Rāmopākhyāna

Rāmopākhyāna

Author: Peter M. Scharf

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 962

ISBN-13: 9780700713912

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Based on the most popular story in all of India and a classic of world literature, this fully annotated reader is intended for independent study or classroom use for students of various levels who have had a basic introduction to Sanskrit.


Divyāmbara

Divyāmbara

Author: Lotika Varadarajan

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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This is a worthy addition to the publications of the National Museum, New Delhi. The novelty of the textile collection in the National Museum is that unlike the Indian Museum, Kolkata and the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum Jaipur, it has no heritage collections upon which it can draw. This has its advantages. The collections based on gifts and purchase offer a heterogeneity which a scholar can utilize while alluding to the continuity between the past and present. As the catalogue is devoted to the master pieces of the costume from the collection, pagris, head gear have not been included and the same applies to the unstitched garment, the sari. However, India has a vast continuum from which it is possible to elicit information and the costume collection mirrors this.0While Lotika Varadarajan, as Tagore Fellow, brings her wide knowledge of textiles to bear on the subject, Sushmit Sharma adds another dimension to the work by his understanding of visual language in its many dimensions. This has opened up further avenues of investigation adding additional depth to the subject. The work has been envisaged keeping in mind the transformation of the role of museum in modern times from being geared to the needs of a research scholar to that of translating works of art into quotidian language.


Encyclopaedia of Untouchables Ancient, Medieval and Modern

Encyclopaedia of Untouchables Ancient, Medieval and Modern

Author: Raj Kumar

Publisher: Gyan Publishing House

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 9788178356648

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The book entitled Encyclopaedia of Untouchables, Ancient, Medieval and Modern compiled in 2 volumes witnesses to the fact that how the Brahminical ideology used to behave with the poor people of the Father which is totally unbearable to a normal person, even though they used to clean the cities, latrines, skin of the dead animals which were owned by the Brahmans. Hence, the Dalit literature is not a simple literature, it is associated with a movement to bring about a change in the society by working personally to realize the basic facts of the life, but Brahmans are only the philosophers of their literature, working for their personal benefit not for others. It has established its own strong tradition with anti-caste or untouchables thinker like Buddha, Ved Vyash, Valmiki, Qutab-ud-Din Aebik, Balban, Balban, Firoz Shah Tuglaq, Barani the great writer, Amir Timur, Sultan Sikandar of Kashmir, Zain-ul- Abidin, Mirza Haidar Dughlat, Babar, Ravidas, Akbar, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Phule, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, many more as its sign posts.


Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, volume 2

Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, volume 2

Author: Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami

Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

Published:

Total Pages: 1234

ISBN-13: 9171496777

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Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. The individual is A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: philosopher, scholar, religious leader, saint. The achievement is the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to twentieth-century America. This second volume begins in 1971. In the West, Srila Prabhupada had firmly established the Krsna consciousness movement, which his disciples were expanding in his absence. This volume chronicles Srila Prabhupada's triumphant return to India and his plans for constructing temples in three crucial locations: Bombay, the center of India's wealth and business; Vrindavana, the sacred village where Lord Krsna lived and sported; and Mayapur, the holy birth site of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who had inaugurated the Hare Krsna movement some five hundred years earlier. These are vigorous years spent building a spiritual society in India and establishing centers around the world where people could contact the ancient, orthodox faith of India in their own cities. In this volume, Srila Prabhupada circles the globe repeatedly, speaking out on timely issues and defending his budding religious society against "brainwashing" charges in America and shady business practices in India. Srila Prabhupada wanted to unite two worlds, the "lame man" of India and the "blind man" of America. "A blind man can carry a lame man," he said, "and together they can walk. Similarly, the combination of Indian spirituality and American technology can benefit the whole world." His principal means of accomplishing this feat was to publish his books – annotated translations of India's spiritual classics. Under his guidance, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust was organized, and by 1977 it had produced and distributed more than sixty million volumes of Srila Prabhupada's writings. A final tour of India in 1977 took Srila Prabhupada, eighty-one and in failing health, to the colossal Kumbha-mela religious festival, to Hrsikesha, and finally back to his beloved Vrindavana. The time for his passing had come, he said. As his anguished disciples flooded Vrindavana from all corners of the world, Srila Prabhupada presented them with the greatest challenge – and the greatest lesson – of their young spiritual lives.


Jain Paintings and Material Culture of Medieval Western India

Jain Paintings and Material Culture of Medieval Western India

Author: Lipika Maitra

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 1000918793

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Through a curated collection of key Jain paintings, this volume offers a glimpse into the way people lived in western India during the medieval times: What they wore, how they ornamented themselves, what they amused themselves with, what furniture they sat on, which modes of transport they used. It includes Jain paintings from various collections in India and abroad to underscore the value of pictorial evidence in piecing together the past. The book takes the reader on a breath-taking visual journey through the varied costumes, exquisite textiles, handcrafted ornaments, curiously shaped vessels and containers, musical instruments, arms and armour, conveyances, and many such articles of everyday use. These articles of everyday use are corroborated with the descriptions left by foreign travellers passing through western India at that time. It explores contemporary lexicons and vernacular literature from this period, for possible names in vogue for the articles of Material Culture. The work is richly illustrated with line drawings by the author to highlight the objects being referred to. What comes across clearly through this book is that art is the mirror of the times, and as such, paintings reflect the society in which they are created. A magnificent read, this book will be essential for scholars and researchers of Indian painting, art history, Indian art, arts and aesthetics, Jainism, visual arts, South Asian history, Indian history, heritage studies and cultural history. It will also be a must-have for history and visual arts enthusiasts all over the world.


Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, volume 1

Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta, volume 1

Author: Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami

Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

Published:

Total Pages: 1279

ISBN-13: 9171496769

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Srila Prabhupada-lilamrta tells the story of a remarkable individual and a remarkable achievement. The individual is A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: philosopher, scholar, religious leader, saint. The achievement is the revolutionary transplantation of a timeless spiritual culture from ancient India to twentieth-century America. This first of two volumes begins with the story of the events leading up to Srila Prabhupada's meeting his guru, an encounter that ignited in Srila Prabhupada a slowburning flame of desire to take Krishna consciousness to the Western world. His early life was a period of patient and transcendent determination as he prepared for a mission that would later be crowned with astounding success. In August and September of 1965 Srila Prabhupada traveled alone aboard a steamship from India to New York City, with no more than the equivalent of eight dollars in his pocket and no institutional backing, but with unshakable faith in Lord Krishna and the instructions of his spiritual master. It is the 1960s, an era in which the children of those who fought World War II were leading a sweeping revolt against a society losing its soul to godless mass consumerism. Into this milieu Srila Prabhupada brought a vision for a new kind of society, a society born of a radical transformation of human consciousness from materialism to the loftiest spiritual and ethical idealism. By 1967 he had arrived in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, America's counter-culture capital, where he continued his work of calling America's youth to live up to their higher spiritual ideals and distributing the holy name of Krishna indiscriminately. By the end of the volume, we have seen Srila Prabhupada in England (meeting the Beatles), Holland, Japan, Africa, and finally back in India, where he triumphantly returned with his "dancing white elephants" – a group of his mostly Caucasian Western followers. The research team assembled by the author traveled throughout the world to gather thousands of hours of interviews with hundreds of people who knew Srila Prabhupada; diaries and memoirs from his students; and more than seven thousand of Srila Prabhupada's letters. Then the author and his team distilled this voluminous firsthand source material into a rich composite view of Srila Prabhupada, a dazzling and colorful picture of one of the most remarkable lives of our times.


Srimad-Bhagavatam, Tenth Canto

Srimad-Bhagavatam, Tenth Canto

Author: His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

Published: 1977-12-31

Total Pages: 4082

ISBN-13: 9171496432

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Srimad-Bhagavatam, an epic philosophical and literary classic, holds a prominent position in India's voluminous written wisdom. The timeless wisdom of India is expressed in the Vedas, ancient Sanskrit texts that touches upon all fields of human knowledge. Originally preserved through oral tradition, the Vedas were first put into writing by Srila Vyasadeva, the "literary incarnation of God." After compiling the Vedas, Srila Vyasadeva was inspired by his spiritual master to present their profound essence in the form of Srimad-Bhagavatam. Known as "the ripened fruit of the tree of Vedic literature," Srimad-Bhagavatam is the most complete and authoritative exposition of Vedic knowledge. After writing the Bhagavatam, Vyasa taught it to his son, Shukadeva Goswami, who later spoke the Bhagavatam to Maharaja Parikshit in an assembly of sages on the bank of the sacred Ganges River. Although Maharaja Parikshit was a great rajarshi (saintly king) and the emperor of the world, when he received notice of his death seven days in advance, he renounced his entire kingdom and retired to the bank of the Ganges to seek spiritual enlightenment. The questions of King Parikshit and Shukadeva Goswami's illuminating answers, concerning everything from the nature of the self to the origin of the universe, are the basis of Srimad-Bhagavatam. This edition of Bhagavatam is the only complete English translation with an elaborate and scholarly commentary, and it is the first edition widely available to the English-reading public. This work is the product of the scholarly and devotional effort of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the world's most distinguished teacher of Indian religious and philosophical thought. His Sanskrit scholarship and intimate familiarity with Vedic culture combine to reveal to the West a magnificent exposition of this important classic.