Описание: Dharma is central to all the major religious traditions which originated on the Indian subcontinent. Such is its importance that these traditions cannot adequately be understood apart from it. Often translated as "ethics," "religion," "law," or "social order," dharma possesses elements of each of these but is not confined to any single category familiar to Western thought. Neither is it the straightforward equivalent of what many in the West might usually consider to be "a philosophy". This much-needed analysis of the history and heritage of dharma shows that it is instead a multi-faceted religious force, or paradigm, that has defined and that continues to shape the different cultures and civilizations of South Asia in a whole multitude of forms, organizing many aspects of life. Experts in the fields of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh studies here bring fresh insights to dharma in terms both of its distinctiveness and its commonality as these are expressed across, and between, the several religions of the subcontinent. Exploring ethics, practice, history and social and gender issues, the contributors engage critically with some prevalent and often problematic interpretations of dharma, and point to new ways of appreciating these traditions in a manner that is appropriate to and thoroughly consistent with their varied internal debates, practices and self-representations.
Описание: The share of Hindus in Guyana's Indian population declined from 83.5 percent in 1880 to 62.8 percent in 2012. Yet even a casual observer would conclude that Guyanese Hindus, at home and in the diaspora, are a very religious people. Many of us do a jhandi or havan once annually; others do the more elaborate and costlier yaj a, where everyone is welcome, once or twice in their lifetime. Most of us do a short daily puja-prayers, offerings, reading the stras and listening to bhajan-in our homes. Christian missionaries worked assiduously to convert immigrants. Their first order of business was to denigrate Hinduism, designate Hindus as heathens, and disparage their culture, food, and even attire. Immigrants stubbornly resisted, led by the tiny educated elite, including Brhmaas, whom we call Brahmins. Conversion was a failure, at least up to the end of the nineteenth century, but picked up momentum thereafter. From around the 1870s, there occurred an unplanned movement toward a "synthesis" that brought Hindus, regardless of caste or sect, under a "unitary form of Hinduism." Guyanese Hindus call it Sanatana Dharma and Ramesh Gampat labels it Plantation Hinduism in this book. The book argues that the brand of Hinduism practiced is inconsistent with Sanatana Dharma, called Vednta by the more philosophically inclined. It features an extraordinary dependence upon purohits (pandits), which has anaesthetized the Hindu mind and render it unable to think, question, and inquire when it comes to dharma. Rituals and bhakti have been degraded and turned into desire-motivated worship. Devats have been misconstrued as Brahman rather than as limited manifestation of the one nondual pure consciousness. Belief in the multiplicity of gods encourages image worship, and superstitions anchor Guyanese Hindus to tradition and mere belief. Plantation Hinduism is little more than desire-motivated actions, dogmas, and superstitions. Absent is the idea that Sanatana Dharma is a spiritual science no less scientific than the hard sciences, such as physics and astronomy. The central message of Vednta is the innate divinity of every person and the freedom to realize that divinity through anubhava, direct personal experience of supreme reality.
Автор: Srinivas, Tulasi Название: Cow in the elevator ISBN: 0822370646 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780822370642 Издательство: Mare Nostrum (Eurospan) Рейтинг: Цена: 17550.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание:
In The Cow in the Elevator Tulasi Srinivas explores a wonderful world where deities jump fences and priests ride in helicopters to present a joyful, imaginative, yet critical reading of modern religious life. Drawing on nearly two decades of fieldwork with priests, residents, and devotees, and her own experience of living in the high-tech city of Bangalore, Srinivas finds moments where ritual enmeshes with global modernity to create wonder—a feeling of amazement at being overcome by the unexpected and sublime. Offering a nuanced account of how the ruptures of modernity can be made normal, enrapturing, and even comical in a city swept up in globalization's tumult, Srinivas brings the visceral richness of wonder—apparent in creative ritual in and around Hindu temples—into the anthropological gaze. Broaching provocative philosophical themes like desire, complicity, loss, time, money, technology, and the imagination, Srinivas pursues an interrogation of wonder and the adventure of writing true to its experience. The Cow in the Elevator rethinks the study of ritual while reshaping our appreciation of wonder's transformative potential for scholarship and for life.
Автор: Altman Michael J Название: Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu ISBN: 0190654929 ISBN-13(EAN): 9780190654924 Издательство: Oxford Academ Рейтинг: Цена: 4275.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Today, there are more than two million Hindus in America. But before the twentieth century, Hinduism was unknown in the United States. But while Americans did not write about "Hinduism," they speculated at length about "heathenism," "the religion of the Hindoos," and "Brahmanism." In Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu, Michael J. Altman argues that this is not a mere sematic distinction-a case of more politically correct terminology being accepted over time-but a way that Americans worked out their own identities. American representations of India said more about Americans than about Hindus. Cotton Mather, Hannah Adams, and Joseph Priestley engaged the larger European Enlightenment project of classifying and comparing religion in India. Evangelical missionaries used images of "Hindoo heathenism" to raise support at home. Unitarian Protestants found a kindred spirit in the writings of Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy. Popular magazines and common school books used the image of dark, heathen, despotic India to buttress Protestant, white, democratic American identity. Transcendentalists and Theosophists imagined the contemplative and esoteric religion of India as an alternative to materialist American Protestantism. Hindu delegates and American speakers at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions engaged in a protracted debate about the definition of religion in industrializing America. Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu is a groundbreaking analysis of American representations of religion in India before the turn of the twentieth century. Altman reorients American religious history and the history of Asian religions in America, showing how Americans of all sorts imagined India for their own purposes. The questions that animated descriptions of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus in the past, he argues, still animate American debates today.
Автор: Narale Sunita, Narale Ratnakar Название: Hindi Teacher for Hindu Children Color Coded ISBN: 189741675X ISBN-13(EAN): 9781897416754 Издательство: Неизвестно Цена: 5518.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony. Marriage to the goddess, as well as the rites that the dedication ceremony authorizes jogatis to perform, have long been seen as illegitimate and criminalized. Kinship with the goddess is productive for the families who dedicate their children, Ramberg argues, and yet it cannot conform to modern conceptions of gender, family, or religion. This nonconformity, she suggests, speaks to the limitations of modern categories, as well as to the possibilities of relations—between and among humans and deities—that exceed such categories.
Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony. Marriage to the goddess, as well as the rites that the dedication ceremony authorizes jogatis to perform, have long been seen as illegitimate and criminalized. Kinship with the goddess is productive for the families who dedicate their children, Ramberg argues, and yet it cannot conform to modern conceptions of gender, family, or religion. This nonconformity, she suggests, speaks to the limitations of modern categories, as well as to the possibilities of relations—between and among humans and deities—that exceed such categories.
The intensity and meaningfulness of aesthetic experience have often been described in theological terms. By designating basic human emotions as rasa, a word that connotes taste, flavor, or essence, Indian aesthetic theory conceptualizes emotional states as something to be savored. At their core, emotions can be tastes of the divine. In this book, the methods of the emerging discipline of comparative theology enable the author’s appreciation of Hindu texts and practices to illuminate her Christian reflections on aesthetics and emotion. Three emotions vie for prominence in the religious sphere: peace, love, and fury. Whereas Indian theorists following Abhinavagupta claim that the aesthetic emotion of peace best approximates the goal of religious experience, devotees of Krishna and medieval Christian readings of the Song of Songs argue that love communicates most powerfully with divinity. In response to the transcendence emphasized in both approaches, the book turns to fury at injustice to attend to emotion’s foundations in the material realm. The implications of this constructive theology of emotion for Christian liturgy, pastoral care, and social engagement are manifold.
Автор: Keya Maitra Название: Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction ISBN: 1350040193 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781350040199 Издательство: Bloomsbury Academic Рейтинг: Цена: 8712.00 р. Наличие на складе: Есть у поставщика Поставка под заказ.
Описание: Philosophy of The Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction presents a complete philosophical guide and new translation of the most celebrated text of Hinduism. While usually treated as mystical and religious poetry, this new translation focuses on the philosophy underpinning the story of a battle between two sets of cousins of the Aryan clan. Designed for use in the classroom, this lively and readable translation: - Situates the text in its philosophical and cultural contexts - Features summaries and chapter analyses and questions at the opening and end of each of the eighteen chapters encouraging further study - Highlights points of comparison and overlap between Indian and Western philosophical concepts and themes such as just war, care ethics, integrity and authenticity - Includes a glossary allowing the reader to determine the meaning of central concepts Written with clarity and without presupposing any prior knowledge of Hinduism, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction reveals the importance and value of reading the Gita philosophically.
Описание: Popularly Hinduism is believed to be the world's oldest living religion. This claim is based on a continuous reverence to the oldest strata of religious authority within the Hindu traditions, the Vedic corpus, which began to be composed more than three thousand years ago, around 1750-1200 BCE. The Vedas have been considered by many as the philosophical cornerstone of the Brahmanical traditions (āstika); even previous to the colonial construction of the concept of "Hinduism." However, what can be pieced together from the Vedic texts is very different from contemporary Hindu religious practices, beliefs, social norms and political realities. This book presents the results of a study of the traditional education and training of Brahmins through the traditional system of education called gurukula as observed in 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharasthra. This system of education aims to teach Brahmin males how to properly recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Veda. This book combines insights from ethnographic and textual analysis to unravel how the recitation of the Vedic texts and the Vedic traditions, as well as the identity of the traditional Brahmin in general, are transmitted from one generation to the next in contemporary India.
