Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a "traditional" or "medieval" India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers--"Orientalists"--and has also argued that a history of "early medieval" India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in India and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.

Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia

History

Jonathan S. Walters

Daud, Ali

Ronald B. Inden

Asia

Oxford University Press

Explores how community is defined and how it functions among Theravada Buddhists in South and Southeast Asia. Constituting Communities explores how community functions within Theravada Buddhist culture. Although the dominant focus of Buddhist studies for the past century has been on doctrinal and philosophical issues, this volume concentrates on discourses that produced them, and why and how these discourses and practices shaped Theravada communities in South and Southeast Asia. From a variety of perspectives, including historical, literary, doctrinal and philosophical, and social and anthropological, the contributors explore the issues that have proven important and definitive for identifying what it has meant, individually and socially, to be Buddhist in this particular region. The book focuses on textual discourse, how communities are formed and maintained within pluralistic contexts, and the formation of community both within and between the monastic and lay settings.

Constituting Communities: Theravada Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia (Suny Series in Buddhist Studies)

Religion & Spirituality

John Clifford Holt

Jacob N. Kinnard

Buddhism

State Univ of New York Pr

State University of New York Press

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Books by Jonathan S. Walters