Bringing to light an important dharmic tradition that is highly relevant to the modern age, An Introduction to Jain Philosophy provides Western readers with the most accessible and enlightening overview of this spiritual philosophy yet. Although in practice for millennia and having been extremely influential in the development of Indian thought and culture, the Jain tradition has remained relatively underrepresented outside of India. An Introduction to Jain Philosophy is a significant attempt to address that. Drawing on an extraordinary collection of writings and discourses by the Jain monk Ācārya Sushil Kumar and on his own self-studies as a lifelong practitioner, author Parveen Jain distills the fundamental tenets of Jain philosophy for both academic and non-academic audiences. With relevance to today's political conflicts and our own search for meaning and purpose in our lives, An Introduction to Jain Philosophy holds the timeless teachings of what Jain thinkers have to say about the universal issues of the human condition -- and how we might understand and enhance our relationship with other living beings as a powerful and effective spiritual journey.

An Introduction to Jain Philosophy

Religion & Spirituality

Parveen Jain

Other Eastern Religions & Sacred Texts

DK Printworld

Since the publication in English of the Theory and Practice of Mandala by Giuseppe Tucci in 1961, our knowledge of the subject has increased considerably. Two-dimensional paintings (Tibetan: thanka, Skt.: paubha) have been displayed in many art exhibitions, reproduced photographically, and analysed in readable books as well as in articles in specialised journals. Three-dimensional mandalas like, for instance, the Barabadur in Java recently renovated by UNESCO, have been visited by many thousands of tourists as well as pilgrims. In America, Europe and Asia, monks have made and unmade numerous sand-mandalas openly, in public. Mandalas are, indeed, much less secret than they used to be. Yet, up to now, mandalas have largely been studied outside the context of their use: in museums, in exhibitions and in libraries. This volume highlights, perhaps for the first time, the techniques whereby mandala-schemes are projected in thought, belief and action, on to widely differing natural landscapes. Putting together the research findings of a group of Buddhist scholars from America, Austria, England, France, Germany and New Zealand, Professor Macdonald tries to underscore the linkages between mandalas and landscapes in varying eco-systems between Afghanistan and Japan with special focus on their geographical contexts and socio-cultural traditions. Each of the ten studies, included here, is supported by relevant illustrative material and extensive bibliographical references. Embodied in Mandala and Landscape are the research results from field-work carried out in China, Nepal, Pakistan, Japan and Tibet. It is, as such, invaluable to scholars of Buddhist Studies, specially the researchers involved with the mandalas in South Asia and elsewhere.

Mandala and Landscape

Arts & Photography

Alexander W. MacDonald

Other Media

It is an altogether fresh 'reprint' of the eminent Orientalist, Arthur Macdonell's A Sanskrit Grammar (1927 edition: Oxford). Which, ever since its first appearance, has been widely acclaimed: both in India and elsewhere in the world, as an authentic, at once relevant account of classical Sanskrit. Projecting, with well-chosen examples, a whole mass of grammatical forms to be met with in the post-Vedic Sanskrit literature, the author systematically explains the mechanics of its euphonic combinations (sandhi), declension, conjugation, nominal stem formation and compounds, and a lot else -- with complete insights into the syntactical arrangement of Sanskrit sentence. Supported by several information-packaged appendices, the book also carries a brilliant resume of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition going back to the 5th century BC. Now typeset anew with the latest technological aids, the late Macdonell's work today remains as much indispensable to the students of Sanskrit as to the scholars, who seek to discover for themselves the splendour of its literary classics.

Sanskrit Grammar for Students (English and Sanskrit Edition) (Spanish and English Edition) (English and Spanish Edition)

Reference

Arthur Anthony MacDonell

Words, Language & Grammar

In (perhaps) secret defiance of the rigid prescriptive codes of the Buddhist monastic order cropped up a new, esoteric cultic phenomenon. Which, later known as Buddhist tantra, not just compromised Shakyamuni s ethical legacy, but came to be administered by a whole host of mudras, mandalas, kriyas, caryas and mysteriously ritualistic elements, even hedonistic practices. Dr. Mishra s book attempts afresh to investigate when, why and how emerged this secrecy-ridden cult: now a spiritual tradition in its own right. The author, who has had long, personal interactions with some of the living tantriks, here enters the dark alleys of Buddhist tantra to look for its nucleus, its evolution, its culmination, and the causes of its disintegration. Focussing, further, on the shifting philosophical tenets of Buddhism: from Hinayana to Mahayana, Vajrayana, Kalacakrayana and, finally, Sahajayana, Dr. Mishra spells out quintessentially the world-view of Buddhist Tantra and its path to nirvana or sukhavati: the abode of bliss, together with a wide range of tàntric concepts that remain guhya (secret) to the uninitiated. Also showing how Buddhist art, almost from the beginning, has been compellingly influenced by tantric practices, the book exemplifies the manifestations of this influence in the iconographic representations of the Buddhist deities, illustrated manuscripts, thangkas, and even in the use of colours by the Buddhist artists.

Buddhist Tantra and Buddhist Art (Emerging Perceptions in Buddhist Studies)

T.N. Misra

Religious

Over the rolling centuries, Buddhism and Hinduism, two of the world s oldest sustained faiths, came to evolve a complex, yet precisely defining, iconic language: not just for figural representations, but for the architectural plans of their temples and monuments as well a language that allows interpretations of geometric proportions. Here is the first ever effort to brilliantly unravel the iconic idiom involved in the architectural plans of Buddhist and Hindu temples and monuments of India and the Indianized States of Southeast Asia. With his indepth surveys of diverse Buddhic and Hindic temples in India, Sri Lanka, Java (Indonesia), Kambuja, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, the author shows how the basic element in their architecture: the PLAN conceived within a cosmological framework was fraught with iconographic import and input, necessitating the guidance of authoritative compendia, like the Manasara and the Mayamata, the arcane knowledge of the sthapati (priest-architect), and many other complex procedures which all were steeped in symbolism. In analysing the architectural plans of these temples, Professor Bunce also highlights the various related iconographic considerations, like orientation, basic geometric forms, construction methods, rules and ratios, the non-congregational necessity, the high place as a consideration as well as the cave besides a number of viable influences which exert various amounts of control, e.g., textual, philosophic/theologic, numerological, astrological/astronomical, regionality and, most importantly, the mandala. Generously supported by visual material comprising as many as 400 figures and line-drawings, Professor Bunce s book is veritably a monumental, off-beat exercise of enormous interest to iconographers as well as the historians/specialists of South and Southeast Asian temple architecture.

Iconography of Architectural Plans: A Study of the Influence of Buddhism and Hinduism on Plans of South and Southeast Asia

Politics & Social Sciences

Fredrick W. Bunce

Social Sciences

These essays, originally presented at an international conference, are in the forefront of the modern response to an ancient work that has gained a new critical and social relevance in contemporary scholarship. Approaching the Ramayana from several angles in an attempt to understand its aesthetic and ideological meaning, they examine the epic through the perspectives of textual criticism, art, architecture and film. Thereby they address critical issues such as the seminal status of Valmiki, the underlying problem of canonicity itself, the importance of other so-called derivative Ramayanas, the implications of gender representation, and the cultural manipulation of social ideals relating to the position of women and the idealisation of love that achieves its highest value in marriage. Using the methods of rigorous textual and historical investigation, each essay seeks not only to uncover the layers of meaning in the complex structure of the epic in its varied forms but also to situate it critically in the cultures of South and Southeast Asia.

The Ramayana Culture: Text, Performance and Iconography

Mandakranta Bose

The book attempts to examine those occult sciences that deal with the birth- and name-related attributes of human beings, their bodily features and their style of writing for deeper insights into personality and fate -- topics like astrology, numerology, palmistry, physiognomy, phrenology, moleosophy and graphology. In a simple language and with easy-to-understand examples and illustrations, Dr Nandlal Vanvari reveals the way in which these sciences explain aspects of human character and mind by going beyond the environmental conditioning of man and his trait of reducing everything to automatic reflex. Keeping the modern scientific perspective in mind throughout, he delves into horoscopes and effects of the planets and constellations, the significance of numbers in numerology and their association with planets, the palm lines, significance of moles located in different parts of the body and so on. The work will be useful for those associated with the sciences of the mind as well as general readers interested in occult sciences.

Understanding Occult Sciences

Nandlal Vanvari

Worship & Devotion

Teyyam, the spectacular ritual dance widely performed in north Kerala, has its distinct forms of visual and verbal expression. However, what was once expressed through the distinctly indigenous forms of this religious "other" no longer remains the same, as the specificities of meaning and messages as encoded in the whole structure of its ritual performance were leveled out and superceded by the ideological laundering of caste Hinduism. Ritual as ideology looks into the specific cultural formation of teyyam-it re-frames and interprets various myths of the mother-goddesses and hero-deities by situating them in the historical conditions in which they originated. Based on a study of the myths at a micro-structural level, the book explores from a sociological perspective how the ritual functions as ideology, apart from its cultic or religious significance. The study also unfolds and explains the gender disparity between the archetypal Female Devourer and her Male Victims, the recurrent motifs in the myths related to various manifestations of the Terrible Mother in teyyam. The study thus acquires contemporary significance in the face of appropriation attributes the village pantheon of every "little tradition" to canonical Hinduism, a process that has been so rife in today's cultural politics.

Ritual as Ideology: Text and Context in Teyyam

Chandran

Hindustani Music: A tradition in transition is a wide-ranging survey of the North Indian tradition of classical music during the post-independence period. Explicitly, this book addresses music lovers of above-average familiarity with Hindustani music, and their curiosity about its inner workings. It is, however, also a valuable reference for scholars and other writers on music. The book is based on the author's long years of training as a musician, vast experience as an analyst of music, and an observer of the cultural environment. The book is divided into six parts. Part I articulates an Indian perspective on important societal, cultural, economic and technological drivers of Hindustani music. Part II discusses issues pertaining to presentation formats, and the structural and melodic aspects of Hindustani music. Part III deals with the notion of raga-ness, and the world of ragas. Part IV presents comprehensive backgrounders on the four major genres of vocal music Dhrupad, Khayal, Thumree, and Tappa. Part V features detailed fact-sheets on eight major melodic instruments of the Hindustani tradition Rudra Veena, Sitar, Surbahar, Sarod, Sarangi, Shehnai, Santoor, and the Indian classical (Hawaiian) guitar. Part VI presents a glossary of words in italics, a list of suggested readings, and an index. The book makes complex musicological concepts accessible to non-academic readers, and contributes significantly to widening the understanding of contemporary trends in Hindustani music. Written by an author of impeccable credentials as a musician, researcher, and author, this book is a very significant addition to the body of authoritative writing on 20th century Hindustani music.

Hindustani Music: A Tradition in Transition

Deepak Raja

Music

India has continuous and cumulative intellectual traditions in many domains of knowledge. This tradition has its beginning in the Rigveda, the first attested Indo-European document, and continues to be alive in the life, practices and learning of the Indian people. The power and pertinence of knowledge systems in this tradition are attested by the existence of innumerable texts and thinkers that continue to be the subject of study in major contemporary universities round the world. Not many today are aware of this rich heritage of thought. The Academy therefore produces rootless young minds that at best are ignorant and at worst have contempt for their own traditions of thought. The two volumes, comprising 34 articles by distinguished scholars, expound some major Indian knowledge systems viz. Logic, Philosophy of Language, Technology and Crafts, Polity and Governance, Ethics and Sociological texts, Architecture, Poetics and Aesthetics, Law and Justice, Mathematics and Astronomy, Agriculture, Trade and Commerce and Medicine and Life Science. Under its seven sections (i) Indian Knowledge Systems (Ex)Positions; (ii) Science; (iii) Medical Science in India; (iv) Psychology, Polity and Sociological Texts; (v) Aesthetics and Poetics; (vi) Philosophy, Logic and Language; and (vii) Knowledge Formation, Dissemination and Practice it makes available the first statements that articulate their validity for the contemporary Indian and Western reality.

Indian Knowledge Systems (2 Vol)

Kapil Kapoor

Awadhesh Kumar Singh

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