Natural Religion in India
Author: Sir Alfred C. Lyall
Publisher:
Published: 1891
Total Pages: 72
ISBN-13:
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Against a Hindu God
Author: Parimal G. Patil
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2009-08-22
Total Pages: 421
ISBN-13: 0231142226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPhilosophical arguments for and against the existence of God have been crucial to Euro-American and South Asian philosophers for over a millennium. Critical to the history of philosophy in India, were the centuries-long arguments between Buddhist and Hindu philosophers about the existence of a God-like being called Isvara and the religious epistemology used to support them. By focusing on the work of Ratnakirti, one of the last great Buddhist philosophers of India, and his arguments against his Hindu opponents, Parimal G. Patil illuminates South Asian intellectual practices and the nature of philosophy during the final phase of Buddhism in India. Based at the famous university of Vikramasila, Ratnakirti brought the full range of Buddhist philosophical resources to bear on his critique of his Hindu opponents' cosmological/design argument. At stake in his critique was nothing less than the nature of inferential reasoning, the metaphysics of epistemology, and the relevance of philosophy to the practice of religion. In developing a proper comparative approach to the philosophy of religion, Patil transcends the disciplinary boundaries of religious studies, philosophy, and South Asian studies and applies the remarkable work of philosophers like Ratnakirti to contemporary issues in philosophy and religion.
Rethinking Religion in India
Author: Esther Bloch
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-24
Total Pages: 209
ISBN-13: 1135182795
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCritically assesses recent debates about the colonial construction of Hinduism. Written by experts in their field, the chapters present historical and empirical arguments as well as theoretical reflections on the topic, offering new insights into the nature of the construction of religion in India.
Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities
Author: Pankaj Jain
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-22
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13: 1317151607
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Indic religious traditions, a number of rituals and myths exist in which the environment is revered. Despite this nature worship in India, its natural resources are under heavy pressure with its growing economy and exploding population. This has led several scholars to raise questions about the role religious communities can play in environmentalism. Does nature worship inspire Hindus to act in an environmentally conscious way? This book explores the above questions with three communities, the Swadhyaya movement, the Bishnoi, and the Bhil communities. Presenting the texts of Bishnois, their environmental history, and their contemporary activism; investigating the Swadhyaya movement from an ecological perspective; and exploring the Bhil communities and their Sacred Groves, this book applies a non-Western hermeneutical model to interpret the religious traditions of Indic communities. With a foreword by Roger S Gottlieb.
Nature Across Cultures
Author: Helaine Selin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2013-04-17
Total Pages: 492
ISBN-13: 9401701490
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures consists of about 25 essays dealing with the environmental knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Thai, and Andean views of nature and the environment, among others, the book includes essays on Environmentalism and Images of the Other, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Worldviews and Ecology, Rethinking the Western/non-Western Divide, and Landscape, Nature, and Culture. The essays address the connections between nature and culture and relate the environmental practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both environmental history and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Religion, Science, and Empire
Author: Peter Gottschalk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 442
ISBN-13: 0195393015
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPeter Gottschalk offers a compelling study of how, through the British implementation of scientific taxonomy in the subcontinent, Britons and Indians identified an inherent divide between mutually antagonistic religious communities. England's ascent to power coincided with the rise of empirical science as an authoritative way of knowing not only the natural world, but the human one as well. The British scientific passion for classification, combined with the Christian impulse to differentiate people according to religion, led to a designation of Indians as either Hindu or Muslim according to rigidly defined criteria that paralleled classification in botanical and zoological taxonomies. Through an historical and ethnographic study of the north Indian village of Chainpur, Gottschalk shows that the Britons' presumed categories did not necessarily reflect the Indians' concepts of their own identities, though many Indians came to embrace this scientism and gradually accepted the categories the British instituted through projects like the Census of India, the Archaeological Survey of India, and the India Museum. Today's propogators of Hindu-Muslim violence often cite scientistic formulations of difference that descend directly from the categories introduced by imperial Britain. Religion, Science, and Empire will be a valuable resource to anyone interested in the colonial and postcolonial history of religion in India.
The Sacred and the Profane
Author: Mircea Eliade
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1959
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 9780156792011
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFamed historian of religion Mircea Eliade observes that even moderns who proclaim themselves residents of a completely profane world are still unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred. Eliade traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times in terms of space, time, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so he shows how the total human experience of the religious man compares with that of the nonreligious. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of religion, but its perspective also emcompasses philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. It will appeal to anyone seeking to discover the potential dimensions of human existence. -- P. [4] of cover.
The Hindus
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 808
ISBN-13: 9781594202056
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, The Hindus elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds. The Hindus brings a fascinating multiplicity of actors and stories to the stage to show how brilliant and creative thinkers have kept Hinduism alive in ways that other scholars have not fully explored. In this unique and authoritative account, debates about Hindu traditions become platforms to consider history as a whole.
The Snake and the Mongoose
Author: Nathan McGovern
Publisher: Paperbackshop UK Import
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 329
ISBN-13: 0190640790
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn The Snake and The Mongoose, Nathan McGovern turns the commonly-accepted model of the origins of early Indian religions on its head. Instead of assuming a fundamental dichotomy between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical in ancient India, McGovern shows that there were many different groups who all saw themselves as Brahmanical, and out of whose contestation with one another the distinction between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical emerged.
Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s)
Author: Greg Johnson
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2017-06-06
Total Pages: 418
ISBN-13: 9004346716
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExtremely distant and distinct indigenous communities have over recent decades become more like themselves and more like each other – a paradox prevalent globally but inadequately explained by established analytical frames, particularly with regard to religion. Addressing this rich and unfolding context, the Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) engages a wide variety of locations and perspectives. Drawing upon the efforts of a diverse group of scholars working at the intersection of indigenous studies and religious studies, this volume includes a programmatic introduction that argues for new ways of conceptualizing the field of indigenous religion(s), numerous case study-based examples, and an Afterword by Thomas Tweed.
