Download or read book A History of Hinduism written by R. Ramachandran (retd) and published by SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IS THE HISTORY OF HINDUISM, THE HISTORY OF BRAHMANAS FROM RIGVEDIC TIMES TO THE PRESENT? Or, does the story of Hinduism begin with the descriptions of the ancient roots as revealed by archaeological findings and the evidence from present day tribal, village and regional cultures? This book looks at both. The history of Brahmanas, tracing their lineage to the fifty-odd Rigvedic poets, is dealt with through the chronological ordering of the Sanskrit texts which were first handed down to us as oral narratives from Gurus to shishyas. The circumstances and purposes for which these texts were written is examined, along with events of a true historical nature. This is followed by a sequential treatment of Hinduism as a ‘Rigvedic religion’, the two Mimamsas, Buddhism, Jainism, Dharmasastras, the Epics and the Puranas. The growth of Hindu temples, the role of Adi Sankaracharya and the Bhakti movement is delved into, and the influences of Muslim and British rule of the subcontinent on Hinduism is analysed. The author explores one major reason for the survival of Hinduism—the support of prehistoric tribal and village cultures which were not modified or destroyed by the later-day Brahmanas. Much of tribal and village deities and practices were co-opted into concurrent Hinduism, so-much-so that today these cannot be separated from mainstream Hindu practices and traditions. They exist in all their colourful glory to this date and make Hinduism vibrant. It is these ancient folk religions that provide a stable foundation for the survival of Hinduism, argues author R Ramachandran, presenting in this book an all-encompassing landscape view of Hinduism as it has been for the last five thousand years. Finally, the present status of Hinduism is discussed along with its survival in the future.
Download or read book The Oxford History of Hinduism written by Gavin Flood and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative collection on the history of Hindu religious practices. Hindu Practice considers traditions of asceticism, yoga, and devotion, including dance and music, developed in Hinduism over long periods of time.
Download or read book The Hindu History written by Akshoy Kumar Mazumdar and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History of Hindu India written by Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and published by . This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book for kids, teenagers, parents and teachers, the history of today's Hindus, one-sixth of our human race, extends back beyond recorded history. In this book, we pick up the threads of Hindu practice evident in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, which was the largest and in many ways the most advanced of the ancient civilizations. From there we trace the development of Hinduism through the early empires of India, a time of great advances in science, architecture, art and literature—during which Europe was experiencing the Middle Ages. Then came the years of trial by invasion, followed by colonization and finally, in the 20th century, independence from the British Crown. Throughout these periods of history, we highlight the people, philosophical ideas and religious practices that are key to the Hindu religion today. While the text is written for sixth grade social studies classes in US schools, it is also suitable for high school classes. It has even been used in college course work, due to its refreshingly accurate, terse but comprehensive presentation of the world's most ancient faith.Review: from amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference book for travel to India..., October 23, 2011 By MilsP - See all my reviews This review is from: The History of Hindu India (Hardcover) I picked up this book (History of Hindu India) on a whim. I really enjoyed the photographs throughout the book; I would read further and further just to find out what the picture was depicting. The book is true to its title, the authors give us a much better understanding of the Hindu religion from its origins to present day and how the multitude of invaders left their mark on the religion. An aspect of this book that I found surprising and wonderful was the way the authors linked the history of the religious teachings with modern day "heroes" if you will, such has Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Overall I really enjoyed the book and I felt that it is a great reference book and would be very useful to anyone who may be considering a trip to India as well.
Download or read book An Illustrated History of Hinduism written by Rasamandala Das and published by Southwater. This book was released on 2014-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise authoritative history of Hinduism, from its origins over 4000 years ago to the impact of its belief system across the world today.
Download or read book Unifying Hinduism written by Andrew J. Nicholson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.
Download or read book What is Hinduism written by Mahatma Gandhi and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of Gandhiji s articles drawn mainly from his contributions to young india, the Harijan and the Navjivan on Hinduism. Written on different occassions, these articles present a picture of hindu dharma I all its richness, comprehensiveness and sensitivity to the existential delimmas of human existence.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Hinduism written by Jeffery D. Long and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Historical Dictionary of Hinduism relates the history of Hinduism through a chronology, an introductory essay, photos, an extensive bibliography, and over 1,000 cross referenced dictionary entries on Hindu terminology, names of major historical figures and movements, gods and goddesses, prominent temples, terms for items used in Hindu practice, major texts, philosophical concepts, and more. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Hinduism.
Download or read book The Emergence of Modern Hinduism written by Richard S. Weiss and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization. Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasize the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, the author considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Weiss narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions, making this text essential for scholarly audiences of South Asian history, religious studies, Hindu studies, and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Ancient Hindu Science written by Alok Kumar and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To understand modern science as a coherent story, it is essential to recognize the accomplishments of the ancient Hindus. They invented our base-ten number system and zero that are now used globally, carefully mapped the sky and assigned motion to the Earth in their astronomy, developed a sophisticated system of medicine with its mind-body approach known as Ayurveda, mastered metallurgical methods of extraction and purification of metals, including the so-called Damascus blade and the Iron Pillar of New Delhi, and developed the science of self-improvement that is popularly known as yoga. Their scientific contributions made impact on noted scholars globally: Aristotle, Megasthenes, and Apollonius of Tyana among the Greeks; Al-Biruni, Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Labban, and Al-Uqlidisi, Al-Ja?iz among the Islamic scholars; Fa-Hien, Hiuen Tsang, and I-tsing among the Chinese; and Leonardo Fibbonacci, Pope Sylvester II, Roger Bacon, Voltaire and Copernicus from Europe. In the modern era, thinkers and scientists as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Carl Jung, Max Müller, Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Schrödinger, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Henry David Thoreau have acknowledged their debt to ancient Hindu achievements in science, technology, and philosophy. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the largest scientific organizations in the world, in 2000, published a timeline of 100 most important scientific finding in history to celebrate the new millennium. There were only two mentions from the non-Western world: (1) invention of zero and (2) the Hindu and Mayan skywatchers astronomical observations for agricultural and religious purposes. Both findings involved the works of the ancient Hindus. The Ancient Hindu Science is well documented with remarkable objectivity, proper citations, and a substantial bibliography. It highlights the achievements of this remarkable civilization through painstaking research of historical and scientific sources. The style of writing is lucid and elegant, making the book easy to read. This book is the perfect text for all students and others interested in the developments of science throughout history and among the ancient Hindus, in particular.
Download or read book The Hindus written by Wendy Doniger and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, The Hindus elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds. The Hindus brings a fascinating multiplicity of actors and stories to the stage to show how brilliant and creative thinkers have kept Hinduism alive in ways that other scholars have not fully explored. In this unique and authoritative account, debates about Hindu traditions become platforms to consider history as a whole.
Download or read book A Prehistory of Hinduism written by Manu V. Devadevan and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a pioneering attempt to understand the prehistory of Hinduism in South Asia. Exploring religious processes in the Deccan region between the eleventh and the nineteenth century with class relations as its point of focus, it throws new light on the making of religious communities, monastic institutions, legends, lineages, and the ethics that governed them. In the light of this prehistory, a compelling framework is suggested for a revision of existing perspectives on the making of Hinduism in the nineteenth and the twentieth century.
Download or read book Hinduism and Its Sense of History written by Arvind Sharma and published by New Delhi : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is virtually an axiom in the study of Hindu religion and culture that the Hindus lived in a mythic universe and lacked a sense of history. This text examines this proposition in detail.
Download or read book Hindu Law written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The foundation of Hindu law is the voluminous textual tradition called Dharmaśāstra, the expert tradition on dharma. This book seeks to delineate the historical development of Dharmaśāstra, even though the tradition presented dharma as timeless and ahistorical. The volume establishes the importance of law for the history and study of Hinduism by providing interpretive descriptions of all the major topics of Hindu dharma according to this tradition. First, two broad introductions to the historical development of the textual sources of Hindu law suggest new ways to understand both the original texts (smṛti) and the later commentaries and digests. Next, groundbreaking research into the origin of the householder (gṛhastha), who is at the center of the Dharmaśāstric enterprise, provides new insights into both the origin of this genre and many of its topics, such as the āśrama system and married household life. The book devotes its central chapters to each of the major topics of Dharmaśāstra: epistemology of dharma, caste and social class, orders of life, rites of passage, Vedic student and graduate, marriage, children, inheritance, women, daily duties, food, gifting, funeral and ancestral offerings, impurity and purification, ascetic modes of life, dharma during emergencies, king, punishment, legal procedure, titles of law, penances, vows, pilgrimage, images, and temples. The final chapters then explore both the reception of Dharmaśāstra in other religious traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, and the relevance of Dharmaśāstra to studies of critical concepts in religious studies—the body, emotions, material culture, subjectivity, animal studies, and vernacular culture."--
Download or read book The Roots of Hinduism written by Asko Parpola and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hinduism has two major roots. The more familiar is the religion brought to South Asia in the second millennium BCE by speakers of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Another, more enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, which left behind exquisitely carved seals and thousands of short inscriptions in a long-forgotten pictographic script. Discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s, the Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, in more than 1000 settlements, several of which were cities of some 50,000 inhabitants. With an area of nearly a million square kilometers, the Indus civilization was more extensive than the contemporaneous urban cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Yet, after almost a century of excavation and research the Indus civilization remains little understood. How might we decipher the Indus inscriptions? What language did the Indus people speak? What deities did they worship? Asko Parpola has spent fifty years researching the roots of Hinduism to answer these fundamental questions, which have been debated with increasing animosity since the rise of Hindu nationalist politics in the 1980s. In this pioneering book, he traces the archaeological route of the Indo-Iranian languages from the Aryan homeland north of the Black Sea to Central, West, and South Asia. His new ideas on the formation of the Vedic literature and rites and the great Hindu epics hinge on the profound impact that the invention of the horse-drawn chariot had on Indo-Aryan religion. Parpola's comprehensive assessment of the Indus language and religion is based on all available textual, linguistic and archaeological evidence, including West Asian sources and the Indus script. The results affirm cultural and religious continuity to the present day and, among many other things, shed new light on the prehistory of the key Hindu goddess Durga and her Tantric cult.
Download or read book Hinduism Before Reform written by Brian A. Hatcher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold retelling of the origins of contemporary Hinduism, and an argument against the long-established notion of religious reform. By the early eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire was in decline, and the East India Company was making inroads into the subcontinent. A century later Christian missionaries, Hindu teachers, Muslim saints, and Sikh rebels formed the colorful religious fabric of colonial India. Focusing on two early nineteenth-century Hindu communities, the Brahmo Samaj and the Swaminarayan Sampraday, and their charismatic figureheads—the “cosmopolitan” Rammohun Roy and the “parochial” Swami Narayan—Brian Hatcher explores how urban and rural people thought about faith, ritual, and gods. Along the way he sketches a radical new view of the origins of contemporary Hinduism and overturns the idea of religious reform. Hinduism Before Reform challenges the rigid structure of revelation-schism-reform-sect prevalent in much history of religion. Reform, in particular, plays an important role in how we think about influential Hindu movements and religious history at large. Through the lens of reform, one doctrine is inevitably backward-looking while another represents modernity. From this comparison flows a host of simplistic conclusions. Instead of presuming a clear dichotomy between backward and modern, Hatcher is interested in how religious authority is acquired and projected. Hinduism Before Reform asks how religious history would look if we eschewed the obfuscating binary of progress and tradition. There is another way to conceptualize the origins and significance of these two Hindu movements, one that does not trap them within the teleology of a predetermined modernity.
Download or read book Hinduism Ritual Reason and Beyond written by Ashok Mishra and published by StoryMirror Infotech Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2019-08-03 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is journey through 5000 years of evolution of Hinduism, and is outcome of seven years of study to understand the roots of Hinduism. Tracing the genesis of Hinduism to pre-Indus Valley period, the book explains Hindu, Hinduism and Sanatana Dharma, before it takes one through Hinduism’s oldest scriptures - the four Vedas, the four components of each Veda, and what they contain. How all original translations of Vedic texts were done by Western Sanskrit scholars, and why their works have left scope for doubt about the fidelity of translations. The yajnas (yagya) like Ashvamedha, Rajsooya, Vajpeya, etc., about which we only hear on TV serials and talk shows, have been demystified. The reader will be taken aback reading the sheer size and scale of Soma yajna, described step by step, in great detail. Hinduism’s journey to the Age of Reason, the Upanishads, its encounter with Buddhism, and its transformation into idol worshipping society with many gods and a multitude of stories about its millions of gods is lucidly explained. Puranas, what they contain and what was the reason they were created, has been described and explained next. Hinduism's journey to its modern form - idol worship, the modern puja, detailed description of puja and Sanskaras like Vivaha, their detailed description, the meaning of each action and how they are conducted, the gift to the priest, types of idols, their consecration, all are explained to help a reader understand the why and the how of what we do as a Hindu. The book concludes with a discussion of - Do mantras have power? & Do rituals have meaning?
