This is a fresh and innovative exploration of traditional Indian religion and culture - an area that has fascinated and puzzled the West for centuries. Making use of his own original research, conducted over twenty-five years, Friedhelm Hardy aims at presenting the widest possible range of themes that have preoccupied Indian culture. He draws on a variety of sources, in various languages, and listens not only to what the philosopher or theologian in the classical Sanskrit texts has to say, but also to what folk and regional cults and cultures express in stories, myths and poetry. In an often...

Western scholarship has largely ignored the practice of venerating the physical remains of the Buddha, a practice that has been a central focus of both monastic and lay Buddhists for more than two millennia. This study draws on textual and archaeological evidence from India and Sri Lanka to examine the place of relic veneration in the history of South Asian Buddhism. It contributes to current work on the history of Western Buddhology, to the discipline of religious studies, and to the history of Indian and Sri Lankan Buddhism.

The Body Divine explores the ways in which two spiritual teachers, one Christian (Teilhard de Chardin) and one Hindu (R DEGREESD=am DEGREESD=anuja) have seen the world as inherently divine, and have presented this insight theologically through the use of a symbol, that of the "body of the divine" (the body of Christ/Brahman). In a careful study of their beliefs, Dr. Hunt Overzee shows how both thinkers came to understand reality in terms of consciousness, believing that salvation/release is realized through attaining the Lord. This goal is approximated through a changed view of things, in...

In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers.

In this book, Julia Ching offers a survey of over 4,000 years of Chinese civilization through an examination of the relationship between kingship and mysticism. She investigates the sage-king myth and ideal, arguing that institutions of kingship were bound up with cultivation of trance states and communication with spirits. Over time, the sage-king myth became a model for the actual ruler. As a paradigm, it was also appropriated by private individuals who strove for wisdom without becoming kings. As the Confucian tradition interacted with the Taoist and the Buddhist, the religious character...

The Dance of Siva is a complete account of Siva's Dance of Bliss, which is based on a remarkable Sanskrit poem written by Umapati Sivacarya about 1300 AD. Siva is one of the two main gods of Hinduism. The book deals with the famous Chola Nataraja bronze--today the best-known Hindu image, the key location of Siva's Dance in South India, and the temple of Cidambaram. Dr. Smith explores all aspects of Nataraja and the Goddess, and the temple, its priests and ritual. Relevant contemporary art from Cidambaram and neighboring sites illuminates the text.

The number theoretic properties of curves of genus 2 are attracting increasing attention. This book provides new insights into this subject; much of the material here is entirely new, and none has appeared in book form before. The authors include an explicit treatment of the Jacobian, which throws new light onto the geometry of the Kummer surface. Mathematicians can then determine the Mordell-Weil group for many curves, and in many nontrivial cases they can find all rational points. The results exemplify the power of computer algebra in diophantine contexts, but computer expertise is not...

The Dance of Siva is a complete account of Siva's Dance of Bliss, which is based on a remarkable Sanskrit poem written by Umapati Sivacarya about 1300 AD. Siva is one of the two main gods of Hinduism. The book deals with the famous Chola Nataraja bronze--today the best-known Hindu image, the key location of Siva's Dance in South India, and the temple of Cidambaram. Dr. Smith explores all aspects of Nataraja and the Goddess, and the temple, its priests and ritual. Relevant contemporary art from Cidambaram and neighboring sites illuminates the text.

This book presents a new answer to the question: what is nirvana? Part One distinguishes between systematic and narrative thought in the Pali texts of Theravada Buddhism, looking at the place of nirvana in both. Part Two explores other Buddhist utopias and relates Buddhist utopianism to studies of European and American utopian writing. Steven Collins discusses these issues in relation to textuality, world history, and ideology in premodern civilizations, aiming to contribute to a new vision of Buddhist history that integrates the inside and the outside of texts.

Examines the meaning of 'nirvana' and discusses Buddhist utopias, textuality and world history.