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If the country of India is mentioned with it the plurality of religions; It is an example in that, and then India is the source of the diverse and plural religions. Hence, in the Malay Peninsula and its combined Algeria, there are different beliefs and tendencies; They converted to Islam in the thirteenth century, and that was the result of the relations that linked them to the Arabs, which were direct, represented in trade, and indirect, represented in the fact that they were located on the sea route for the Arabs in their trade towards China .. The research aims at researching the ancient Indian religions in the Malay Archipelago - Malaysia - in addition to talking about India as it represents an important source for the spread of those religions in the archipelago, as well as the neighborhood that brings them together, India and the archipelago, and it was for direct contact factors, such as trade and other reciprocal travel. His role in the transmission of those religions from here and there. If there are multiple religions in the archipelago, However, this research will focus on the three major religions (Hinduism - Buddhism - Jainism). They are the most famous and important religions among other religions, as well as being an important source for other religions of India and the archipelago

This article examines the concept of inclusivism by Paul Hacker on the basis of one of his last articles dedicated to the problem of correlation between concepts “inclusivism”, “tolerance” and “intolerance”. This concept approaches the prob­lem of relationship between religions by implying that only one religion com­prises the absolute truth while it remains achievable to some extent at least for some other religions. P. Hacker developed his own conception and used the ex­ample of Indian religions to show the relationship between the notions of “inclu­sivism” and “tolerance” and argued that inclusivism is a form of thinking charac­teristic for Indian culture. P. Hacker defends the idea that what is referred to as tolerance in Western studies relating to Indian culture is not exactly tolerance but a fundamentally different way of thinking. This conception has attracted the at­tention of many Indologists including Gerhard Oberhammer who thoroughly an­alyzed the notion of inclusivism in relation to religious texts of Hinduism. Ac­cording to G. Oberhammer, the theory of P. Hacker includes propositions that could be interpreted ambivalently and require additional explanation. This article summarizes one of Paul Hacker’s latest works, analyzes Gerhard Oberhammer’s perception of his conception, reveals the main critical theses which were pro­posed and summarizes Gerhard Oberhammer’s own views on this conception.

One hears of constant turns in the humanities and social sciences from the cultural turn and linguistic turn to the more recent post-human turn and ontological turn. Such turns, as it goes, help sc...

Religion plays an important role in Indian culture, and greatly influences thinking and behavior around issues of hygiene and health. This study explored the religious texts of six major religions in India, and interviewed key informants, in order to identify religious precepts and proscriptions that may underlie current levels of stigma and social restrictions placed on people affected by leprosy. The study found a historical basis for leprosy stigma in the scriptures of all six religions. Attitudes are changing, especially with the acceptance of modern treatment. It is essential to incorporate stigma reduction perspectives in religious preaching.

Religion and Modernity in the Himalaya, edited by Megan Adamson Sijapati and Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. 191 pp. £104 (hb). ISBN 978-0-415-72339-8.

The concept of Revelation is found in all religions that have faith in God in terms of expressing the relationship between the creator and the human. Revelation is a common phenomenon of religions in the way that God communicates with Man and sets principles for the world and the hereafter, even if it is expressed in different meanings in each religion. In this study, we will focus on the interpretation of the concept of Revelation in the most common religions in the Indian subcontinent. Revelation is one of the important concepts in religions in the context of belief in God, the Scripture, the prophet and the hereafter. For this reason, it is not possible to understand the other beliefs of a religion without understanding the understanding of Revelation. Although the religions of the Indian subcontinent have been influenced by each other on many issues related to religion, there are some similarities and differences between them on the subject of Revelation. In this research, we tried to examine the concept of Revelation, which plays a major role in understanding the phenomena of Indian religions.

Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) is a name who isremembered with Theosophical Society, which has an important place in thehistory of modern occultism and esotericism. His encounter with Russian-bornHelena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was a turning point in Olcott's career.The duo soon set in motion a modern occultist structure under the name ofTheosophical Society (1875). The society which is nourished by many doctrinesin terms of its syncretic structure was born out of modern spiritualism andthen turned to the Western esoteric tradition. Main objective of the society isto reveal the occult forces that claimed to be exist in the nature of humanbeings and to explain these abilities with modern science and to establish atheoretical structure.Blavatsky and Olcott, who had been operating in theUSA for a few years, went to India in 1879, and moved the international centerof the society to Madras (today Chennai) in 1882.Following this development, Indian beliefs and thoughts gained weight in theteachings of the society. The Society carried out social, cultural andpolitical activities in India. After Blavatsky returned to Europe, Olcott tookthe lead in the Indian-based work of the Theosophical Society. Olcott spent thelast twenty-eight years of his seventy-five-years life in India, carrying outsignificant activities especially in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Olcotttoured India almost every inch, opened branches of Theosophical Society andshared the targeted works with the Indian people. Accordingly, the communitywill work to revive Indian religion and culture, strive to translate Indianscriptures into Western languages, and endeavor to compile books and catechismscontaining Indian religions, philosophies and traditions. The society carriedout successful works on these issues and has been an important tool intransferring Indian beliefs and ideas to the West. One of Olcott's importantfields of study is education. Many schools were opened in India and Ceylonunder the leadership of Olcott; some of these schools continue their activitiestoday. The Adyar Library and Research Center, founded by Olcott in 1886, hasmade great progress in the process and nowadays it is become an importantcenter for Oriental studies.Olcott, also had a significant impact on the Parsicommunity in India. In 1882, Olcott gave a conference to Parsies, entitled “TheSpirit of the Zoroastrian Religion”. The conference, which called on theParsies to revive their religion and traditions, resonated within the Parsicommunity and the text of the speech was reproduced and distributed by thecommunity. As a result of the work of both Olcott and his successor AnnieBesant, a group has emerged within the Bombay Theosophical Society whichdescribes themselves as “Parsi theosophists”.Olcott's activities, especially towards Buddhism, areremarkable. Olcott conducted studies for Buddhists in Ceylon, Burma and Japan.In particular, he had a major impact on the revival of Buddhism in Ceylon.Olcott, who visited the lands of Ceylon with Blavatskyfirstly in 1880 and declared that he was a Buddhist during this visit, washonored by the island’s Buddhists on several occasions as a result of his workin the following years. Known as “White Buddhist” in Ceylon, Olcott was told“Bodhisattva of 19th century”. Even today, in Sri Lanka, Buddhists view Olcottas a saint and a hero. Every year on February 17, they commemorate his memoryunder the name of "Olcott Day". On the other hand, on the 60thanniversary of his death, Olcott was commemorated in Sri Lanka with specialstamps. By the time Ceylon was a British colony. Missionary activities on theisland were extensive and Buddhist culture was weakened. At the end of the 19thcentury, in Ceylon, under the above-mentioned conditions, it is seen thatBuddhism began to regain vitality. It is stated that Olcott's influence in thisrevival is remarkable. One of Olcott's important contributions to the Buddhistworld was the design of the Buddhist flag, which is still in use today andaccepted as an universal symbol. Olcott also worked on the unification ofBuddhist sects. He helped Vesak to be recognized by the British and to bedeclared as a holiday. Olcott also traveled to Japan, one of the importantcenters of the Buddhist world. Visited Japan three times, where he was reveredas a result of his work in Ceylon and he gave speeches to Buddhist communities.The Buddhist Catechism, which he wrote in 1881, has animportant place among his works. In the form of question and answer model basedon Christian catechism, Olcott gave short answers to 383 short questions andpresented information about the Buddha, Buddhist beliefs and Buddhist history.In this work, Olcott tried to reconcile traditional Buddhist teachings withtheosophical teachings. In the text; spiritualistic, esoteric and occultistapproaches of theosophical movement are clearly revealed. In addition, theevolutionist understanding that dominates the scientific world of the time isperceived. Moreover, it is seen that the claims of Buddhist doctrines arecombined side by side with the controversial claims that are sometimesconsidered to be false science. Some information that contrasts with historicaland statistical information is also prominent in the text.This article, on the one hand aims to evaluateOlcott's work on Buddhism and his Buddhist Catechism and on the other hand tocontribute to the Turkish literature on Buddhist studies., Henry SteelOlcott modern spiritüalist (ruhçu) akımdan etkilenmekle beraber TeosofiCemiyeti ve Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ile birlikte yeni bir kariyere yelkenaçmıştır. Cemiyetin kurucularından olan Olcott hayatı boyunca resmi başkanlıkgörevini yürütmüştür. Teosofi Cemiyeti modern okültist hareketler içinde önemlibir yere sahiptir. Amerika’da kurulan cemiyet bir süre sonra Hindistan’ataşınmıştır; bu andan itibaren cemiyetin öğretilerinde Hint inanç vedüşünceleri ağırlık kazanmıştır. Cemiyet Hindistan topraklarında sosyal,kültürel ve siyasi çalışmalar yürütmüştür. Hint inanç ve düşüncelerinin Batı’yaaktarılmasında cemiyet önemli bir araç olmuştur. Blavatsky’nin Hindistan’ı terketmesinden sonra Teosofi Cemiyeti’nin Hindistan’daki faaliyetlerinde Olcott’unismi tam anlamıyla öne çıkmıştır. Olcott’un özellikle Budizm’e yönelikfaaliyetleri dikkat çekicidir. Olcott, Seylan başta olmak üzere Burma veJaponya’da Budistlere yönelik çalışmalar yapmıştır. Onun hususen Seylan'daBudizm’in canlanmasında büyük etkisi olmuştur. Kaleme aldığı Budist Kateşizm’in(Budist İlmihal) ise çalışmaları arasında önemli bir yeri vardır. Olcott bueserinde geleneksel Budist öğretiler ile teosofik öğretileri bağdaştırmagayreti gütmüştür. Bu makale bir yandan Olcott’un Budizm üzerine çalışmalarınıve Budist Kateşizm’ini değerlendirmeyi diğer yandan Budist çalışmalar hakkındaTürkçe literatüre katkı sunmayı amaç edinmektedir.

In an ambitious and variegated book based on more than ten years of ethnographic research in field sites spanning Punjab province in Pakistan to the state of Punjab in India, Virinder S. Kalra and ...

A closer look at some of the most notable democratic breakdowns in the last few decades tells us that it’s not the military generals but the elected representatives of the people themselves who have engineered the Constitutional cataclysms. In a practice which has repeatedly been touted as dangerously deceptive, creation of authoritarian regimes through the imposition of martial law and other forms of dictatorship has been replaced by the use of subtle changes in the constitutional order to bypass the accountability measures. These subtle yet systematic changes in the Constitutional order eviscerate it’s substance behind the camouflage of managerial stratagems of reforms and development. While the Indian descent towards illiberalism has been well-documented, this work aims to fill the scholarly gap in locating the erosion of liberal Constitutional order in India from the prims of emergence of religion as a competitive order. The note has been divided into 3 parts. Part I discusses the attributes of Liberal Constitutionalism and religion while underscoring the tradeoff between the value sets of these orders. Part II of the paper analyses the treatment that the Constitutional order has meted out to the religion in India to catalogue the reasons for emergence of the Religion as a successful competing order (to liberal constitutionalism). In the Part III of the paper, I discuss the emergence and working of the Religious Constitutionalism in India and it’s prospective impact on the Indian Constitutional Scheme

The current paper explores the potential interlink between names of individuals in a society and its collective social consciousness, particularly with reference to the pervasive occurrence of the ‘mathematical names’ in the current Hindu society spanning the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Initially, an attempt is made to put things into mathematical perspective by drawing a quick sketch of some of the stellar achievements of the Indian mathematicians. Under the six broad categories of geometry, trigonometry, numeration, arithmetic, algebra, and mathematics in the Vedic tradition, a concise simple description of these subdivisions is presented, underlining selected mathematical concepts and terms, sometimes by producing the textual references. We hypothesize that such terms permeate as names in the current Hindu society, reflecting the impressions of the tremendously rich mathematical heritage left by the stalwart Hindu mathematicians. Accordingly, an attempt is made to juxtapose these terms with the names current in the Indian Hindu society. By employing an extensive dataset of university student names in India and the directories of Facebook and LinkedIn, we produce both qualitative and quantitative evidence of the presence of such names in the Indian subcontinent. Our hypothesis has also been examined by taking surveys of people bearing these mathematical names, as well as by documenting the ‘conscious procedures’ that go behind the naming of a Hindu Indian child. In trying to investigate if such a phenomenon is unique to the Indian tradition, a stark contrast with the ‘names in mathematics’ as prevalent in the post-renaissance Europe is presented, as cultural roots of mathematics are explored. Evidently, the large magnitude and the span of such names substantiates the presence of these names as the extant remains of the colossal impact of multifarious mathematical traditions existing in India. Interestingly, the present research also brings to the fore, certain unseen facets of the Indian Hindu society as regards the education of mathematics to women – through an indirect exploration of their names. We also show that the pervasive occurrence of these names is not merely the result of semantic chance events, but must denote the richness of the Indian mathematical legacy. By presenting some cross-cultural comparisons, we bring about the specific uniqueness of Indian mathematical and scientific traditions that led to the pervasiveness of ‘mathematical names’ in India vis-à-vis other cultures. Finally, an attempt is made to clarify some subtle points on the associations between mathematics and religion in India and other cultures of the world. It is sincerely hoped that the present study may shed light on the cultural roots of mathematics and may furnish a new dimension in the study of mathematics, culture, and civilizations across the world.

The use of names and terms of Indian origin bears witness to encounters of Iranian-speaking Manichaeans with Indian religious traditions and cultures, but the importance of an impact of Indian religions on Manichaeism is still subject of scholarly discussions. This paper focuses on Buddhist and Indian elements in Manichaean onomastics. Recent research in the context of the project *Iranisches Personennamenbuch* has provided, for the first time, a complete collection of proper names in the Iranian Manichaean texts from the Turfan region. The transmitted Iranian, hybrid, and non-Iranian names of Manichaean and non-Manichaean historical persons, literary, and mythological figures reflect the ethnic, religious, and multilingual diversity of the peoples along the Silk Roads. The results of this study enable us to analyse the various influences in Manichaean onomastics. Here this refers to proper names of Indian origin, loan-translations, Buddha and Bodhisattva names, names from the Buddhist tradition, and the like. This paper shall show which Indian names occur in Iranian Manichaean texts and how they have been adapted to the Manichaean context.

In this chapter, I show how religion has shaped patterns of out-migration from India by determining societal structures such as the social location of groups within society, which in turn influences the fundamental characteristics of groups and gives rise to differential state policies toward them. Religion has also played a central role in the community formation of Indian immigrants, not just through faith and religious institutions but through the intersection of the religiously infused identities and concepts of secularism of the United States and of India which profoundly impact the political incorporation of Indian Americans and their mobilization patterns. Majority/minority religious status in the United States mould racial attitudes and self-identification in different ways, while majority/minority religious status in India affects activism profiles around homeland issues.

In sharp contrast to the heterosexist views of some people in Western society, the majority of other cultures that have been studied by anthropologists condone at least some forms of same sex eroticism as socially acceptable behavior. Married couples in particular turn to them since, as “half men/half women,” they can see things from the perspective of both sexes. In contrast to Western sexist views, where a male who acts like a woman is considered to be “lowering himself” to the subordinate female status, in the egalitarian American Indian religions feminine roles are accorded equal respect with men’s roles. In most Western cultures, such people are often considered misfits, an embarrassment to the family. They often leave the family in shame or are thrown out by homophobic relatives, the family thereby losing the benefit of their productive labor. Psychological theory suggests that if a family does not love and support such children, they will quickly internalize a negative self-image.

Lucid dreaming (LD) began to be scientifically studied in the last century, but various religions have highlighted the importance of LD in their doctrines for a much longer period. Hindus' manuscripts dating back over 2,000 years ago, for example, divide consciousness in waking, dreaming (including LD), and deep sleep. In the Buddhist tradition, Tibetan monks have been practicing the "Dream Yoga," a meditation technique that instructs dreamers to recognize the dream, overcome all fears when lucid, and control the oneiric content. In the Islamic sacred scriptures, LD is regarded as a mental state of great value, and a special way for the initiated to reach mystical experiences. The Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) mentions LD as a kind of preview of the afterlife, when the soul separates from the body. In the nineteenth century, some branches of the Spiritism religion argue that LD precedes out-of-body experiences during sleep. Here we reviewed how these religions interpret dreams, LD and other conscious states during sleep. We observed that while Abrahamic monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) recognize dreams as a way to communicate with God to understand the present and predict the future, the traditional Indian religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) are more engaged in cultivating self-awareness, thus developed specific techniques to induce LD and witnessing sleep. Teachings from religious traditions around the world offer important insights for scientific researchers today who want to understand the full range of LD phenomenology as it has emerged through history.

The 44th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, 12–14 April 2019, Lancaster. A conference report

The Gospel of John is considered as one of the significant literary masterpieces that appeals to Indian spirituality and ideals in multifarious ways. The Gospel has unique features as a universalistic rhetoric that encompasses feelings and aspirations of Indians. The character of Jesus in the Gospel and His assimilative power to contemporary realities reverberate the situational aspects of Indian communities. In the current article, first of all, an attempt is made to explore the character of Jesus and the impression of the Johannine spirituality in relation to Indian realities. We also attempt to place the Fourth Gospel in Indian context in order to derive an interpretative dynamism that takes into account both the Jesus of John and the diverse religious and cultural aspects of today’s context. The character of Jesus and the spirituality reflected in John have much in common with the mystical traditions of the Indian religions.

Among Indian religions, desires for the mundane are typically viewed as sources of suffering and impediments to liberation. To modulate these and other soteriological impediments, many traditions developed transformational paths of practice. One of the most prominent of these is the Gau??ya Vai??ava path of devotion, which celebrates K???a as the highest deity. The goal is not merely liberation, but to develop uninterrupted loving devotion for K???a. However, self-interested desires remain critical impediments. To overcome these desires and reach the goals of the path, early Gau??ya theologians recommended various practices of devotion. Drawing on scientific research on desire-modulation, I argue that many of these practices would be effective for modulating desires because of the ways in which they manipulate situation and stimulus controls, attention allocation, and processes of valuation. This analysis has implications for our understanding of the development of the Gau??ya path, the development and success of certain kinds of Hindu religious practices over time, and the power of religious practices more generally for modulating desires.

In the present paper, we examine the current state of the study of Indian religions in Latin America. An important investigation on the study of Sanskrit outside India conveys the image that the situation of the study of Indian religions in Latin America is perceived internationally as an activity carried out by isolated scholars. Relevant analyses on the Study of Religion in Latin America, on the other hand, show that many social scientists of the region tend to overlook the presence and the effect that religious phenomena linked to Indian culture have over the religious scenario of Latin American countries. The exam of the field we carry out in this paper, in contrast, seeks to demonstrate that the study of Indian religions in Latin America is neither an isolated phenomenon nor an issue disregarded by all social scientists. In order to corroborate our point of view, we discuss, in the first place, the orientation and activities of the main scholarly centers dedicated to the field, and the larger academic areas in which the study of Indian religions appears to be included. We survey, in the second place, the works of important scholars of the region published in the present decade with the purpose of analyzing the main tendencies of current research and of showing which are the main editorial channels involved in the circulation of such works. Our study provides, thus, substantial information on the current state of the field in the region and suggests that the conditions are favorable enough for the field to attain, in the near future, a considerable degree of regional integration and international projection Fil: Martino, Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina

This chapter explores the platformization of religion in India and, in particular, the predominant religion in India, Hinduism. To begin with, I would also like to add that my thoughts on this subject are to some extent provisional, given that religion and religiosity online are constantly being reshaped by technological change as well as by economic and political imperatives. In this chapter, I attempt to deal primarily with issues related to platforms that are dedicated to the provision of various services to everyday religion, and only secondarily with mega-platforms, such as Facebook, which are home to literally thousands of religious socialities. Nonetheless, in both cases, the mining and repurposing of these socialities by political parties and quasi-political (and sometimes extreme right) Hindu organizations towards partisan ends has become a point of contention in India, as it has with other faiths in other parts of the world. From an academic point of view, the relationship between online communication and religious nationalism has been the basis for a number of writings, including by Sahana Udupa and others (Bhushan 2015; Chaturvedi 2016; Kallen 1998; Udupa 2015). This chapter takes its topical focus from the role played by platforms in creating opportunities for various commodifications of Hinduism. At the same time, this chapter also makes the argument that equivalences between commodifications in and of Hinduism and other religions such as Christianity need to be eschewed in favour of a broader understanding of the specificities of mediated religious experiences and the ‘apprehending’ of the divine, which varies from one religion to another.

This chapter offers a broad overview of the three key terms used as: Tantra, Sakta and puja. It discusses the representation and ritual of the goddess Tripurasundari. Online religion represented how the fluid and flexible nature of the Internet allowed new forms of religiosity and lived religious practice online. The term Tantra stands for many different elements of Indian religions and Indian religiosity. Tantra is a living tradition, and most Tantric adepts and practitioners continue to vigilantly guard the secrets of the tradition. In addition to the smarta bowdlerization of Tantra, the shifting tides of modern India and the British colonial moral sensibility contributed to push the fierce forms of Tantric rituals and practices into a cloaked existence. With regards to Hindu Sakta Tantra, the Kamakhya temple and online pujas, a veil exists at the social, cultural and subconscious levels.

This paper focuses on the branch of Santmat (thus far, unstudied by scholars of Indian religions), prevalent in the rural areas of Bihar, India. Santmat&mdash, literally meaning &ldquo, the Path of Sants&rdquo, or &ldquo, Point of View of the Sants&rdquo, &mdash, of Bihar represents a unique synthesis of the elements of the Vedic traditions, rural Hindu practices, and esoteric experiences, as recorded in the poetry of the medieval Sant Tradition. I characterize this tradition as &ldquo, Santmat of Bihar&rdquo, to differentiate it from the other branches of Santmat. The tradition has spread to all parts of India, but its highest concentration remains in Bihar. Maharishi Mehi, a twentieth-century Sant from Bihar State, identifies Santmat&rsquo, s goal as śānti. Maharishi Mehi defines Śānti as the state of deep stillness, equilibrium, and the unity with the Divine. He considers those individuals sants who are established in this state. The state of sublime peace is equally available to all human beings, irrespective of gender, religion, ethnicity, or status. However, it requires a systematic path. Drawing on the writings of the texts of Sanātana Dharma, teachings of the Sants and personal experiences, Maharishi Mehi lays out a systematic path that encompasses the moral observances and detailed esoteric experiences. He also provides an in-depth description of the esoteric practices of divine light (dṛṣti yoga) and sound (surat śabda yoga) in the inner meditation. After providing a brief overview of the history and distinctive features of Santmat of Bihar, this paper will focus on the specifics and unique interpretations of the four structural principles of the tradition: Guru (spiritual teacher), dhyān (inner path of mediation), satsaṅg (spiritual discourses or congregating practitioners for meditation or study), and sadācār (moral conduct). Through a close analysis of textual sources, Sants&rsquo, oral discourses that I translated, as well as insights from my participant-observant experiences, I will examine how the four elements reorient the practitioner from the mundane world to the sacred inner experience of śānti.

In 1920 and 1922, an Indian Christian called Sadhu Sundar Singh toured Britain. Widely renowned in the global Christian community in the interwar period, Singh was notorious for certain stories of miracles, for his appearance and for the ways in which he epitomised Eastern Christianity. Using Singh’s correspondence and a range of newspapers, this article argues that British audiences were attracted to Singh because of his appearance and ethnicity and because he conformed to stereotypes of essentialised Indian spirituality despite his Christian faith. It argues that the reception to Singh in Britain must be understood in relation to the perpetuation of Orientalist understandings of Indians and Indian religions in the interwar period.

This article offers one of the first scholarly analyses of the impact of print on religion in India in the middle of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the publishing project of Arumuga Navalar, one of the most important authors and editors of Tamil Shaiva works. I examine the details of some of Navalar’s key publications, especially his 1852 prose rendition of the Tamil Shaiva classic Periya Puranam. This work was part of Navalar’s effort to make Shaiva canonical texts, traditionally composed in verse, more widely accessible. He employed prose and print to defend established Shaiva caste and ritual practices; to respond to Christian critiques of Hinduism; and to marginalise Shaiva voices that questioned caste or engaged in ritual innovation. I argue that in nineteenth-century South India, print served as an effective tool to disseminate messages of established religious interests.

Yet, there has never been a unified or singular Hinduism in America. Rather, the story of Hinduisms in America provides an important example for the ways a religious tradition is imagined in America. In the 18th and 19th century, Americans described religion in India as ‘heathenism’, ‘Hindoo religion’, ‘Hindu religion’, and ‘Brahmanism’. By the end of the 19th century, figures like Swami Vivekanada brought the idea of ‘Hinduism’, a world religion, to America. In the 20th century, Hindu immigrants from South Asia began to build temples and practice their own forms of Hinduism throughout the United States.

Relationships between text and image in pre-modern South Asia1 have been both ignored and exploited throughout the history of western scholarship [...]

This essay discusses the religious experience of Srividya practices at Devipuram in Andhra Pradesh, South India, based on ethnographic studies conducted in 2014 and 2015. A summary of phenomena described by Amritanandanatha Saraswati in his memoirs situates the background. Interviews with three disciples of Amritananda probe their visionary experiences, practical methodologies and relationships with the Goddess. An inter-textual study of interviews, memoirs and narratives helps identify a theme of vision and embodiment&mdash, in particular, the aniconic graphic form of the Goddess, the Sriyantra, which is experienced as embodied within the practitioner.

American interest in and knowledge of religion in India began before Americans imagined Hinduism as a coherent world religion. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Americans used a variety of terms to describe, represent, and imagine the religious culture of India: Gentoos, Hindoos, religion of the Hindoos, Hindoo religion, Brahmanism, heathenism, and paganism. Each term meant different things to different writers at different times. But there was no Hinduism, a world religion originating in India and comparable to others, in America prior to the late nineteenth century. Americans read and wrote about “Hindoos” and “Hindoo religion,” something altogether different from Hindus and Hinduism. This article analyzes two examples of American representations of Hindoo religion before Hinduism. First, it examines American missionary reports about “Hindoo heathenism” written by American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionaries and published in American missionary journals in the early nineteenth century. Second, it examines the Unitarian interest in Rammohun Roy and his growing popularity in New England during the 1820s and 1830s. Unitarian interest in Roy and ABCFM missionary reports exemplify the ways Protestant questions and interests shaped the American understanding of religions and the eventual construction of “world religions” such as Hinduism to suit American Protestant concerns.

This article illustrates the role of religion in the Indian Army of the Great War. It demonstrates the importance of religion in the martial race ideology that set forth British views on eligibility for military recruitment. It explains how an interpretation of the origins of the Mutiny underwrote preference for those peoples regarded as being less religious but made it necessary to enable soldiers to practise their faiths, even informing the conception of these races in British thinking. It also discusses what this meant in practice for Indian soldiers fighting on the Western Front and then for casualties taken to the Pavilion Hospital. It focuses upon the special arrangements made by the military authorities to satisfy the soldiers’ religious requirements as the British understood them, ranging from places of worship to diet, caste and funeral rites. Finally, it argues that martial race ideology, not excluding religious issues, continues to exercise an influence in contemporary Britain.

India is home to more than 800 million Hindus and has a massive higher education system that is overseen by the University Grants Commission (ugc). Despite this, there are hardly any departments of religion or Hinduism in India, but the ugc, even though it has a secular mission, funds universities with explicit religious affiliations. This article traces the reasons for these paradoxes and discusses the apparent lacuna of religious studies departments by looking at the genealogy of the study of religion in India. It initially looks at the contested terrain of nineteenth-century educational institutions. The work of British missionaries, Orientalists, and government officials form the imperial context to understand Charles Wood’s momentousDespatch(1854), which, on the one hand, argues for secular institutions but, on the other, tries to accommodate the work of the Orientalists and the missionaries. Wood recommends a system in which government subsidies, secular education, and universities with overt religious profiles become interlocked, but the formal study of religion is bypassed. Finally, I reconsider what the “dearth” of religious studies and the “absence” of Hinduism departments reveal about the construction of religion in India itself. The lack of conceptual correspondence between “religion” and “Hinduism” as taught in Western academic contexts does not preclude the formal study of religion in India. Instead, the study of religion is conducted within particularized frameworks germane to the Indic context, using a network of unique institutes. Reflection on these distinctively Indian epistemological frameworks push new ways of thinking about religious education and the construction of religion as an object of study in South Asia.

Scholars of religion frequently distinguish between the religions practiced by American Indians and non-Natives, raising a question about the role of religion in constructing and preserving notions of human difference. The present article locates key assumptions about the inherent distinction of Indigenous religions in early anthropological and linguistic research on American Indians. I demonstrate that as anthropologists studied Native cultures in the late nineteenth century, they drew on evolutionary theories of language in order to construct racialized cultural classifications. Analysis of language provided a framework and foundation for research on American Indian religions. I focus on the writings produced by the Bureau of American Ethnology (bae), led by the influential anthropologist John Wesley Powell, who directed the Bureau from 1879 to 1902. Drawing on philology, the science of language, bae researchers outlined a perceived essential difference between spiritual capacities of American Indians and non-Natives.

References to caste are common in religious texts from the classical period in South Asian history and even before. In the colonial era, caste was understood by the British as a defining characteristic of social life, and in independent India it has taken on new salience in the political mobilization especially of lower caste communities. Clearly, caste is an institution that must be reckoned with by students who seek to understand religion in India. This article will introduce some of the basics about caste, proceeding more or less in reverse chronological order from the more recent times backwards, with a section at the end on theories about caste.

English Abstract: This brief article reviews two main contributions by the French sociologist Louis Dumont, his essay “World Renunciation in Indian Religions” and his major work on the Indian caste system, Homo Hierarchicus. Some of the critique of Dumont’s ideas about renunciation, hierarchy and purity is discussed with special focus on three points: (1) The creative role of renunciation in the history of Hinduism; (2) the Indian caste system as a hierarchy regulated according to ritual purity and the alternative model by A. M. Hocart of the Indian society as a ritual organization; and (3) theoretical discussions regarding the need to go beyond the purity-impurity dichotomy and integrate another opposition, that between the auspicious and the inauspicious, in order to develop a more precise analytical tool in the research of Hindu culture. Dansk resume: Denne korte artikel diskuterer to vigtige bidrag af den franske sociolog Louis Dumont, hans essay “World Renunciation in Indian Religions” og hans hovedværk om det indiske kastesystem, Homo Hierarchicus. Noget af den kritik, der blev rejst mod Dumonts ideer om verdensforsagelse, hierarki og renhed, diskuteres med særlig fokus på tre punkter: (1) Verdensforsagelsens kreative betydning for hinduismens udvikling; (2) Dumonts model af det indiske kastesystem som et hierarki reguleret i forhold til rituel renhed og A. M. Hocarts alternative model, der ser hindusamfundet som en rituel organisation koncentrisk centreret omkring kongen; (3) de teoretiske diskussioner om nødvendigheden af at supplere rent-urent dikotomien med endnu en dikotomi, nemlig mellem det lykke- og ildevarslende, for at udvikle et mere præcist analyseapparat i udforskningen af hinduismen.

In this chapter, we examine a popular and current claim about religious ecstasy—that Eastern religions never valued religious experience and “exalted spiritual states.” We shall focus on India, analyzing the argument that religious experience was never valuable in their history until British colonialists came and imposed Western values on Indian religions. This chapter will briefly go over a history of religious ecstasy in Indian religions, showing that this generalization is false. The areas covered will be Vedic, Upanishadic, yogic, bhakti, tantric, and folk religions, examining their understandings of ecstatic states. The chapter also includes some responses of local informants to the idea that their valuing of religious ecstasy really came from Westerners.

The tussle between freedom of expression and religious intolerance is intensely manifested in Indian society where the State, through censoring of books, movies and other forms of critical expression, victimizes writers, film directors, and academics in order to appease Hindu religious-nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist groups. Against this background, this study explores some of the perceptions of Hindu and Muslim graduate students on the conflict between freedom of expression and religious intolerance in India. Conceptually, the author approaches the tussle between freedom of expression and religion by applying a contextual approach of secular-multiculturalism. This study applies qualitative research methods, specifically in-depth interviews, desk research, and narrative analysis. The findings of this study help demonstrate how to manage conflict between freedom of expression and religion in Indian society, while exploring concepts of Western secularism and the need to contextualize the right to freedom of expression.

This essay surveys the history of material culture in relation to the study of Buddhism and Hinduism. The essay opens by exploring the factors in Reformation and Enlightenment Europe that led to the marginalization of material culture in relation to religion, and how these attitudes towards the use of material objects in religion entered the academic study of religion as the discipline developed. Colonial attitudes towards Buddhist and Hindu material culture are also addressed as an example of how the western move towards a privileging of texts and doctrines over matter impacted the early study of Indian religions by western academics. The more recent shift towards including data from material sources is also demonstrated with a focus on two fields within religious studies: the history of religions and lived religions. In relation to the history of religions, the essay demonstrates that incorporating material sources both questions accepted scholarship based solely on texts and allows for a more complete historical context through which scholars can explore both texts and objects together. The discussion of lived religions and material culture emphasizes the movement towards understanding religion as embodied and that a study of how objects are produced, exchanged and understood gives us insight into everyday religious practice and the social relationships that are constructed through the use of ‘stuff’.