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The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya

Steven E. Lindquist

A literary and historical investigation into an ancient Indian religious thinker, tracing his rise in importance in the Hindu tradition.

In this fascinating study, Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary production in the “life” of Yājñavalkya, the most important ancient Indian literary figure prior to the Buddha. Known for his sharp tongue and deep thought, Yājñavalkya is associated with a number of “firsts” in Indian religious literary history: the first person to discuss brahman and ātman thoroughly; the first to put forth a theory of karma and reincarnation; the first to renounce his household life; and the first to dispute with women in religious debate. Throughout early Indian history, he was seen as a priestly bearer of ritual authority, a sage of mystical knowledge, and an innovative propagator of philosophical ideas and religious law. Drawing on history, literary studies, ritual studies, Sanskrit philology, narrative studies, and philosophy, Lindquist traces Yājñavalkya’s literary life—from his earliest mentions in ritual texts, through his developing biography in the Upaniṣads, and finally to his role as a hoary sage in narrative literature—offering the first detailed monograph on this central figure in early Indian religious and literary history.

The Essence of Reality: A Defense of Philosophical Sufism

ʿAyn al-Quḍāt (author), Mohammed Rustom (translator), Livia Kohn (foreword), Bilal Orfali (editor)

A groundbreaking exposition of Islamic mysticism.

The Essence of Reality was written over the course of just three days in 514/1120, by a scholar who was just twenty-four. The text, like its author ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which that it is in all likelihood the earliest philosophical exposition of mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This important work would go on to exert significant influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and philosophical mysticism.

Written in a terse yet beautiful style, The Essence of Reality consists of one hundred brief chapters interspersed with Qurʾanic verses, prophetic sayings, Sufi maxims, and poetry. In conversation with the work of the philosophers Avicenna and al-Ghazālī, the book takes readers on a philosophical journey, with lucid expositions of questions including the problem of the eternity of the world; the nature of God’s essence and attributes; the concepts of “before” and “after”; and the soul’s relationship to the body. All these discussions are seamlessly tied into ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s foundational argument—that mystical knowledge lies beyond the realm of the intellect.

The Requirements of the Sufi Path: A Defense of the Mystical Tradition

Ibn Khaldūn (author), Carolyn Baugh (translator), Jesus R. Velasco (foreword), Devin J. Stewart (editor), Shawkat M. Toorawa (editor)

Sufism through the eyes of a legal scholar.

In The Requirements of the Sufi Path, the renowned North African historian and jurist Ibn Khaldūn applies his analytical powers to Sufism, which he deems a bona fide form of Islamic piety. Ibn Khaldūn is widely known for his groundbreaking work as a sociologist and historian, in particular for the Muqaddimah, the introduction to his massive universal history. In The Requirements of the Sufi Path, he writes from the perspective of an Islamic jurist and legal scholar. He characterizes Sufism and the stages along the Sufi path and takes up the question of the need for a guide along that path. In doing so, he relies on the works of influential Sufi scholars, including al-Qushayrī, al-Ghazālī, and Ibn al-Khaṭīb. Even as Ibn Khaldūn warns of the extremes to which some Sufis go—including practicing magic—his work is essentially a legal opinion, a fatwa, asserting the inherent validity of the Sufi path.

The Requirements of the Sufi Path incorporates the wisdom of three of Sufism’s greatest voices as well as Ibn Khaldūn’s own insights, acquired through his intellectual encounters with Sufism and his broad legal expertise. All this he brings to bear on the debate over Sufi practices in a remarkable work of synthesis and analysis.

The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali

Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (author), Mario Kozah (translator), David Gordon White (foreword), Kevin van Bladel (editor), Shawkat M. Toorawa (editor)

A brilliant cross-cultural interpretation of a key text of yoga philosophy.

The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is the foundational text of yoga philosophy, used by millions of yoga practitioners and students worldwide. Written in a question-and-answer format, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali deals with the theory and practice of yoga and the psychological question of the liberation of the soul from attachments.

This book is a new rendering into English of the Arabic translation and commentary of this text by the brilliant eleventh-century polymath al-Bīrūnī. Given the many historical variants of the Yoga Sutras, his Kitāb Bātanjali is important for yoga studies as the earliest translation of the Sanskrit. It is also of unique value as an Arabic text within Islamic studies, given the intellectual and philosophical challenges that faced the medieval Muslim reader when presented with the intricacy of composition, interpretation, and allusion that permeates this translation.

Women in Buddhist Traditions

Karma Lekshe Tsomo

A new history of Buddhism that highlights the insights and experiences of women from diverse communities and traditions around the world.

Buddhist traditions have developed over a period of twenty-five centuries in Asia, and recent decades have seen an unprecedented spread of Buddhism globally. From India to Japan, Sri Lanka to Russia, Buddhist traditions around the world have their own rich and diverse histories, cultures, religious lives, and roles for women.

Wherever Buddhism has taken root, it has interacted with indigenous cultures and existing religious traditions. These traditions have inevitably influenced the ways in which Buddhist ideas and practices have been understood and adapted. Tracing the branches and fruits of these culturally specific transmissions and adaptations is as challenging as it is fascinating.

Women in Buddhist Traditions chronicles pivotal moments in the story of Buddhist women, from the beginning of Buddhist history until today. The book highlights the unique contributions of Buddhist women from a variety of backgrounds and the strategies they have developed to challenge patriarchy in the process of creating an enlightened society.

Women in Buddhist Traditions offers a groundbreaking and insightful introduction to the lives of Buddhist women worldwide.

The Scattered Court: Hindustani Music in Colonial Bengal (hardcover)

Richard David Williams

Presents a new history of how Hindustani court music responded to the political transitions of the nineteenth century.

How far did colonialism transform north Indian music? In the period between the Mughal empire and the British Raj, how did the political landscape bleed into aesthetics, music, dance, and poetry? Examining musical culture through a diverse and multilingual archive, primarily using sources in Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi that have not been translated or critically examined before, The Scattered Court challenges our assumptions about the period. Richard David Williams presents a long history of interactions between northern India and Bengal, with a core focus on the two courts of Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887), the last ruler of the kingdom of Awadh. He charts the movement of musicians and dancers between the two courts in Lucknow and Matiyaburj, as well as the transregional circulation of intellectual traditions and musical genres, and demonstrates the importance of the exile period for the rise of Calcutta as a celebrated center of Hindustani classical music. Since Lucknow is associated with late Mughal or Nawabi society and Calcutta with colonial modernity, examining the relationship between the two cities sheds light on forms of continuity and transition over the nineteenth century, as artists and their patrons navigated political ruptures and social transformations. The Scattered Court challenges the existing historiography of Hindustani music and Indian culture under colonialism by arguing that our focus on Anglophone sources and modernizing impulses has directed us away from the aesthetic subtleties, historical continuities, and emotional dimensions of nineteenth-century music.

The Scattered Court: Hindustani Music in Colonial Bengal (paperback)

Richard David Williams

Making a Canon: Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Sri Lanka, and the Place of Buddhist Art

Janice Leoshko

The story of how one scholar’s experiences in Sri Lanka shaped the contours of the Buddhist visual canon.

An early interpreter of Buddhist art to the West, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy laid the foundation of what would become the South Asian visual canon, particularly through his efforts to understand how Buddhist art emerged and developed. In Making a Canon, Janice Leoshko examines how Coomaraswamy’s experience as the director of a mineralogical survey in Sri Lanka shaped his understanding of South Asian art and religion. Along the way, she reveals how Coomaraswamy’s distinctive repetition of Sri Lankan visual images in his work influenced the direction of South Asia’s canon formation and left a lasting impression on our understanding of Buddhist art.

The Path of Desire: Living Tantra in Northeast India

Hugh B. Urban

A provocative study of contemporary Tantra as a dynamic living tradition.

Tantra, one of the most important religious currents in South Asia, is often misrepresented as little more than ritualized sex. Through a mixture of ethnography and history, Hugh B. Urban reveals a dynamic living tradition behind the sensationalist stories. Urban shows that Tantric desire goes beyond the erotic, encompassing such quotidian experiences as childbearing and healing. He traces these holistic desires through a series of unique practices: institutional Tantra centered on gurus and esoteric rituals; public Tantra marked by performance and festival; folk Tantra focused on magic and personal well-being; and popular Tantra imagined in fiction, film, and digital media. The result is a provocative new description of Hindu Tantra that challenges us to approach religion as something always entwined with politics and culture, thoroughly entangled with ordinary needs and desires.

Iran to India: The Shansabānīs of Afghanistan, c. 1145-1190 CE

Alka Patel

Brings together all the architectural patronage attributed to the Shansabānīs in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Swat and lower Indus region).

• Creates an architectural biography of this pivotal polity and its trans-regional empire.
• Treats built remains as independent, primary sources – and juxtaposes them with the principal texts – to create a complex understanding of the historical processes the Shansabānīs initiated throughout the landscapes they re-conjoined.
• Provides the first analysis of this important epigraphic corpus.
• Serves as the starting point for future research on the medieval epigraphy of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This book charts the origins and rise of the Shansabānīs, a nomadic-pastoralist or transhumant group from modern central Afghanistan. As they adapted and mastered the mores of Perso-Islamic kingship, they created a transregional empire unseen in the region for almost a millennium, since the Kushanas of the early centuries CE.

The Shansabānīs’ imperialism of little more than a half-century belies their longue durée significance: they altered the geopolitical landscapes of eastern Khurasan through the Indo-Gangetic plains, reconnecting these regions in continuous flows of people, objects, and ideas that broadened the Persianate world and had consequences into the modern age of nation-states in Central and South Asia.

Language in the Indian Diaspora: Sociolinguistic Perspectives

Rajend Mesthrie and Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi (editors)

Examines the role of language in shaping the Indian diaspora experience.

• Brings together a wide range of Indian languages and diasporic contexts.
• Has a stronger and more up-to-date sociolinguistic focus than has been the case in previous collections.
• Explores repertoire changes in diaspora, as well as migration and language resilience.

Rajend Mesthrie and Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi bring together an international range of scholars to explore the sociolinguistic outcomes of multilingualism and contact involving the Indian diaspora. The collection presents twelve rich case studies of Indian diaspora languages in South Asia, East Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the USA. It examines different forms of displacement in response to a wide range of historical, social, technological and geopolitical developments: internal displacement and transcontinental migration, colonial and contemporary migrations, urban and rural migrations, migration of skilled and unskilled workers, and migration of major and minor Indian languages. By comparing the sociolinguistic consequences of migration in diverse contexts, Language in the Indian Diaspora examines the role of language practices in shaping local and global mobile contexts. In doing so, it develops our understanding of the processes of language use and language change in the emerging arena of migration studies.

Failed Masculinities: The Men in Satyajit Ray’s Films

Devapriya Sanyal

The first comprehensive study of men and masculinity in the cinema of Satyajit Ray.

• Links Ray’s male characters with India’s national trajectory in its early post-independence years.
• Interrogates the director’s standing as a national filmmaker.
• Situates Ray within post-colonial filmmaking and realist cinema traditions.

Satyajit Ray belonged to a category of filmmakers and artists from newly independent countries whose work was used to define ‘national culture’.

Failed Masculinities: The Men in Satyajit Ray’s Films argues that a study of his films will give us a purchase on the moral trajectory of India in its first few decades of independence, particularly through examination of his male characters and their narratives. Films discussed by Sanyal include the Apu Trilogy, Shakha Prasakha, Ghare Baire and Kapurush.