This series, in association with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, intends primarily the publication of constructive Hindu theological, philosophical and ethical projects aimed at bringing Hindu traditions into dialogue with contemporary trends in scholarship and contemporary society. The series invites original, high quality, research level work on religion, culture and society of Hindus living in India and abroad. Proposals for annotated translations of important primary sources and studies in the history of the Hindu religious traditions will also be considered.
By Joseph T. O'Connell, Rembert Lutjeharms
November 05, 2018
Within the broad Hindu religious tradition, there have been for millennia many subtraditions generically called Vaiṣṇava, who insist that the most appropriate mode of religious faith and experience is bhakti, or devotion, to the supreme personal deity, Viṣṇu. Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas are a community...
By Brainerd Prince
August 14, 2018
Sri Aurobindo was an Indian nationalist, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet. This book is an enquiry into the integral philosophy of Aurobindo and its contemporary relevance. It offers a reading of Aurobindo’s key texts by bringing them into conversation with religious studies and the hermeneutical ...
By Alf Hiltebeitel
July 27, 2018
In Indian mythological texts like the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, there are recurrent tales about gleaners. The practice of "gleaning" in India had more to do with the house-less forest life than with residential village or urban life or with gathering residual post-harvest grains from cultivated ...
By Raj Balkaran
July 19, 2018
The Sanskrit narrative text Devī Māhātmya, “The Greatness of The Goddess,” extols the triumphs of an all-powerful Goddess, Durgā, over universe-imperiling demons. These exploits are embedded in an intriguing frame narrative: a deposed king solicits the counsel of a forest-dwelling ascetic, who ...
By Ankur Barua
June 28, 2018
Hindu and Christian debates over the meanings, motivations, and modalities of ‘conversion’ provide the central connecting theme running through this book. It focuses on the reasons offered by both sides to defend or oppose the possibility of these cross-border movements, and shows how these reasons...
By Daniela Bevilacqua
January 31, 2018
Modern Hindu Traditionalism addresses Hindu traditions that resisted contact with both Neo-Hindu thought and views of “classical” Hinduism perceived to be outmoded. This book provides an in-depth understanding of Modern Hindu Traditionalism through the case study of the Rāmānandī order (sampradāya)...
By Barbara A. Holdrege
January 22, 2018
The historical shift from Vedic traditions to post-Vedic bhakti (devotional) traditions is accompanied by a shift from abstract, translocal notions of divinity to particularized, localized notions of divinity and a corresponding shift from aniconic to iconic traditions and from temporary ...
By Sucharita Adluri
January 22, 2018
Theistic Vedānta originated with Rāmānuja (1077-1157), who was one of the foremost theologians of Viśistādvaita Vedānta and also an initiate of the Śrīvaisnava sectarian tradition in South India. As devotees of the God Visnu and his consort Śrī, the Śrīvaisnavas established themselves through ...
By Prabhavati C. Reddy
October 26, 2017
In recent years, changes in religious studies in general and the study of Hinduism in particular have drawn more scholarly attention to other forms of the Hindu faith that are concretely embodied in temples, icons, artworks, rituals, and pilgrimage practices. This book analyses the phenomenon of ...
By Makarand R. Paranjape
October 26, 2017
Who is responsible for the Mahatma’s death? Just one single, but determined, fanatic, the whole ideology of Hindu nationalism, the ruling Congress-led government whichfailed to protect him, or a vast majority of Indians and their descendants who considered Gandhi irrelevant? Such questions ...
By Christopher Framarin
October 13, 2017
This book argues that the standard arguments for and against the claim that certain Hindu texts and traditions attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants are unconvincing. It presents careful, extensive, and original interpretations of passages from the Manusmrti (law), the Mahābhārata (...
By Mandakranta Bose, Sarika Bose
October 12, 2017
The Rāmāyana, an ancient epic of India, with audiences across vast stretches of time and geography, continues to influence numberless readers socially and morally through its many re-tellings. Made available in English for the first time, the 16th century version presented here is by Candrāvatī, a ...