Author: Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer
Heidrun Bruckner/Anne Feldhaus
Editor(s): Heidrun Bruckner / Anne Feldhaus
Publisher: Manohar
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 468
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8173045216
Description
The present volume contains fourteen selected papers in English by the late G D Sontheimer and follows up on his earlier volume King of Hunters, warriors, and Shepherds: Essays on Khandoba (Delhi 1997). The articles chosen for publication here span a wide thematic and temporal range and will be of interest to student of Hinduism. The volume contains essays on the juristic personality of Hindu deities, the history and religion of pastoral groups in the Deccan and the interdependence of folk and scriptural religion. The articles reflect Sontheimer’s multidisciplinary approach, combining the methodologies of philology, anthropology, history, archaeology, epigraphy and iconography.
Three other articles, illustrated by over a hundred photographs, focus on hero-and sati-stones of the Deccan and Western India. Sontheimer identified the worship of heroes and satis as an important element of folk religion. He analyses the memorial stones in the context of other historical, social and religious references, physical ecology and literary sources. Yet another set of articles deals with aspects of oral literature. Two papers can be considered building blocks for a model of Hinduism that was finally worked out in Hinduism-The Five Components and their Interaction (1989), the article which concludes the present volume.
The two volumes of Sontheimer’s collected papers are complemented by a memorial volume entitled In the Company of Gods which is being published simultaneously by the same editors.