South Asian Studies
The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or earlier. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the coronation place of the Chalukya dynasty, Pattadakal and its neighboring sites are of major historical importance. In Shiva's Waterfront Temples: …
Extensively based on fieldwork material, From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus' Understanding of Embodied Practices (Equinox, 2024) primarily analyses embodied practices of ascetics belonging to four religious orders historically associated with the practice of yoga and hatha yoga. This focus on ascetics stems from the fact that yogic techniques …
A wordsmith, an extempore poet and a satirist, Kāḷamēkam (also known as Kāḷamēka Pulavar; fifteenth century) is widely known for his taṉippāṭals or 'self-contained verses', on a panoply of topics. These splendid but notoriously provocative verses were composed during a transitional phase of Tamil literature, by now in deep conversation with …
Existence and Perception in Medieval Vedānta: Vyāsatīrtha's Defence of Realism in the Nyāyāmṛta (de Gruyter, 2024) focuses on discussions of metaphysics and epistemology in early modern India found in the works of the South Indian philosopher Vyāsatīrtha (1460-1539). Vyāsatīrtha was pivotal to the ascendancy of the Mādhva tradition to …
The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India’s most contentious disputes: a long-running struggle over women’s access to the Hindu temple at Sabarimala. In 2018, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the temple, which had traditionally been forbidden to …
Michael C. Baltutis' book What is Hinduism?: A Student's Introduction (Routledge, 2024) is an engaging introduction to the complex religious tradition of Hinduism. Central to its focus is demonstrating the fundamental diversity within Hinduism through the multiplicity of its core beliefs and traditions. Chapters are divided into four historical …
Today I talked to Hari Dutt Sharma about Gulmini: An Anthology of Sanskrit Lyrics and Gazals (Rākā Prakāśana, 2023). The book presents 51 lyrical poems in rythmic and melodious Sanskrit in free metre, The poems examine various sentiments and emotions (rasa and bhāva) on various subjects, from depictions of beautiful seasonal nature to reflections …
Bhakti Ethics, Emotions, and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics (Lexington Books, 2024) explores the broader implications of understanding bhakti, “devotional love to the divine,” as an ethical theory based on a “realist” account of emotions, where emotions are sensory perceptions of the real ethical qualities of classes of actions. The work …
Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range of these challenges, Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age (Lexington, 2019) draws upon individual cases of exemplary leadership from the world’s Dharma …
The ancient Indian Vedas contain sentences of rather varied content, including religious statements ("Varuṇa truly is the king of the gods"), words of wisdom ("Thought is quicker than speech") or even banal observations ("Wife and husband wash each other's back"). The well-known Erlangen Indo-Europeanists and Indologists Karl Hoffmann (1915-1996) …