An Introduction to Islamic Law

An Introduction to Islamic Law

Author: Wael B. Hallaq

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-07-09

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1139489305

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The study of Islamic law can be a forbidding prospect for those entering the field for the first time. Wael Hallaq, a leading scholar and practitioner of Islamic law, guides students through the intricacies of the subject in this absorbing introduction. The first half of the book is devoted to a discussion of Islamic law in its pre-modern natural habitat. The second part explains how the law was transformed and ultimately dismantled during the colonial period. In the final chapters, the author charts recent developments and the struggles of the Islamists to negotiate changes which have seen the law emerge as a primarily textual entity focused on fixed punishments and ritual requirements. The book, which includes a chronology, a glossary of key terms, and lists of further reading, will be the first stop for those who wish to understand the fundamentals of Islamic law, its practices and history.


The Parrots of Desire

The Parrots of Desire

Author: Amrita Narayanan

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 9789383064090

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Anthology of erotic stories; includes translation from multiple Indic languages.


Shringar - the Ras Raj

Shringar - the Ras Raj

Author: Ved Bhatnagar

Publisher: Abhinav Publications

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 8170174252

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The Shringar poetry is not simply a fresh school of poetry but is, in many respects, comparable to the great English romantic poetry excelling in the delineation of nature and flight of imagination. It is a unique effort of bringing under the umbrella of ras poetry, music, sculpture and painting, and a rare mix of scholarship and popular writing.


Jasmine

Jasmine

Author: Bharati Mukherjee

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780802136305

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After the assassination of her husband, seventeen-year-old Jasmine leaves India to live with a middle-aged banker in a small Iowa town, only to retain some of the traditions and memories of the past.


Kalidasa For The 21St Century Reader

Kalidasa For The 21St Century Reader

Author: Kalidasa

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Published: 2014-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789382277750

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A fresh and very readable translation of the world's greatest Sanskrit writer, Kalidasa ""Kalidasa(circa fourth century CE) is widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. Not much is known with certainty about his life and though many are aware of his timeless Sakuntalam and Meghadutam, very few have actually read him, even in translation. The aesthetics of poetry may have changed over 1500 years - we no longer compare women's faces to lotuses or their figures to vines - but it is difficult not to be moved by the sheer beauty and lyricism of Kalidasa's description of the exiled yak?a beseeching a cloud to carry his message across the mountains to his lover, or his evocative narration of the meeting of doomed lovers in the forest."" ""Mani Rao's supple, contemporary translation removes the distance between Kalidasa and the modern reader, she helps 'read' the poetry for us while remaining loyal to the text. "" ""Selections from all seven of the great poet's works (which are considered by Sanskrit scholars to be authentically his creations) are included in this volume- Meghad?tam, Kumarasambhavam and ?tusa?h?ram, he heroic exploits narrated in Raghuva?sam which gives us a remarkable picture of ancient India, as well as the celebrated dramas Abhijnãna Sakuntalam, Vikramorvasiyam and Malavikagnimitram. This is a translation that belongs to today, Kalidasa renewed""


Bordering Britain

Bordering Britain

Author: Nadine El-Enany

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1526145448

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(B)ordering Britain argues that Britain is the spoils of empire, its immigration law is colonial violence and irregular immigration is anti-colonial resistance. In announcing itself as postcolonial through immigration and nationality laws passed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Britain cut itself off symbolically and physically from its colonies and the Commonwealth, taking with it what it had plundered. This imperial vanishing act cast Britain's colonial history into the shadows. The British Empire, about which Britons know little, can be remembered fondly as a moment of past glory, as a gift once given to the world. Meanwhile immigration laws are justified on the basis that they keep the undeserving hordes out. In fact, immigration laws are acts of colonial seizure and violence. They obstruct the vast majority of racialised people from accessing colonial wealth amassed in the course of colonial conquest. Regardless of what the law, media and political discourse dictate, people with personal, ancestral or geographical links to colonialism, or those existing under the weight of its legacy of race and racism, have every right to come to Britain and take back what is theirs.


Rites of the God-King

Rites of the God-King

Author: Marko Geslani

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0190862882

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Rites of the God-King offers a critical revision of mainstream Hinduism from the perspective of the life of a single ritual from medieval India. Drawing theoretical connections to modern ethnographies, it raises questions about the nature of kingship and priesthood, image-worship, and ritual change.


In Praise of the Goddess

In Praise of the Goddess

Author:

Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc.

Published: 2003-12-01

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0892546166

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About 16 centuries ago, an unknown Indian author or authors gathered together the diverse threads of already ancient traditions and wove them into a verbal tapestry that today is still the central text for worshippers of the Hindu Devi, the Divine Mother. This spiritual classic, the Devimahatmya, addresses the perennial questions of the nature of the universe, humankind, and divinity. How are they related, how do we live in a world torn between good and evil, and how do we find lasting satisfaction and inner peace? These questions and their answers form the substance of the Devimahatmya. Its narrative of a dispossessed king, a merchant betrayed by the family he loves, and a seer whose teaching leads beyond existential suffering sets the stage for a trilogy of myths concerning the all-powerful Divine Mother, Durga, and the fierce battles she wages against throngs of demonic foes. In these allegories, her adversaries represent our all-too-human impulses toward power, possessions, and pleasure. The battlefields symbolize the field of human consciousness on which our lives' dramas play out in joy and sorrow, in wisdom and folly. The Devimahatmya speaks to us across the ages of the experiences and beliefs of our ancient ancestors. We sense their enchantment at nature's bounty and their terror before its destructive fury, their recognition of the good and evil in the human heart, and their understanding that everything in our experience is the expression of a greater reality, personified as the Divine Mother.


The Black Hill

The Black Hill

Author: Mamang Dai

Publisher: Rupa Publications

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9789382277231

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Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the action takes place in the Northeast-the region that spreads from Assam to Arunachal today. The East India Company is seeking to make inroads into the region and the local people-in particular the Abor and Mishmee tribes fear their coming and are doing all they can to keep them out of their territories. The author takes a recorded historical event-the mysterious disappearance of a French priest, Father Nicolas Krick in the 1850s and the execution of Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe for his murder and woven a gripping, densely imagined work of fiction around it. And, even as the novel tells the story of an impossible journey and an elopement, it explores the themes of the lure of unknown worlds, the love people have for each other and their land and the forces of history. Gimur, a girl from the Abor tribe, runs away with Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe and they settle down on his land near the Tibetan border. Father Krick's attempts to reach Tibet to set up a Jesuit mission are foiled repeatedly by the local people not because of any personal animus towards the priests or their work but because they feel rightly that once the priests come, the British, with their guns and their garrisons will follow. The story revolves around events in Gimur's and Kajinsha's villages and is also seen from the point of view of Father Krick, a gentle, intelligent man, devout but no bigot, whose determination to reach Tibet no matter what the cost, impacts tragically on all those who encounter him.