Download or read book Recht Staat und Verwaltung im klassischen Indien written by Elisabeth Müller-Luckner and published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg. This book was released on 1997 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trotz seiner Beschränkung auf Recht, Staat und Verwaltung spiegelt der Band etwas von der Vielfalt der gegenwärtigen Forschung zur älteren indischen Geschichte wider. Dem hinduistischen Indien fehlt ja die indigene Historiographie. Das Gerüst aus Fakten und Ideen hat man aus disparaten Quellen zusammenzusetzen - und für lange Perioden, für ganze Regionen fehlen auch die. Man ist auf beiläufige Erwähnungen, auf Rituale, Sprachgeschichte, Dialektgeographie angewiesen. Deutlich später setzt der breite Strom der mit grossem Prestige ausgestatteten Rechts- oder Moralliteratur ein, der - wiederum beiläufig - ein in seinen Grundzügen kohärentes Bild vom Königtum, von Recht und Staat vermittelt. Dessen Realität ist jedoch immer wieder in Zweifel gezogen worden - nicht zuletzt durch die Texte selbst. Obwohl sie sich normierend geben, reden sie gelegentlich der Pluralität, den Lokaltraditionen das Wort. Die seit dem Mittelalter reichlicher fließenden inschriftlichen Quellen zeigen dann auch regional unterschiedliche Systeme - kaum verwunderlich angesichts der Ausdehnung und kulturellen Vielfalt des Subkontinents. Dazu kommen Partikularrechte einzelner religiöser Gruppen, únd die Akkulturation durch den sich ausbreitenden Hinduismus in mannigfachen Mischformen. All das dokumentiert den mühseligen Prozeß der Auseinandersetzung zwischen "Lokalbrauch" und der Begrifflichkeit der Orthodoxie.
Download or read book King Governance and Law in Ancient India written by Kauṭalya and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India presents an English translation of Kautilya's Arthasastra (AS.) along with detailed endnotes. When it was discovered around 1905, the AS. was described as perhaps the most precious work in the whole range of Sanskrit literature, an assessment that still rings true. Patrick Olivelle's new translation of this significant text, the first in close to half a century, takes into account a number of important advances in our knowledge of the texts, inscriptions, and archeological and art historical remains from the period in Indian history to which the AS. belongs. The AS. is what we would today call a scientific treatise. It codifies a body of knowledge handed down in expert traditions and is specifically interested in two things: first, how a king can expand his territory, keep enemies at bay, enhance his external power, and amass riches; second, how a king can best organize his state bureaucracy to consolidate his internal power, to suppress internal enemies, to expand the economy, to enhance his treasury through taxes, duties, and entrepreneurial activities, to keep law and order, and to settle disputes among his subjects. The AS. stands alone: there is nothing like it before and there is nothing like it after.
Download or read book King Governance and Law in Ancient India written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India presents an English translation of Kautilya's Arthasastra (AS.) along with detailed endnotes. When it was discovered around 1905, the AS. was described as perhaps the most precious work in the whole range of Sanskrit literature, an assessment that still rings true. Patrick Olivelle's new translation of this significant text, the first in close to half a century, takes into account a number of important advances in our knowledge of the texts, inscriptions, and archeological and art historical remains from the period in Indian history to which the AS. belongs. The AS. is what we would today call a scientific treatise. It codifies a body of knowledge handed down in expert traditions and is specifically interested in two things: first, how a king can expand his territory, keep enemies at bay, enhance his external power, and amass riches; second, how a king can best organize his state bureaucracy to consolidate his internal power, to suppress internal enemies, to expand the economy, to enhance his treasury through taxes, duties, and entrepreneurial activities, to keep law and order, and to settle disputes among his subjects. The AS. stands alone: there is nothing like it before and there is nothing like it after.
Download or read book Hinduism and Law written by Timothy Lubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering the earliest Sanskrit rulebooks through to the codification of 'Hindu law' in modern times, this interdisciplinary volume examines the interactions between Hinduism and the law. The authors present the major transformations to India's legal system in both the colonial and post colonial periods and their relation to recent changes in Hinduism. Thematic studies show how law and Hinduism relate and interact in areas such as ritual, logic, politics, and literature, offering a broad coverage of South Asia's contributions to religion and law at the intersection of society, politics and culture. In doing so, the authors build on previous treatments of Hindu law as a purely text-based tradition, and in the process, provide a fascinating account of an often neglected social and political history.
Download or read book The Rigveda 3 Volume Set written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 1725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rigveda is the oldest Sanskrit text, consisting of over one thousand hymns dedicated to various divinities of the Vedic tradition. Orally composed and orally transmitted for several millennia, the hymns display remarkable poetic complexity and religious sophistication. As the culmination of the long tradition of Indo-Iranian oral-formulaic praise poetry and the first monument of specifically Indian religiosity and literature, the Rigveda is crucial to the understanding both of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian cultural prehistory and of later Indian religious history and high literature. This new translation represents the first complete scholarly translation into English in over a century and utilizes the results of the intense research of the last century on the language and the ritual system of the text. The focus of this translation is on the poetic techniques and structures utilized by the bards and on the ways that the poetry intersects with and dynamically expresses the ritual underpinnings of the text.
Download or read book Nonviolence in the Mahabharata written by Alf Hiltebeitel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 fields. Gleaning can be seen a metaphor for the Mahābhārata poets’ art: an art that could have included their manner of gleaning what they made the leftovers (what they found useful) from many preexistent texts into Vyāsa’s “entire thought”—including oral texts and possibly written ones, such as philosophical debates and stories. This book explores the notion of non-violence in the epic Mahābhārata. In examining gleaning as an ecological and spiritual philosophy nurtured as much by hospitality codes as by eating practices, the author analyses the merits and limitations of the 9th century Kashmiri aesthetician Anandavardhana that the dominant aesthetic sentiment or rasa of the Mahābhārata is shanta (peace). Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent reading of the Mahabharata via the Bhagavad Gita are also studied. This book by one of the leaders in Mahābhārata studies is of interest to scholars of South Asian Literary Studies, Religious Studies as well as Peace Studies, South Asian Anthropology and History.
Download or read book The Origins of the World s Mythologies written by E.J. Michael Witzel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this "Out of Africa" mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, Witzel suggests that these common myths--recounted by the communities of the "African Eve"--are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions. Witzel's book is an intellectual hand grenade that will doubtless generate considerable excitement--and consternation--in the scholarly community. Indeed, everyone interested in mythology will want to grapple with Witzel's extraordinary hypothesis about the spirituality of our common ancestors, and to understand what it tells us about our modern cultures and the way they are linked at the deepest level.
Download or read book Strong Arms and Drinking Strength written by Jarrod L. Whitaker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jarrod L. Whitaker examines the ritualized poetic construction of male identity in the Rgveda, India's oldest Sanskrit text, arguing that an important aspect of early Vedic life was the sustained promotion and embodiment of what it means to be a true man. The Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed primarily to three gods: the deified ritual Fire, Agni; the war god, Indra; and Soma, who is none other than the personification of the sacred beverage sóma. The hymns were sung in day-long fire rituals in which poet-priests prepared the sacred drink to empower Indra. The dominant image of Indra is that of a highly glamorized, violent, and powerful Aryan male; the three gods represent the ideals of manhood. Whitaker finds that the Rgvedic poet-priests employed a fascinating range of poetic and performative strategies--some explicit, others very subtle--to construct their masculine ideology, while justifying it as the most valid way for men to live. Poet-priests naturalized this ideology by encoding it within a man's sense of his body and physical self. Rgvedic ritual rhetoric and practices thus encode specific male roles, especially the role of man as warrior, while embedding these roles in a complex network of social, economic, and political relationships. Strong Arms and Drinking Strength is the first book in English to examine the relationship between Rgvedic gods, ritual practices, and the identities and expectations placed on men in ancient India.
Download or read book Dharma written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Motilal Banarsidass. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly book devoted to the study of the term dharma with in the broad scope of Indian cultural and religious history. Most generalizations about Indian culture and religion upon close scrutiny turn out to be inaccurate. An exception undoubtedly is the term dharma. This term and the notions underlying it clearly constitute the most central feature of Indian civilization down the centuries, irrespective of linguistic, sectarian, or regional differences. The nineteen papers included in this collection deal with many significant historical manifestations of the term dharma. These studies by some of the leading scholars in the respective fields will both present a more nuanced picture of the semantic history of dharma by putting contours onto the flat landscape we have inherited and spur further studies of this concept so central for understanding the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent.
Download or read book Argument and Design The Unity of the Mah bh rata written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argument and Design features fifteen essays by leading scholars of the Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, discussing the Mahābhārata’s upākhyānas, subtales that branch off from the central storyline and provide vantage points for reflecting on it. Contributors include: Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee, Greg Bailey, Adam Bowles, Simon Brodbeck, Nicolas Dejenne, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, Robert P. Goldman, Alf Hiltebeitel, Thennilapuram Mahadevan, Adheesh Sathaye, Bruce M. Sullivan, and Fernando Wulff Alonso.
Download or read book Martyrdom Self Sacrifice and Self Immolation written by Margo Kitts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition treated in this volume, from ascetic heroes who conquer their passions to save others by dying, to righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. At the same time, there are persistent disputes about the concepts used to justify these deaths, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. In this volume, renowned scholars bring their literary and historical expertise to bear on the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three examine contemporary movements with disputed classical roots, while eleven look at classical religious literatures which variously laud and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of death. Overall, the volume offers an important scholarly corrective to the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.
Download or read book Raja Yudhisthira written by Kevin McGrath and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Raja Yudhisthira, Kevin McGrath brings his comprehensive literary, ethnographic, and analytical knowledge of the epic Mahabharata to bear on the representation of kingship in the poem. He shows how the preliterate Great Bharata song depicts both archaic and classical models of kingly and premonetary polity and how the king becomes a ruler who is viewed as ritually divine. Based on his precise and empirical close reading of the text, McGrath then addresses the idea of heroic religion in both antiquity and today; for bronze-age heroes still receive great devotional worship in modern India and communities continue to clash at the sites that have been—for millennia—associated with these epic figures; in fact, the word hero is in fact more of a religious than a martial term. One of the most important contributions of Raja Yudhisthira, and a subtext in McGrath's analysis of Yudhisthira's kingship, is the revelation that neither of the contesting moieties of the royal Hastinapura clan triumphs in the end, for it is the Yadava band of Krsna who achieve real victory. That is, it is the matriline and not the patriline that secures ultimate success: it is the kinship group of Krsna—the heroic figure who was to become the dominant Vaisnava icon of classical India—who benefits most from the terrible Bharata war.
Download or read book The Oxford History of Hinduism Hindu Law written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-08 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through pointed studies of important aspects and topics of dharma in Dharmaśāstra, this comprehensive collection shows that the history of Hinduism cannot be written without the history of Hindu law. Part One provides a concise overview of the literary genres in which Dharmasastra was written with attention to chronology and historical developments. This study divides the tradition into its two major historical periods--the origins and formation of the classical texts and the later genres of commentary and digest--in order to provide a thorough, but manageable overview of the textual bases of the tradition. Part Two presents descriptive and historical studies of all the major substantive topics of Dharmasastra. Each chapter offers readers with salest knowledge of the debates, transformations, and fluctcating importance of each topic. Indirectly, readers will also gain insight into the ethos or worldview of religious law in Hinduism, enabling them to get a feel for how dharma authors thought and why. Part Three contains brief studies of the impact and reception of Dharmasastra in other South Asian cultural and textual traditions. Finally, Part Four draws inspiration from "critical terms" in contemporary legal and religious studies to analyze Dharmasastra texts. Contributors offer interpretive views of Dharmasastra that start from hermeneutic and social concerns today.
Download or read book Collected Essays 2 written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Firenze University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Early Upanishads written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-24 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the full edition of the early Upanisads, the central scriptures of Hinduism. Featuring Patrick Olivelle's acclaimed new English translation (Oxford, 1996), it also includes the complete Sanskrit text, as well as variant readings, scholarly emendations, and explanations of Olivelle's choices of particular readings. The volume also contains a concordance of the two recensions of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, and an extensive bibliography.
Download or read book Of Gods and Books written by Florinda De Simini and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: India has been the homeland of diverse manuscript traditions that do not cease to impress scholars for their imposing size and complexity. Nevertheless, many topics concerning the study of Indian manuscript cultures still remain to receive systematic examination. Of Gods and Books pays attention to one of these topics - the use of manuscripts as ritualistic tools. Literary sources deal quite extensively with rituals principally focused on manuscripts, whose worship, donation and preservation are duly prescribed. Around these activities, a specific category of ritual gift is created, which finds attestations in pre-tantric, as well as in smārta and tantric, literature, and whose practice is also variously reflected in epigraphical documents. De Simini offers a first systematic study of the textual evidence on the topic of the worship and donation of knowledge. She gives account of possible implications for the relationships between religion and power. The book is indsipensible for a deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of manuscript transmission in medieval India, and beyond.
Download or read book Ascetics and Brahmins written by Patrick Olivelle and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together papers on Indian ascetical institutions and ideologies published by Patrick Olivelle over a span of about thirty years. Asceticism represents a major strand in the religious and cultural history of India, providing some of the most creative elements within Indian religions and philosophies. Most of the major religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, and religious philosophies both within these new religions and in the Brahmanical tradition, were created by world-renouncing ascetics. Yet ascetical institutions and ideologies developed in a creative tension with other religious institutions that stressed the centrality of family, procreation and society. It is this tension that has articulated many of the central features of Indian religion and culture. The papers collected in this volume seek to locate Indian ascetical traditions within their historical, political and ideological contexts.
