Author: Harvey P Alper
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 540
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8120818962
Description
Understanding Mantras explores the origin, nature, function, and significance of mantras within the bounds of the Hindu tradition. It analyses the use of mantras in the Vedic age in the great theistic movements of Saivism and Vaisnavism, and in Tantra.
The introduction outlines the major controversies in Western scholarship concerning the nature of mantras and gives an insightful and suggestive paradigm for resolving the issues. The essays provide enlightenment into the Indian mantric tradition, and into Western attempts to understand that tradition. They also discuss the issues surrounding the debate over whether mantras should count as instances of language.
Of immeasurable worth is the comprehensive bibliographical and methodological essay and list contributed by Professor Alper. This essay covers more than 1600 items and situates mantra contextually in Indian history, society, and culture. It approaches a bibliography on all of Hinduism and will serve as an invaluable tool for future research.
REVIEWS
This is the single best effort to date on the whole issue of mantra.
-Paul R Courtright
University of North Carolina Greensboro
I know of nothing in its field that approaches this collection in scope and quality. Superior both in objectivity and in command of Sanskrit, its contributors represent the new grade of excellence in Asian studies produced in half a century of academic maturation in America. In this continent, no better selection could have been made.
-Norvin J Hein
Yale University
The bibliography by Alper is a tremendous piece of work-almost publishable in and of itself.
-Brian K Smith
Barnard College
Its greatest assert is the contribution it makes to the scholarly study of Indian religions, and more broadly to the study of ritual and to the philosophy of language.
-Glenn Yocum
Whittier College
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Harvey P Alper
1. Mantrakavisasta : Speech as Performative in the Rgveda
2. Vedic Mantras
3. The Mantra in Vedic and Tantric Ritual
4. Mantra in Ayurveda : A Study of the Use of Magico-Religious Speech in Ancient Indian Medicine
5. Are Mantras Speech Acts?
6. The Mimamsa Point of View
7. The meaning and Power of Mantras in Bhartrhari's Vakyapadiya
8. Mantras in the Sivapurana
9. The Use of Mantra in Yogic Meditation : The Testimony of the Pasupata
10. The Pancaratra Attitude to Mantra
11. The Cosmos as Siva's Language-game : "Mantra" According to Ksemaraja's Sivasutravimarsini
CONCLUSION
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS VOLUME
A WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE STUDY OF MANTRAS
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST
INDEX