The Manusmriti, or Laws of Manu, is an important statement of Hindu law. It is a collection of laws governing individuals, communities and nations and is an important (and somewhat controversial) source of information about the caste system and the status of women. With a new introduction.
The Laws of Manu form a towering work of Hindu philosophy. Composed by many Brahmin priests, this is an extraordinary, encyclopaedic representation of human life in the world, and how it should be lived. Manu encompasses topics as wide-ranging as the social obligations and duties of the various castes, the proper way for a righteous king to rule and to punish transgressors, relations between men and women, birth, death, taxes, karma, rebirth and ritual practices. First translated into English in 1794, its influence spread from Nietzsche to the British Raj, and although often misinterpreted, it remains an essential work for understanding India today. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
This book, first published in 1975, is a comprehensive list of all the books on India, written in English before 1900. It is an invaluable reference source on India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from the work of professional writers, there are the writings of a cross-section of society from soldiers to scientists. We find dictionaries of obscure dialects written by government officials, descriptions of their travels by visiting clerics, homely details of everyday life by housewives, as well as technical and scientific works written by scholars.
The Language of Disenchantment explores how Protestant ideas about language inspired British colonial critiques of Hindu mythological, ritual, linguistic, and legal traditions.
A history of the rediscovery of India's history... Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Western world had very little knowledge - or an extremely distorted view - of the glorious and fascinating history of the Indian subcontinent. In fact, with little of the region's 3000-year-old heritage formally preserved and documented, it was widely believed that the country's history had begun with the reign of the Mughals. When the British gained control over the subcontinent, the scholars, explorers and Indophiles among them discovered things and areas of great historical wonder but found few answers. Armed with great intellectual curiosity, they set out to uncover things no one had given a thought to earlier. From William Jones who identified Chandragupta Maurya as 'Sandrocottus' mentioned in Greek sources and set the first chronological point of reference for recorded Indian history to Charles Wilkins who designed the first typeface of the Bengali script; from Henry Colebrooke who shone light on the wonders of ancient Indian scientific knowledge to Alexander Cunningham, the father of Indian archaeology, who led the first excavation of the Harappa site in the Punjab - Forgotten Civilizations brings together the intriguing stories of fifteen intrepid Englishmen who dedicated their lives to rediscovering India's ancient heritage and redefining the significance of its pluralistic and sophisticated culture to the rest of the world.
The two years Thoreau spent at Walden Pond and the night he spent in the Concord jail are among the most familiar features of the American intellectual landscape. In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on a retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.
In this new biography, based on a reexamination of Thoreau's manuscripts and on retracing of his trips, Robert Richardson offers a view of Thoreau's life and achievement in their full nineteenth century context.
