Much anthropological and sociological work on South Asia (especially work done by western academics) takes for granted the centrality of caste in Hindu society. The aim of the present volume is to take a critical look at this assumption, contextualising caste in relation to other dimensions of modern Indian society. The contribution of the volume will be both theoretical and ethnographic.

Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe is a comprehensive history of child saints and their cults from late Antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. The child martyrs of the persecutions, including the Holy Innocents, were the first child saints recognized by the Church and their cults spread throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. Alongside these cults, medieval society also venerated child -martyrs-, victims of political or domestic violence. The increasing role of the papacy in the canonization process after the tenth century resulted...

Protestants who fled England during the reign of Mary Tudor settled in a number of cities on the Continent. Those who went to Geneva at the invitation of John Calvin have become known as the most radical voices for reform of the Church of England during the Elizabethan Settlement. Many scholars have called them -puritans.- "Pilgrimage to Puritanism" is a comprehensive study of these English Protestant refugees: who they were, what they published while in Geneva and later during Elizabeth's reign, the nature of the refugee church they established under Calvin's tutelage, and the theological...

This volume brings together scholars to explore the challenges of translating Christianity. Christianity has been the impulse behind the creation of more dictionaries and grammars of the world's languages than any other force in history. More people pray and worship in more languages in Christianity than in any other religion. It is a religion without a revealed language; a faith characterized by 'the triumph of its translatability'. Christianity is also a translated religion in a very different sense. Many of its ritual practices have been predicated on the translation of material objects,...