Author: Gavin Flood
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 599
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0631215352
Description
This volume presents the most recent scholarly thinking about Hinduism in an accessible way. It provides a forum for the best scholars in the world to make their views and research available to a wider audience.
While comprehensively covering the textual traditions of Hinduism, the volume also includes material on Hindu folk religions and stresses the importance of region in analyzing Hinduism. In doing so, it reflects the current move away from essentialist understandings of Hinduism and towards traditionally and regionally specific studies.
The Companion as a whole spans the entire field of Hindu studies and is divided into four coherent sections: theoretical issues, textual traditions, theologies, and Hindu society and politics.
Contents
Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Establishing the Boundaries
PART I - THEORETICAL ISSUES
Colonialism and the Construction of Hinduism
Orientalism and Hinduism
PART II - TEXT AND TRADITION
THE SANSKRIT TEXTUAL TRADITIONS
Vedas and Upanisads
The Dharmasastras
The Sanskrit Epics
The Puranas
TEXTUAL TRADITIONS IN REGIONAL LANGUAGES
Tamil Hindu Literature
The Literature of Hinduism in Malayalam
North Indian Hindi Devotional Literature
MAJOR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
The Saiva Traditions
History of Vaisnava Traditions: An Esquisse
The Renouncer Tradition
The Householder Tradition in Hindu Society
REGIONAL TRADITIONS
The Teyyam Tradition of Kerala
The Month of Kartik and Women’s Ritual Devotions to Krishna in Benares
PART III - SYSTEMATIC THOUGHT
THE INDIAN SCIENCES
Introduction-Frits Staal
The Science of Language
Indian Mathematics
Calendar, Astrology, and Astronomy
The Science of Medicine
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY
Hinduism and the Proper Work of Reason
Restoring Hindu Theology as a Category in Indian Intellectual Discourse
Mantra
PART IV - SOCIETY, POLITICS, AND NATION
On the Relationship between Caste and Hinduism
Modernity, Reform, and Revival
Contemporary Political Hinduism
The Goddess and the Nation: Subterfuges of Antiquity, the Cunning of Modernity
Gender in a Devotional Universe
INDEX