New Books In Hindu Studies

Turning the Mirror: A View From the East is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and award-winning writer Pankaj Mishra. The conversation provides behind-the-scenes insights into several of Pankaj’s books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and An End To Suffering: The Buddha In The World, and his motivations to write them. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Rādhā Tantra is an anonymous 17th-century tantric text from Bengal. Mans Broo's The Rādhā Tantra: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (Routledge, 2019) offers a lively picture of the meeting of different religious traditions in 17th century Bengal, since it presents a Śākta version of the famous Vaiṣṇava story of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. This book presents a critically edited text of the Rādhā Tantra, based on manuscripts in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as an annotated translation It is prefaced by an introduction that situates the text in its social and historical context and discusses its significance.  Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Raj Balkaran speaks with Wendy Doniger about her new book Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History (University of Virginia Press, 2021), along with her translation of the final four books of the Mahābhārata's Critical Edition translation project, the power of the purāṇas, cultural appropriation, and more! Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

The Ubiquitous Siva: Somananda's Sivadrsti and His Philosophical Interlocutors (Oxford UP, 2021) is a sequel to a volume published in 2011 by OUP under the title The Ubiquitous Siva: Somananda's Sivadrsti and his Tantric Interlocutors. The first volume offered an introduction, critical edition, and annotated translation of the first three chapters of the Sivadrsti of Somananda, along with its principal commentary, the Sivadrstivrtti, written by Utpaladeva. It dealt primarily with Saiva theology and the religious views of competing esoteric traditions. The present volume presents the fourth chapter of the Sivadrsti and Sivadrstivrtti and addresses a fresh set of issues that engage a distinct family of opposing schools and authors of mainstream Indian philosophical traditions. In this fourth and final chapter, Somananda and Utpaladeva engage logical and philosophical works that exerted tremendous influence in the Indian subcontinent in its premodernity. Throughout this chapter, Somananda endeavors to explain hi

Gidi Ifergan's new book The Psychology of the Yogas (Equinox Publishing, 2021) explores the dissonance between the promises of the yogic quest and psychological states of crisis. Western practitioners of yoga and meditation who have embarked upon years-long spiritual quests and who have practiced under the guidance of a guru tell of profound and ongoing experiences of love, compassion and clarity: the peaks of spiritual fulfillment. However, after returning to the West, they reported difficulties and crises in different areas of their lives. Why did these practitioners, who had apparently touched the heights of fulfillment, still suffer from these crises? Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

This podcast interviews Kusumita Pedersen on the first book-length study of the thought of Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007) and his teaching of a dynamic spirituality of integral transformation. The Philosophy of Sri Chinmoy: Love and Transformation (Lexington, 2021) is a straightforward and unembroidered account of his philosophy, allowing Sri Chinmoy to speak for himself in his own words, in poetry as much as in prose. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

In the first complete English translation of a monumental 14th century Sanskrit philosophical text, the Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology (Bloomsbury 2020), Stephen Phillips introduces modern readers to a classic of Indian philosophy. The author of the Jewel, Gaṅgeśa, is a comprehensive examination of epistemology and its interrelationship with metaphysics, taking up topics in philosophy of language and logic along the way. The translation itself includes a commentary by Phillips, explaining Gaṅgeśa’s historical position in the long tradition of Nyāya philosophy, as well as the relationship of philosophy to contemporary thought. Gaṅgeśa’s treatise argues for realism about the external world, a broadly reliabilist theory of knowledge and justification, and systematically takies up and refutes potential objections to his own systematic account, resulting in a tightly interwoven masterpiece of Sanskrit-language philosophy. Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College

Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha's book Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments (Oxford UP, 2021) examines diverse retellings of the Ramayana narrative as interpreted and embodied through a spectrum of performances. Unlike previous publications, this book is neither a monograph on a single performance tradition nor a general overview of Indian theatre. Instead, it provides context-specific analyses of selected case studies that explore contemporary enactments of performance traditions and the narratives from which they draw: Kutiyattam, Nangyarkuttu and Kathakali from Kerala; Kattaikkuttu and a "mythological" drama from Tamilnadu; Talamaddale from Karnataka; avant-garde performances from Puducherry and New Delhi; a modern dance-drama from West Bengal; the monastic tradition of Sattriya from Assam; anti-caste plays from North India; and the Ramnagar Ramlila.  Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more a

Rewriting Buddhism: Pali Literature and Monastic Reform in Sri Lanka, 1157–1270 (UCL Press, 2020) is the first intellectual history of premodern Sri Lanka’s most culturally productive period. This era of reform (1157–1270) shaped the nature of Theravada Buddhism both in Sri Lanka and also Southeast Asia and even today continues to define monastic intellectual life in the region. Alastair Gornall argues that the long century’s literary productivity was not born of political stability, as is often thought, but rather of the social, economic and political chaos brought about by invasions and civil wars. Faced with unprecedented uncertainty, the monastic community sought greater political autonomy, styled itself as royal court, and undertook a series of reforms, most notably, a purification and unification in 1165 during the reign of Parakramabahu I. He describes how central to the process of reform was the production of new forms of Pali literature, which helped create a new conceptual and social coherence withi

Medieval Kashmir in its golden age saw the development of some of the most sophisticated theories of language, literature, and emotion articulated in the pre-modern world. James D. Reich's book To Savor the Meaning: The Theology of Literary Emotions in Medieval Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2021) examines the overlap of literary theory and religious philosophy in this period by looking at debates about how poetry communicates emotions to its readers, what it is readers do when they savor these emotions, and why this might be valuable.  Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Dr. Don Davis (Professor and Chair, Department of Asian Studies) speaks about the newly launched Resource Library for Dharmaśāstra Studies, a digitized open educational resource hosted at the University of Texas, Austin. We discuss the genesis and utility of this important online resource, highlighting the herculean efforts of Dr. Patrick Olivelle. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

How do religious groups reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences? How do they rebrand their messages and recast their rituals in order to make their followers more diverse? In Branding Bhakti: Krishna Consciousness and the Makeover of a Movement (Indiana UP, 2021), Nicole Karapanagiotis considers the new branding of the Hare Krishna Movement, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Branding Bhakti not only investigates the methods the ISKCON movement uses to position itself for growth but also highlights devotees' painful and complicated struggles as they work to transform their shrinking, sectarian movement into one with global religious appeal. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

What is Open Access Publishing and why is it important? Listen in as Raj Balkaran interviews Dominik A. Haas on his Fair Open Access Publishing in South Asian Studies (FOASAS) initiative which maintains a list of relevant publishers, journals, book series and other publication media. The list is available here. If you know of any other FOA publishers, journals etc. with an emphasis on Indological / South Asia-related research, or have feedback about the list, feel free to contact Dominik directly at dominik@haas.asia Dominik A. Haas, BA MA, is a DOC Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences and a PhD Candidate, University of Vienna Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth Century India (Oxford UP, 2021) charts an intense "pamphlet war" that took place in sixteenth-century South India. Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea explore this controversy as a case study in the dynamics of innovation in early modern India, a time of great intellectual innovation. This debate took place within the traditional discourses of Vedic Hermeneutics and its increasingly influential sibling discipline of Vednta, and its proponents among the leading intellectuals and public figures of the period. First Words, Last Words traces both the issue of sequence and the question of innovation through an in-depth study of this debate and through a comparative survey of similar problems in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, revealing that the disputants in this controversy often pretended to uphold traditional views, when they were in fact radically innovative. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information

Noted for their haunting melodies and enigmatic lyrics, Bauls have been portrayed as spiritually enlightened troubadours traveling around the countryside in West Bengal in India and in Bangladesh. As emblems of Bengali culture, Bauls have long been a subject of scholarly debates which center on their esoteric practices, and middle class imaginaries of the category Baul.  Adding to this literature, the intimate ethnography presented in Kristin Hanssen's book Women, Religion and the Body in South Asia: Living With Bengali Bauls (Routledge, 2020) recounts the life stories of members from a single family, shining light on their past and present tribulations bound up with being poor and of a lowly caste. It shows that taking up the Baul path is a means of softening the stigma of their lower caste identity in that religious practice, where women play a key role, renders the body pure. The path is also a source of monetary income in that begging is considered part of their vocation. For women, the Baul path has the

Listen in as Raj Balkaran speaks with Amir Hussain (Chair, Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University) about his scholarship on Muslims in America, his work as the Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (2011-2015), his role as the Vice President of the American Academy of Religion, and overall trends in the field of Religious Studies. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Today I talked to Dr. Emilia Bachrach about In the Service of Krishna: Illustrating the Lives of Eighty-Four Vaishnavas from a 1702 Manuscript in the Amit Ambalal Collection (Mapin, 2020). The Pushtimarg, or the Path of Grace, is a Hindu tradition whose ritual worship of the deity Krishna has developed in close relationship to a distinct genre of early-modern Hindi prose hagiography. This bookintroduces readers to the most popular hagiographic text of the Pushtimarg which tells the sacred life stories of the community's first preceptor Vallabhacharya (1497-1531) and his most beloved disciples. This book focuses on the only extant Chaurasi Vaishnavan ki Varta manuscript dated to the beginning of the 18th century, now in artist Amit Ambalal's collection. The volume will appeal to scholars and students of Indian art and literature, to those who have grown up in the Pushtimarg tradition, and more broadly to those with an appreciation for the distinct ways in which pictures can tell stories that unite the everyday

Raj Balkaran speaks with Jacob Kyle about the genesis and vision of the online educational platform Embodied Philosophy. Over the course of their rich conversation, they touch on contemplative studies, the journal Tarka, yoga in the West, the scholar-practitioner, the state of online education, the ethics of entrepreneurship and the integration of spiritual and scholarly paradigms. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Jainism evokes images of monks wearing face-masks to protect insects and mico-organisms from being inhaled. Or of Jains sweeping the ground in front of them to ensure that living creatures are not inadvertently crushed: a practice of non-violence so radical as to defy easy comprehension. Yet for all its apparent exoticism, Jainism is still little understood in the West. What is this mysterious philosophy which originated in the 6th century BCE, whose absolute requirement is vegetarianism, and which now commands a following of four million adherents both in its native India and diaspora communities across the globe?  In Jainism: An Introduction (I. B. Tauris, 2009), Long makes an ancient tradition fully intelligible to the modern reader. Plunging back more than two and a half millennia, to the plains of northern India and the life of a prince who - much like the Buddha - gave up a life of luxury to pursue enlightenment, Long traces the history of the Jain community from founding sage Mahavira to the present da

Every day millions of Tamil women in southeast India wake up before dawn to create a kolam, an ephemeral ritual design made with rice flour, on the thresholds of homes, businesses and temples. This thousand-year-old ritual welcomes and honors Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and alertness, and Bhudevi, the goddess of the earth. Created by hand with great skill, artistry, and mathematical precision, the kolam disappears in a few hours, borne away by passing footsteps and hungry insects. This is the first comprehensive study of the kolam in the English language. It examines its significance in historical, mathematical, ecological, anthropological, and literary contexts. The culmination of Vijaya Nagarajan's many years of research and writing on this exacting ritual practice, Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India--an Exploration of the Kolam (Oxford UP, 2018) celebrates the experiences, thoughts, and voices of the Tamil women who keep this tradition alive. You can visit the book's website h