Agehananda Bharati

The Hindu Renaissance and its Apologetic Patterns

An anthropological and linguistic analysis of the idiom of modern Hindu religious specialists and their followers, an audience which embraces all English speaking Indians and a large segment of the urban populations of India. The highly eclectic, quasi-secular and neo-Hindu ideology inaugurated by such charismatics as Vivekananda, other “Swamis” and interiorized by Indian nationalists, expresses itself in a highly stereotyped coded parlance, informed by Victorian English as well as by diffuse elements which could be described as a Hindu Protestant Ethic. Both systematic and conscious obfuscation of scriptural categories as well as complex but predictable patterns of dissimulation extending over virtually all types of cultural and social discourse—the caste-system, “superstitions,” the “scientific” base of Hinduism, political talk, etc., are adduced and investigated as paradigms of contemporary Indian parlance, which is not the grass-roots idiom, but which is gathering momentum as the forensic instrument of Indias leadership and of Indian administrators, educators, and the Indian intellectuals.

Sati : historical and phenomenological essays

It conveys the historical evolution and discusses the Indo-Western encounter. The major topics it discusses include Sati: A Study in Western Reactions, The Tradition of Indigenous Protest against Sati, an Analysis of Reaction of Hindus and Non-Hindus to Sati, The Scriptural sanction for Sati in Hinduism, Raja Rammonhum Roy and Bal Gangadhar Tilak: A comparison based on Roys attitude towards Sati, The Bahagavad Gita: Its Role in the Abolition of Sati. Widowhood and Yoga.

The Use of 'Superstition' as an Anti-Traditional Device in Urban Hinduism

not criticizing them for giving short shrift to some of the more formalistic approaches to social analysis which have originated’ in this country. I do, however, suggest that there is nothing wrong, on principle, in trying out new methodologies, and to test them over a period of time, as to their fertility, accuracy, and capacity to supplement or replace in part some older methodologies which have run their course. I shall begin therefore by giving a very short outline of emics and etics as heuristic devices, these two being the core terms of the &dquo;new ethnography&dquo;. Claude L6vi-Strauss may or may not have been one of the inspirers of this scheme: his notion that social research should proceed on the thematic model of structural Iiiaguistics is akin to the basic postulates of ethnoscience and ethnosemantics, terms which, for our purpose at least, are rough synonyms of the &dquo;new ethnography&dquo;. The terms emics and etics were coined by Kenneth Pike (1954),&dquo; one of the living fathers of modern linguistics. Pike’s concern, of course, was more purely linguistic than that of cultural anthropologists who took their cue from him. Marvin Harris’s monumental, controversial book (1968) is, at this time, a sine qua non for all serious students of anthropology.

The Gandhari Dharmapada.

The manuscript, written in the first or second century A.D., is generally considered to be the oldest surviving manuscript of an Indian text. It was discovered near Khotan in Central Asia in 1892, and reached Europe in two parts, one of which went to Russia and the other to France. In 1897 S. Oldenburg published one leaf of the Russian portion; and in 1898 E. Senart edited the French material in the Journal Asiatique, together with facsimiles of the larger leaves, but not of the fragments. Now, almost seventy years after the discovery of the manuscript, it is possible for the first time to place before scholars an edition of the whole of the extant material, together with complete facsimiles.

The Canon of the Śaivāgama and the Kubjikā Tantras of the Western Kaula Tradition@@@The Canon of the Saivagama and the Kubjika Tantras of the Western Kaula Tradition

The book is also an introduction to the literature of the Kubjika-mata. As Kundalini, Kubjika is worshipped as the Goddess who is curled up and sleeping, waiting to be awakened. The author explores place in its Tantric literature.

Peasant society and redfield's fields

Robert Redfield. The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago: University Press, 1961 (Phoenix Paperback P53). 265 pp.,

Modern Hindu Exegesis of Mahayana Doctrine

2.25.

The Tantric Tradition.

IN PRESENT-DAY Sanskrit writing in the Veddnta and other Brfhmanical traditions, there seems to be an increasing awareness of the value per se of heretical doctrines and arguments. Whereas Jaina scholastic writing has not so far attracted much attention of Hindu scholars in this century, Buddhism has. Widening contact with the Buddhist world and with Buddhist thought is no doubt the most important factor here, and such occasions as the Buddha Jayanti celebrated in India five years ago add to the desire to resume the discourse with the Buddhist teachings which has long been dormant.