This text presents the earliest South Indian inscriptions (ca. second century bc to sixth century ad), written in Tamil in local derivations of the Ashokan Brahmi script. They are the earliest known Dravidian documents available and show some overlap with the early Cera and Pandya dynasties. Their language is Archaic Tamil, with a few borrowings from Prakrit and influences of old Kannada, both resulting from the early presence of northern Jainism. The widespread occurrence of pottery inscriptions indicates that the Tamil-Brahmi script had taken deep roots all over the countryside, leading to...
This text presents the earliest South Indian inscriptions (ca. second century bc to sixth century ad), written in Tamil in local derivations of the As...
Dating to the first half of the first millennium bce, the "Katha Aranyaka" is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new, never-before published critical edition, Michael Witzel, using available manuscripts and, primarily, a color facsimile of a restored five-hundred-year-old Kashmiri birch bark manuscript preserved at Tubingen since 1895, presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads. The text is preceded by an extensive introduction in English...
Dating to the first half of the first millennium bce, the "Katha Aranyaka" is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic rit...
This volume explores the earliest available version of the Sikh canon. The book contains the first critical description and partial edition of the Goindval Pothis, a set of proto-scriptural manuscripts prepared in the 1570s. The manuscripts also contain a number of hymns by non-Sikh saints, some of them not found elsewhere. Through a meticulous analysis of the contents of these rare manuscripts, G. M. Singh establishes their place and importance in the history of Sikh canon formation. The book will be of great interest to scholars of comparative canon studies and of medieval Indian...
This volume explores the earliest available version of the Sikh canon. The book contains the first critical description and partial edition of the Goi...
This poem belongs of the little-known Newari (Nepal Bhasha) language and literature, specifically to its even less known Buddhist version. It is one of the very rare cases that works in Newari language appear outside Nepal.
In nineteen long cantos, the "Sugata Saurabha" tells of the life of the Buddha, following the traditional accounts, but situates it in the strongly local context of Newar and Nepali Buddhism. It emulates the classical (Kavya) style of the long-standing Indian tradition, and has been inspired by the 2,000-year-old Sanskrit poem, the "Buddhacarita." Consequently, the...
This poem belongs of the little-known Newari (Nepal Bhasha) language and literature, specifically to its even less known Buddhist version. It is o...
This volume, which includes introductory chapters to Rai mythology and Rai grammar, for the first time brings together different variants of myths from various Rai languages, presenting them with linguistic glossings in interlinear translations
This volume, which includes introductory chapters to Rai mythology and Rai grammar, for the first time brings together different variants of myths fro...
This volume discusses the Bhaiksuki manuscript of the "Candralamkara" ( Ornament of the Moon ), a commentary of the twelfth century based on the "Candravyakarana," Candragomin s seminal Buddhist grammar of Sanskrit (fifth century). The discovery of the Bhaiksuki script and of all available written sources are described. The detailed study of this "codex unicus" of the "Candralamkara" is accompanied by a facsimile edition and extensive tables of the script, a long-felt desideratum in the field of palaeography. The Buddhist author of the commentary has been identified for the first time,...
This volume discusses the Bhaiksuki manuscript of the "Candralamkara" ( Ornament of the Moon ), a commentary of the twelfth century based on the "...
The Law Code of Visnu (Vaisnava-dharmasastra) is one of the latest of the ancient Indian legal texts composed around the seventh century ce in Kashmir. Both because the Vaishnava-Dharmasastra is the only Dharmasastra that can be geographically located and because it introduces some interesting and new elements into the discussion of Dharmasastric topics, this is a document of interest both to scholars of Indian legal literature and to cultural historians of India, especially of Kashmir. The new elements include the first Dharmasastric evidence for a wife burning herself at her husband's...
The Law Code of Visnu (Vaisnava-dharmasastra) is one of the latest of the ancient Indian legal texts composed around the seventh century ce in Kashmir...
This book is a thick description and interpretation of the ethnography of the Mru and Khumi, who live in the Chittagong/Arakan Hills straddling Bangladesh, India, and Burma. They are Tibeto-Burmese speaking horticulturalists practicing swidden agriculture. The work is the outcome of several periods of fieldwork dating back to 1955 1957, 1964, and 1990. Lorenz G. Loffler describes in great detail the material and spiritual culture of these populations: from dwellings and implements to life cycle and social structure, from folklore to religious rituals. All the important local terms are given...
This book is a thick description and interpretation of the ethnography of the Mru and Khumi, who live in the Chittagong/Arakan Hills straddling Bangla...
