narrative: myth. This is the first book to analyze the Marvel output as modern myth, comparing it to epics, symbols, rituals, and stories from world religious traditions. Nichols places the exploits of Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, and the other stars of the Marvel films alongside the legends of Achilles, Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the Buddha, and many others. It examines their origin stories and rites of passage, the conflicts they contend with, and the symbols of death and the battle against it that stalk them at every turn. The films deal with timeless human dilemmas and questions, evoking an enduring sense of adventure and wonder common across world mythic traditions.

The Scholar Practitioner
Jesuit Priest, Professor, Harvard Divinity
School, New Books Network 2021
Frank Cloooney

To what extent should scholarship foreground the beliefs and experiences of the scholar producing it? Where does the scholar-practitioners fit at the academy today? Join us as we explore such issues in conversation with Dr. Francis Clooney, Jesuit Priest and Harvard Professor of Comparative Theology, specializing in Catholic and Hindu traditions.

Chris Chapple on Nonviolence as Pandemic Wisdom
New Books Network 2021
Chris Chapple

How can the doctrine of nonviolence help us cope with these troubled times? Join us as we speak to Dr. Chris Chapple, Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University as we discuss specific, ancient strategies for navigating tumultuous times such as this moment in human history.

Healing Wisdom from a Métis Elder
New Books Network 2021
Ernest W. Matton

The author is a spiritual ambassador who blends Traditional teachings with mainstream information to provide holistic healing approaches for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community members and professional disciplines. What wisdom teachings does he have to offer for healing and the current state of the world at large?

Wisdom and Social Activism
New Books Network 2021
Oneika Mays

How do you engage in social activism in a healthy, balanced sustainable manner? This podcast features the considerable social justice wisdom of Oneika Mays (she, her, certified meditation teacher, E-RYT, LMT and energy worker) who teaches mindfulness to incarcerated people at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in NYC. We discuss the significance of self-care and self-inquiry to social activism, and much more.

Open Access Publishing
New Books Network 2021
Dominik Haas

What is Open Access Publishing and why is it important? Listen in as Raj Balkaran interviews Dominik A. Haas on his Fair Open Access Publishing in South Asian Studies (FOASAS) initiative which maintains a list of relevant publishers, journals, book series and other publication media. The list is available here.

Branding Bhakti
Krishna Consciousness and the Makeover of
a Movement, Indiana University Press 2021
Nicole Karapanagiotis

How do religious groups reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences? How do they rebrand their messages and recast their rituals in order to make their followers more diverse? The author considers the new branding of the Hare Krishna Movement, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Branding Bhakti not only investigates the methods the ISKCON movement uses to position itself for growth but also highlights devotees’ painful and complicated struggles as they work to transform their shrinking, sectarian movement into one with global religious appeal.

To Savor the Meaning
The Theology of Literary Emotions in
Medieval Kashmir, Oxford University Press 2021
James D. Reich

Medieval Kashmir in its golden age saw the development of some of the most sophisticated theories of language, literature, and emotion articulated in the pre-modern world. This book examines the overlap of literary theory and religious philosophy in this period by looking at debates about how poetry communicates emotions to its readers, what it is readers do when they savor these emotions, and why this might be valuable.

Online Dharmasastra Library
New Books Network 2021
Don Davis

Dr. Don Davis (Professor and Chair, Department of Asian Studies) speaks about the newly launched Resource Library for Dharmasāstra Studies, a digitized open educational resource hosted at the University of Texas, Austin. We discuss the genesis and utility of this important online resource, highlighting the herculean efforts of Dr. Patrick Olivelle.

The Philosophy of Sri Chinmoy
Love and Transformation
Lexington Books 2021
Kusumita P. Pedersen

This podcast interviews Pedersen on the first book-length study of the thought of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007) and his teaching of a dynamic spirituality of integral transformation. This book is a straightforward and unembroidered account of his philosophy, allowing Sri Chinmoy to speak for himself in his own words, in poetry as much as in prose.

Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares
Horses in Indian Myth and History
University of Virginia Press 2021
Wendy Doniger

Raj Balkaran speaks with Wendy Doniger about her new book Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History (University of Virginia Press, 2021), along with her translation of the final four books of the Mahābhārata's Critical Edition translation project, the power of the purānas, cultural appropriation, and more!

Savoring God
Comparative Theopoetics
Oxford University Press 2021
Gloria Maité Hernández

This book compares two mystical works central to the Christian Discalced Carmelite and the Hindu Bhakti traditions: the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual (Spiritual Canticle), by John of the Cross, and the Sanskrit Rāsa Līlā, originated in the oral tradition. These texts are examined alongside theological commentaries: for the Cántico, the Comentarios written by John of the Cross on his own poem; for Rāsa Līlā, the foundational commentary by Srīdhara Swāmi along with commentaries by the sixteenth-century theologian Jīva Goswāmī, from the Gaudīya Vaisnava school, and other Gaudīya theologians.

The Cloud of Longing
A New Translation and Eco-Aesthetic Study of
Kalidasa's Meghaduta, Oxford University Press 2021
E.H. Rick Jarow

This is a translation and full-length study of the great Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa's famed Meghadūta (literally: “The Cloud Messenger”) with a focus on its interfacing of nature, feeling, figurative language, and mythic memory. While the Meghadūta has been translated a number of times, the last “almost academic” translation was published in 1976 (Leonard Nathan, The Transport of Love: The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa). This volume, however, is more than an Indological translation. It is a study of the text in light of both classical Indian and contemporary Western literary theory, and it is aimed at lovers of poetry and poetics and students of world literature. It seeks to widen the arena of literary and poetic studies to include classic works of Asian traditions. It also looks at the poem's imaginative portrayals of “nature” and “environment” from perspectives that have rarely been considered.

A Conversation with Laurie Patton
New Books Network 2022
Laurie Patton

Raj Balkaran speaks with Laurie Patton, Professor of Religions and President at Middlebury College, about her scholarly journey, educational administration, poetry, trends in scholarship, the significance of Indian myth, and more.

Boekbespreking Hinduism

Hindu Pluralism
Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern
South Asia, University of California Press 2017
Elaine Fisher

This book sheds light on the variegated, pluralistic texture of Hinduism in precolonial times. Drawing on Sanskrit, Telugu, and Tamil sources, Fisher argues for a uniquely South Asian form of religious pluralism, evidenced by religious performances in the public space. Her work is crucial for considering the development of Hinduism in the early modern era, and that era’s legacy on modern constructions of Hinduism, calling into question the colonial categories implicit in the term “sectarianism”.

Hinduism
A Contemporary Philosophical
Investigation. Routledge 2018
Shyam Ranganathan

In this book the author argues that a careful philosophical study reveals telling philosophical disagreements across topics such as: ethics, logic, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. His analysis offers an innovative stance on the very study of Hinduism, and tensions between scholars and practitioners of Hindu traditions.

Living Mantra
Mantra, Deity, and Visionary Experience
Today. Palgrave Macmillan 2019
Mani Rao

What role does mantra play in the lives of Hindu practitioners? Mani Rao takes us on a journey to three sacred sites across India’s Andhra-Telangana region. The practitioners she engages at these sites offer insight into their transformative embodied experience of mantra. Rao dovetails scholarship and practice to grapple with the captivating, eye-opening, mind-blowing narratives of the practitioners she engages. This book broaches compelling questions such as: what is the relationship between mantras and deities? Texts? Gurus? Do practitioners relate to mantra as vehicles of meaning, or as aesthetic entities? What is the relationship to sound and visions in mantra practice? What is the role of imagination here? Celebrating lived experience, the book documents the modern-day existence of seers (rishis), thus underscoring the open, ongoing nature of divine revelation in Hindu traditions.

The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre
Routledge 2018
David V. Mason

To what extent may we say that religion is a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre is a religious experience? Can making sense of one help us make sense of the other? Join us as we dive into this book where the author posits an intriguing parity between theatre and religion. Drawing heavily from Hindu aesthetic theory and Hindu religious performance, Mason examines the phenomenology of religion in an attempt to better understanding of the phenomenology of theatre, arguing that religion can show us the ways in which theatre is not fake.

The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions
Devī as Corpse. Routledge, 2018
Anway Mukhopadhyay

Why is the Indian Goddess sometimes figured as a corpse in Tantric Traditions? What is the significance of this? How is it different from when the Hindu god Shiva is figured as a corpse? Centered on the myth of Sati (whereby the Goddess was dismembered after her self-immolation), this book features a fascinating take on why the “death” of the Goddess in this myth is no death at all, especially in contrast to Shiva as corpse.

Rites of the God-King
Santi and Ritual Change in Early
Hinduism, Oxford University Press 2018
Marko Geslani

Is “Vedic” fire sacrifice at odds with “Hindu” image worship? Through a careful study of ritual (santi) texts geared towards appeasement of inauspicious forces (primarily the Atharva Veda and in the Brhatsamhitā, an Indian astrological work), Marko Geslani demonstrates the persistent significance and centrality of the work of Brahmanical priesthood from ancient to medieval to modern times. In doing so he aptly problematizes the scholarly tendency to demarcate Vedic ritual from popular Hinduism.

Reciting the Goddess
Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism
in Nepal, Oxford University Press 2018
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz

This book represents the very first study of a fascinating Hindu phenomenon: the Svasthanivratakatha (SVK), a sixteenth-century narrative textual tradition native to Nepal surrounding the Goddess, Svasthānī. This work explores Himalayan Hindu religious tradition in the making during the very self-conscious creation of Nepal as the “world's only Hindu kingdom” in the early modern period. Touching on the pan-Hindu goddess tradition, regional ideals of Hindu womanhood, linguistic culture, identity formation and placemaking.

The History of the Arthasastra
Sovereignty and Sacred Law in
Ancient India, Cambridge UP 2019
Mark McClish

Was ancient India ruled by politics or religion? This book explores the Arthasāstra (ancient India’s foundational treatise on statecraft and governance) to problematize the common scholarly idea that politics in ancient India was circumscribed by religion, i.e., that kings prioritized a sacred duty to abide by the spiritual law of dharma. McClish shows that this model of kingship comes to the fore only in the classical period, demonstrating that the Arthasāstra originally espoused a political philosophy marked by empiricism and pragmatism.

Imagining Religious Communities
Transnational Hindus and their Narrative
Performances, Oxford University Press 2019
Jennifer B. Saunders

This book tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious narratives they tell as they create and maintain their extended family and community across national borders. Based on ethnographic research, the book demonstrates the ways that transnational communities are involved in shaping their experiences through narrative performances, it demonstrates that narrative performances shape participants' social realities in multiple ways: they define identities, they create connections between community members living on opposite sides of national borders, and they help create new homes amidst increasing mobility. The narratives are religious and include epic narratives such as excerpts from the Ramayana as well as personal narratives with dharmic implications. The analysis combines scholarly understandings of the ways in which performances shape the contexts in which they are told, indigenous comprehension of the power that reciting certain narratives can have on those who hear them, and the theory that social imaginaries define new social realities through expressing the aspirations of communities. This book argues that this Hindu community's religious narrative performances significantly contribute to shaping their transnational lives.

Hinduism Before Reform
Harvard University Press 2020
Brian A. Hatcher

Did modern Hinduism truly emerge due to the “reforms” instigated by “progressive” colonial figures such as Rammohun Roy? This book challenges this prevalent notion. Aimed at sidestepping the obfuscating binary of “progressive” vs “traditional”, this book examines in tandem two early nineteenth-century Hindu communities and their influential leaders: Rammohun Roy (founder of the “progressive” Brahmo Samaj) and Swami Narayan (founder of the “traditional” Swaminarayan Sampraday movement). This book advocates a radically different understanding of the origins of modern Hinduism by problematizing the notion of “reform” itself, instead advocating for viewing these movements as “religious polities.”

Dharma in America
A Short History of Hindu-
Jain Diaspora, Routledge 2019
Pankaj Jain

This book provides a concise history of Hindus and Jains in the Americas over the last two centuries, highlighting contributions to the economic and intellectual growth of the US in particular. Pankaj Jain pays special attention to contributions of the Hindu and Jain diasporas in the area of medicine and music.

A Conversation witn Nicholas Sutton
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
New Books Network 2020
Nicholas Sutton

Today I talked to Dr. Nicholas Sutton about his work at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We discuss his teaching philosophy, his mandate of making the study of Hinduism accessible to public audiences, and the Centre’s exciting collection of online courses.

The Regulation of Religion and the
Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad
University of North Carolina Press 2019
Alexander Rocklin

The history of the Caribbean Island of Trinidad bears witness to an important interplay between the religious practices of peoples of South Asian and those of peoples of African descent, and in particular the manner in which colonial religious categories shaped that interplay. The author draws on colonial archives and ethnographic work in this pioneering examination of the realities of indentured workers in colonial Trinidad wherein he illuminates in tandem the roots of the Caribbean Hindu diaspora and the very roots of Hinduism itself and its status as a World Religion.

The Many Faces of a Himalayan Goddess
Hadimba, Her Devotees and Religion in
Rapid Change, Oxford University Press 2019
Ehud Halperin

Hadimba is a primary village goddess in the Kullu Valley of the West Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, a rural area known as the Land of Gods. As the book shows, Hadimba is a goddess whose vitality reveals itself in her devotees' rapidly changing encounters with local and far from local players, powers, and ideas. These include invading royal forces, colonial forms of knowledge, and more recently the onslaught of modernity, capitalism, tourism, and ecological change. Hadimba has provided her worshipers with discursive, ritual, and ideological arenas within which they reflect on, debate, give meaning to, and sometimes resist these changing realities, and she herself has been transformed in the process. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and textual materials gathered in the region from 2009 to 2017, the book is rich with myths and tales, accounts of dramatic rituals and festivals, and descriptions of everyday life in the celebrated but remote Kullu Valley. The book employs an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of Hadimba from the ground up, or rather, from the center out, portraying the goddess in varying contexts that radiate outward from her temple to local, regional, national, and indeed global spheres. The result is an important contribution to the study of Indian village goddesses, lived Hinduism, Himalayan Hinduism, and the rapidly growing field of religion and ecology.

Crossing the Lines of Caste
Visvamitra and the Construction of Brahmin Power in
Hindu Mythology, Oxford University Press 2015
Adheesh Sathaye

What does it mean to be a Brahmin, and what could it mean to become one? The ancient Indian mythological figure Visvāmitra accomplishes just this, transforming himself from a king into a Brahmin by cultivation of ascetic power. The book examines legends of the irascible Visvāmitra as occurring in Sanskrit and vernacular texts, oral performances, and visual media to show how the “storyworlds” created by these various retellings have adapted and reinforced Brahmin social identity over the millennia.

Loving Stones
Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of
Mount Govardhan, Oxford University Press 2020
David L. Haberman

This book explores the worship world of Mount Govardhan; located in the Braj region of India, the mountain is considered an embodied form of the Hindu deity Krishna. Above and beyond providing insight into the fascinating religious practices surrounding worship of Mount Govardhan, Haberman probes the paradox of an infinite god embodied in finite form, In doing so, he offers critical consideration of the pejorative concept of idolatry in the study of religions, in particular its problematic use to when applied to Hindu religiosity.

Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds
Suny Press 2020
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger

In her fascinating book, the author analyzes the agency of materiality, that is, the ability of materials to have effect beyond what was intended. This ethnographic journey across three Indian locales examines the agency of various materials - from ornaments, to female guising, to cement images. This book not only delivers deep insight into the Hindu world, but broadens our understanding of the role of material agency within the study of religion.

Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage
Sexual Ideology in the Mahabharata
Suny Press 2008
Arti Dhand

The Hindu tradition has held conflicting views on womanhood from its earliest texts -holding women aloft as goddesses to be worshipped on the one hand and remaining deeply suspicious about women’s sexuality on the other. Dhand examines the religious premises upon which Hindu ideas of sexuality and women are constructed. The work focuses on the great Hindu epic, the Mahābhārata, a text that not only reflects the cogitations of a momentous period in Hindu history, but also was critical in shaping the future of Hinduism. Dhand proposes that the epic’s understanding of womanhood cannot be isolated from the broader religious questions that were debated at the time, and that the formation of a sexual ideology is one element in crafting a coherent religious framework for Hinduism.

Temples of Modernity
Nationalism, Hinduism and Transhumanism in
South Indian Science, Lexington Books 2018
Robert M. Geraci

What is the relationship between science, religion and technology in Hinduism? We speak with Robert M. Geraci about his research into religious ideas and practices in Indian science and engineering circles. The book uses ethnographic data to investigate the presence of religious ideas and practices in Indian science and engineering. Geraci shows 1) how the integration of religion, science and technology undergirds pre- and post-independence Indian nationalism, 2) that traditional icons and rituals remain relevant in elite scientific communities, and 3) that transhumanist ideas now percolate within Indian visions of science and technology. This work identifies the intersection of religion, science, and technology as a worldwide phenomenon and suggests that the study of such interactions should be enriched through attention to the real experiences of people across the globe.

Rabbi on the Ganges
A Jewish-Hindu Encounter
Lexington Books 2019
Alan Brill

How do Judaism and Hinduism compare as religions? Beyond the academic merits of comparative religion, what can adherents to one of these faiths gain by learning about the other? This is the first work to engage the new terrain of Hindu-Jewish religious encounter. The book offers understanding into points of contact between the two religions of Hinduism and Judaism. Providing an important comparative account, the work illuminates key ideas and practices within the traditions, surfacing commonalities between the jnana and Torah study, karmakanda and Jewish ritual, and between the different Hindu philosophic schools and Jewish thought and mysticism, along with meditation and the life of prayer and Kabbalah and creating dialogue around ritual, mediation, worship, and dietary restrictions. The goal of the book is not only to unfold the content of these faith traditions but also to create a religious encounter marked by mutual and reciprocal understanding and openness.

Contemplative Studies in Hinduism
Meditation, Devotion, Prayer
and Worship, Routledge 2020
Rita D. Sherma and Purushottama Bilimoria

What counts as contemplative practices in Hinduism? What can Hindu Studies offer Contemplative Studies as a discipline? This book explores diverse spiritual and religious Hindu practices to grapple with meditative communion and contemplation, devotion, spiritual formation, prayer, ritual, and worship. Contemplative Studies in Hinduism covers a wide range of topics - classical Sāmkhya and Patañjali Yoga, the Bhāgavata Purāna, the role of Sādhana in Advaita Vedānta, Srīvidyā and the Srīcakra, the body in Tantra, the semiotics and illocution of Gaudīya Vaisnava sādhana, mantra in Mīmāmsā, Vaisnava liturgy - to articulate indigenous categories for grappling to Hindu contemplative traditions. In doing so it enriches the fields of both Contemplative Studies and Hindu Studies.

Devi Mahatmyam
The Glory of the Goddess
Raconteurs Audio LLP 2020
Tim Bruce

For millions worldwide, the Devi Mahatmyam is of central spiritual importance and of equal cultural significance within Indian Sanskrit literature to the Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata, and the Ramayana. Also known as the Shri Durga Saptashati (700 verses to Goddess Durga), it forms a major part of the Markandeya Purana (dating from around 550 CE) and remains the prime focus of festivity and devotion to the Divine Mother during the nine nights of Navaratri. Listening to this story nurtures a strong positive feeling of protection and well-being within the Heart chakra, stimulates the energy of the sternum bone that produces the antibodies that fight infection, and is of particular benefit to mankind today, as the world struggles to cope with the many physical and psychological challenges and the increasing pressures of modern life. This is a Devi Mahatmyam for our time.

A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses
Tales of the Feminine Divine from India and
Beyond, University of California Press 2020
Michael Slouber

The book surveys the diversity of India's feminine divine tradition by bringing together a fresh array of captivating and largely overlooked Hindu goddess narratives from different regions. As the first such anthology of goddess narratives in translation, it highlights a range of sources from ancient myths to modern lore. The goddesses in this book battle demons, perform miracles, and grant rare Tantric visions to their devotees. Each translation is paired with a short essay that explains the goddesses historical and social context, demonstrating the ways religion changes over time.

Vicissitudes of the Goddesses
Reconstructions of the Gramadevata in India’s
Religious Traditions, Oxford University Press 2013
SreePadma

Here the focus is on two types of Gramadevatas or goddesses: deified women and those associated with disease and fertility. Setting these figures in the context of their Brahmanic transformation into popular goddesses and noting the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate categories of goddess, the author argues for a continuation of certain goddesses from the Indus period to the contemporary one. She demonstrates two significant aspects of the study of goddesses. First, against the backdrop of the rural versus the urban context, she articulates a history of local goddesses of Andhra Pradesh, clearly linking them to the Indus context as well as the present day. Second, she explains why and how these local goddesses were adopted and adapted to other traditions or systems of thought, namely Brahmanic, Buddhist, and Jain.

The Contemporary Hindu Temple
Fragments for a History
Marg Foundation 2019
Annapurna Garimella

Contemporary Hindu temples raise aesthetic, economic, political and philosophical questions about the role of architecture in making a place for the sacred in society. This book presents the Hindu temple from the perspectives of institutions and individuals, including priests, building practitioners and worshippers, to consider what it means when the temple is no longer at the centre of Indic life, but has instead become one among several important sites of social praxis. The book takes as its subject the multiple forms of architecture, design and sociability that Hindu spaces of worship encompass today. The essays cover shrines located in urban and rural India, where Hindu temples are being maintained, resuscitated or newly constructed at a rapid pace. The authors of the essays in this volume take the contemporary as a moment in which historic structures, modern renovations, evolving religiosities and new design and construction practices intersect and converge. This centres the temple in a landscape of automobility, wireless connectivity and economic reformation, at the crossroads of informal acts of insertion, formal planning and governmentality, or as an architect-designed structure consciously being pushed toward the fresh horizons that a changing society offers. By focusing on a variety of structures, large and small, on expansive forms of encroachment, and on incremental acts of negotiation and seemingly insignificant processes, small feelings and pieties, this book nuances and expands our understanding of the Hindu temple today.