Download or read book The Functions and Significance of Gold in the Veda written by Jan Gonda and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the significance attached to gold by the authors of the Veda; the use made of it in rites and ceremonies (symbolical actions transferring its inherent power, purification, magic etc.); its importance as an element of theological and speculative thought, e.g. the figure of Hiraṇyagarbha in the Veda and the Vedānta.
Download or read book The Functions and Significance of Gold in the Veda written by Jan Gonda and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Vedic Alchemist written by James Kalomiris and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2021-01-20 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about alchemy, Vedic alchemy. It is an investigation of physical matter, but not an ordinary investigation. With the help of the Vedic scriptures and classical alchemical texts, this book explains how physical matter was created, how it evolved from small atoms, and how it coalesced into the physical objects we see every day. After creating physical matter, the Vedic alchemist takes the reader down a path of personal liberation through the transmutation of base metals to the Philosopher Stone, always with an eye to the Vedas.
Download or read book Plants of Life Plants of Death written by Frederick J. Simoons and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines plants associated with ritual purity, fertility, prosperity and life, and plants associated with ritual impurity, sickness, ill fate and death. It provides detail from history, ethnography, religious studies, classics, folklore, ethnobotany and medicine.
Download or read book Soul and Self in Vedic India written by Per-Johan Norelius and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 647 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the Vedic Indians think of life, consciousness, and personhood? How did they envisage man’s fate after death? Did some part of the person survive the death of the body and depart for the beyond? Is it possible to speak of a “soul” or “souls” in the context of Vedic tradition? This book sets out to answer these questions in a systematic manner, subjecting the relevant Vedic beliefs to a detailed chronological investigation. Special attention is given to the ways in which the early Indians’ answers to the above problems changed over time, with an early pluralism of soul-like concepts later giving way to the unified “self” of the Upaniṣads.
Download or read book Vedic Cosmology and Ethics written by Henk W. Bodewitz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did ‘Vedic man’ think about the destiny of man after death and related ethical issues? That heaven was the abode of the gods was undisputed, but was it also accessible to man in his pursuit of immortality? Was there a realm of the deceased or a hell? What terms were used to indicate these ‘yonder worlds’? What is their location in the cosmos and which cosmographic classifications are at the root of these concepts? The articles by Henk Bodewitz collected in this volume, published over a period of 45 years, between 1969 and 2013, deal with these issues on the basis of a systematic philological study of early Vedic texts, from the Ṛgveda to various Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇykas and Upaniṣads.
Download or read book Nectar and Ambrosia written by Tamra Andrews and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-10-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A publishing first, Nectar and Ambrosia presents an encyclopedic treatment of the magic properties and uses of food by mortals and immortals alike, from the pages of myth and legend. Now, for the first time, the magic properties and uses of food by both mortals and immortals as represented in the world's myths and legends are brought together and explained in Nectar and Ambrosia. This A–Z volume is filled with an abundance of exotic lore and legend.
Download or read book Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire written by Thomas T. Allsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-07-13 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the thirteenth century the Mongols created a vast, transcontinental empire that intensified commercial and cultural contact throughout Eurasia. From the outset of their expansion, the Mongols identified and mobilized artisans of diverse backgrounds, frequently transporting them from one cultural zone to another. Prominent among those transported were Muslim textile workers, resettled in China, where they made clothes for the imperial court. In a meticulous and fascinating account, the author investigates the significance of cloth and colour in the political and cultural life of the Mongols. Situated within the broader context of the history of the Silk Road, the primary line in East-West cultural communication during the pre-Muslim era, the study promises to be of interest not only to historians of the Middle East and Asia, but also to art historians and textile specialists.
Download or read book The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and India written by Richard Seaford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains for the first time the genesis and early form of both Indian and Greek philosophy, and their striking similarities.
Download or read book The Nature of Shamanism written by Michael Ripinsky-Naxon and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1993-05-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ripinsky-Naxon explores the core and essence of shamanism by looking at its ritual, mythology, symbolism, and the dynamics of its cultural process. In dealing with the basic elements of shamanism, the author discusses the shamanistic experience and enlightenment, the inner personal crisis, and the many aspects entailed in the role of the shaman.
Download or read book Dowry and Daughters written by Anwesha Arya-Bhattacharya and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-10 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the relevance of dowry as a customary practice in Indian marriages. It examines the historical articulation between traditional cultural texts and modern statutory law to understand how daughters are valued and how dowry as a custom defines this value. The author creates a conceptual link between modern, medieval and ancient marriage rites that formulate and embed dowry behaviour and practice within Indian society. This book also provides a critique of the cultural textual tradition of India and South Asia. It asserts for the first time that Vedic materialism is at the core of an adequate understanding of how dowry as wealth comes to occupy such a central position in the field of marriage. An important study into the custom and tradition of South Asia, this book will be indispensable for students and researchers of cultural studies, women’s studies, gender studies, religion, history, law and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Buddhist Teaching in India written by Johannes Bronkhorst and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-22 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest records we have today of what the Buddha said were written down several centuries after his death, and the body of teachings attributed to him continued to evolve in India for centuries afterward across a shifting cultural and political landscape. As one tradition within a diverse religious milieu that included even the Greek kingdoms of northwestern India, Buddhism had many opportunities to both influence and be influenced by competing schools of thought. Even within Buddhism, a proliferation of interpretive traditions produced a dynamic intellectual climate. Johannes Bronkhorst here tracks the development of Buddhist teachings both within the larger Indian context and among Buddhism's many schools, shedding light on the sources and trajectory of such ideas as dharma theory, emptiness, the bodhisattva ideal, buddha nature, formal logic, and idealism. In these pages, we discover the roots of the doctrinal debates that have animated the Buddhist tradition up until the present day.
Download or read book How the Brahmins Won written by Johannes Bronkhorst and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study to systematically confront the question how Brahmanism, which was geographically limited and under threat during the final centuries BCE, transformed itself and spread all over South and Southeast Asia.
Download or read book Vedic Symbolism written by Sri Aurobindo and published by Lotus Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The value of the Rig Veda as a guidebook to spiritual practice has been obscured due to the heavy veil of symbols used by the Rishis to hide their meaning from the uninitiated. "Vedic Symbolism" introduces the major vedic concepts and reveals their esoteric sense.
Download or read book The Steppe and the Sea written by Thomas T. Allsen and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1221, in what we now call Turkmenistan, a captive held by Mongol soldiers confessed that she had swallowed her pearls in order to safeguard them. She was immediately executed and eviscerated. On finding several pearls, Chinggis Qan (Genghis Khan) ordered that they cut open every slain person on the battlefield. Pearls, valued for aesthetic, economic, religious, and political reasons, were the ultimate luxury good of the Middle Ages, and the Chingissid imperium, the largest contiguous land empire in history, was their unmatched collector, promoter, and conveyor. Thomas T. Allsen examines the importance of pearls, as luxury good and political investment, in the Mongolian empire—from its origin in 1206, through its unprecedented expansion, to its division and decline in 1370—in order to track the varied cultural and commercial interactions between the northern steppes and the southern seas. Focusing first on the acquisition, display, redistribution, and political significance of pearls, Allsen shows how the very act of forming such a vast nomadic empire required the massive accumulation, management, and movement of prestige goods, and how this process brought into being new regimes of consumption on a continental scale. He argues that overland and seaborne trade flourished simultaneously, forming a dynamic exchange system that moved commodities from east to west and north to south, including an enormous quantity of pearls. Tracking the circulation of pearls across time, he highlights the importance of different modes of exchange—booty-taking, tributary relations, market mechanisms, and reciprocal gift-giving. He also sheds light on the ways in which Mongols' marketing strategies made use of not only myth and folklore but also maritime communications networks created by Indian-Buddhist and Muslim merchants skilled in cross-cultural commerce. In Allsen's analysis, pearls illuminate Mongolian exceptionalism in steppe history, the interconnections between overland and seaborne trade, recurrent patterns in the employment of luxury goods in the political cultures of empires, and the consequences of such goods for local and regional economies.
Download or read book Acta Orientalia written by and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book God and Gold in Late Antiquity written by Dominic Janes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-19 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, vast sums of money were spent on the building and sumptuous decoration of churches. The resulting works of art contain many of the greatest monuments of late antique and early medieval society. But how did such expenditure fit with Christ's message of poverty and simplicity? In attempting to answer that question, this 1998 study employs theories on the use of metaphor to show how physical beauty could stand for spiritual excellence. As well as explaining the evolving attitudes to sanctity, decorum and display in Roman and medieval society, detailed analysis is made of case studies of Latin biblical exegesis and gold-ground mosaics so as to counterpoint the contemporary use of gold as a Christian image in art and text.
