Author: Swami Harshananda
Publisher: Ramakrishna Math
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 2050
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788179070574
Description
In the mid-19th century, two British engineers who were in charge of constructing a railway line, got the mounds at Harappa (now in Pakistan) dug for burnt bricks, to be used as ballast. Little did they know that they were digging up a past and an unknown facet of the history of India.
Suspecting the existence of the remnants of an ancient civilisation, systematic evacuations were undertaken by the Archeological Department of India. These evacuations led to detection of the proto-historic city Harappa. This information is an excerpt from the 3-vol. work 'A Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism', authored by Swami Harshananda, Head of Ramakrishna Math at Basavanagudi, Bangalore.
This monumental work, for the first time at one place, covers various subjects such as scriptures, philosophy, mythology, religion, rituals and sacraments, pilgrim centres, biographies of great Hindu leaders in various fields, ancient arts and sciences, archaeology, basic information about Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. It also includes details of Hindu festivals and their significance and the lives & works of people connected with Hindu religion and culture.
Each volume contains app. 700 pages, including 200 line drawings and 100 coloured photographs. The contents are arranged in English alphabetical order, using the International system of diacritical marks for Sanskrit. It took nearly 33 years for Swami Jee to complete this monumental work and, as he claims, it's the first of its kind in English. "A British couple had compiled a dictionary on Hinduism but it's not exhaustive. There is another book on Hinduism in Hindi, which is fairly good but it's restricted to one volume," he said.