Mokṣa

Asian Philosophy, 2010

_ t _ ā dvaita: Contrasting Views of Moks _ a Stafford Betty

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2016

The three volumes of critical edition under review are among the major results of the Mokṣopāya project, supervised by Prof. Walter Slaje. The aim of the project is to make the Sanskrit text of the Mokṣopāya('Means of final liberation', 10th century CE, from Kashmir) available in a critical edition, with a full (German) translation, a philological commentary and a dictionary of its special terminology. The three edited volumes contain the first four books (prakaraṇa) of the Sanskrit text out of six. Most readers of this review will certainly know the project and the reasons for which it is important to have a critical edition of this monumental work of 30,000 verses. It would have been, however, useful if the editors had said a few words about the significance and the context of this philosophical-poetical oeuvre, so that Sanskritists uninitiated into the Mokṣopāya's intricacies should have a better picture of its position in Sanskrit literature. Such basic information may seem superfluous for the editors, who are well acquainted with the subject;perhaps it would feel like stating the obvious. There are nevertheless at least three reasons for which a contextualizing introduction would be necessary, even if it is not a necessary part of a critical edition strictly speaking. * The reviewer would like to apalogize for submitting this review with an indecent and probably unprecedented delay. The fourth volume of the edition and much of the German translation have also been published in the meantime, but unfortunately they could not be considered in the present review.

In its material instantiations, prasāda is found in an infinite variety of forms according to differing regional, sectarian, and individual contexts. The concept of prasāda is common to Sanskrit, almost all modern South Asian languages, and some Southeast Asian languages (e.g. Thai) in orthographically modified forms. Looked at broadly in Hindu and Indic civilizations, prasāda, or the “sacred share,” has multiple levels of meanings. While no treatment of prasāda can ever be comprehensive, I take a multidisciplinary approach in this article to highlight some contexts for prasāda that are widely applicable to many of the literally infinite forms that it can take.

BRILL Encyclopedia of thel Religions of the Indigenous peoples of South Asia, 2021

Front matter of the encyclopedia

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1991

Brill's Encyclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous Peoples of South Asia, 2021

Table of contents

Brill's Encuclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous Peoples of South Asia, 2020

I try here to give an overall view of the situation of the tribes of Western India, particularly in regard to religion. I stress the continuity between tribal religion and popular Hinduism in the region, but also point to various specific traits of the tribal religions. The present pressure from Hindu orgaizations is stressed, but in a erspective of continuous contact over the centuries.

Entry in the Springer Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Tribal Religions

2012

The purpose of this course is to provide an historical overview of the many different indigenous religious movements in India that we now call "Hinduism." Through the reading of mythological, philosophical, ethical, meditative, and devotional primary texts, as well as historical and anthropological studies, we will show how Hindu traditions were constructed through a set of ongoing tensions: Between ascetic/contemplative and sacrificer/priest, villager and city-dweller, low caste and high caste, poet and philosopher, colonized and colonizer, and "secular" citizen and "religious" citizen. In tracing these tensions and the developments they brought about throughout Indian history, we will: 1) examine the roots of Indian tradition; 2) master the basic vocabulary of Indian thought; 3) use that terminology to study developments in Hindu doctrine and popular practice; and 4) examine the religio-political significance of contemporary beliefs and rituals.

Religions of South Asia

The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism, edited by Torkel Brekke. New York:Oxford University Press, 2019. xi + 317 pp., £73 (hb). ISBN 9780198790839.