This book is a “thick” description and interpretation of the ethnography of the Mru and Khumi, who live in the Chittagong/Arakan Hills straddling Bangladesh, India, and Burma. They are Tibeto-Burmese speaking horticulturalists practicing swidden agriculture. The work is the outcome of several periods of fieldwork dating back to 1955–1957, 1964, and 1990. Lorenz G. Löffler describes in great detail the material and spiritual culture of these populations: from dwellings and implements to life cycle and social structure, from folklore to religious rituals. All the important local terms are given in Mru and English. The book includes a number of Mru texts along with their translations. It is illustrated by nearly a hundred color photographs and some thirty drawings and designs.

Ethnographic Notes on the Mru and Khumi of the Chittagong and Arakan Hill Tracts: A Contribution to our Knowledge of South and Southeast Asian ... Hill Tracts (Harvard Oriental Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Löffler, Lorenz G.

Social Sciences

Harvard University Department of South Asian Studies

For anyone interested in an epoch of almost unrivaled intellectual activity and debate in India, the sixth-century Madhyamakahrdayakārikā along with its auto-commentary, the Tarkajvālā, is an indispensable resource. This partly doxographical treatise, composed by the Madhyamaka philosopher Bhāviveka, is the earliest and most substantial work to present and critically examine Śrāvaka, Yogācāra, Sāmkhya, Vaiśesika, Vedānta, and Mīmāmsā in great detail. Bhāviveka’s text is of unique value in its attempt to identify a Madhyamaka approach to other schools of philosophy as well as in furnishing us with valuable information regarding early Indic systematic philosophy, including what appear to be extracts from original sources that are otherwise unavailable. Most probably it served as a Madhyamaka debate manual for those engaged in discussion with representatives of opposing philosophical schools. Bhāviveka’s treatment of Sāmkhya and Vedānta is of particular importance because of the scarcity of sources pertaining to the early formation and development of these systems of philosophy. The present book includes a critical edition and English translation of the Sāmkhya and Vedānta chapters of the Madhyamakahrdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā along with a historical introduction.

Bhāviveka on Sāmkhya and Vedānta: The Sāmkhya and Vedānta Chapters of the Madhyamakahrdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā (Harvard Oriental Series)

History

Asia

The Todas are the oldest inhabitants of the Nilgiri Hills of South India. With their quaint barrel-vaulted architecture, embroidered cloaks, and long-horned buffaloes, they have fascinated the world ever since civilization stepped into the Nilgiris two centuries ago. Their culture revolves around these herds, with each of the six grades of dairy-temple having its corresponding herd of sacred buffaloes. A Toda prayer consists of chant words addressed to sacred natural landmarks such as nearby peaks, slopes, thickets, trees, rocks, meadows, pools, and streams. The Todas represent a rare example of an indigenous culture that has remained generally vegetarian. The Prologue highlights the journey that led to Tarun Chhabra’s being accepted as an “insider.” The thirteen chapters provide detailed ethnographic descriptions of sacred dairy-temple institutions; the Toda relationship with honey; the intricacies of their attire and embroidery motifs; details related to seasonal migrations; settlement patterns; sacred geography and traditional architecture; a spirit’s journey to the afterworld; and ethnobotany. The four appendices focus on the Toda relationship with their flora and fauna, lists of landscape terms, and the all-important prayers for major hamlets. The book includes significant new data and represents a major breakthrough in Toda studies.

The Toda Landscape: Explorations in Cultural Ecology (Harvard Oriental Series)

Chhabra, Tarun

The traditions of oral ritual speech in the Himalayas have a lively existence alongside the written “great” traditions that predominate. However, as Martin Gaenszle shows, the oral traditions are still little known and even less understood. This collection of oral texts from Nepal, Bhutan, and northeast India, rich with translation and interpretation, serves two purposes. First, it presents the texts themselves, not just as fragments, but as coherent performances of ritual speech, varied in their linguistic form. Second, it displays various possible methods of presenting oral ritual texts in written form; no single standard form is yet agreed upon. In Ritual Speech in the Himalayas, each contributor showcases a unique style of transforming the spoken language and its translation or comments into an editorial format to fit the respective genres and scholarly interests, such as interlinear or sectional translation, morphological glossing, or musical scores.

Ritual Speech in the Himalayas: Oral Texts and Their Contexts (Harvard Oriental Series)

Religion & Spirituality

Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts

The Veda in Kashmir presents a detailed history and the current state of Veda tradition in Kashmir. It traces the vicissitudes of Vedic texts and rituals and their survival during some 400 years of Muslim rule. The peculiarities of the &#346;&#257;kalya &#7770;gveda, Ka&#7789;ha Yajurveda, and Paippal&#257;da Atharvaveda texts are discussed in great detail. The rituals from birth to death of the Pandits, the Kashmiri Brahmins, are depicted and explained, including current interpretation. This two-volume work includes a DVD that contains additional texts, rituals, sound recordings, and films taken in 1973 and 1979.

The Veda in Kashmir, Volumes I and II: History and Present State of Vedic Tradition in the Western Himalayas (Harvard Oriental Series)

Witzel, Michael

Utpaladeva on the Power of Action provides the first critical edition, annotated translation, and study of one of the chapters of the Recognition of the Lord, a landmark in the history of nondual &#346;aivism by the Utpaladeva, that were recently recovered from marginal annotations in manuscripts of other commentaries on Utpaladeva's treatise.

Utpaladeva on the Power of Action: A First Edition, Annotated Translation and Study of Īśvarapratyabhijñāvivṛti, Chapter 2.1 (Harvard Oriental Series)

Ratié, Isabelle

Buddhism

The Fifth Prapāṭhaka of the Vādhūla Śrautasūtra: Introduction to the Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Critical Edition (Harvard Oriental Series)

Voegeli, François

The Rājyābhiṣeka Manual for the Coronation of King Bīrendra of Nepal (1975): Introduction and Facsimile Edition (Harvard Oriental Series)

This edition is based on new manuscripts of this important treatise on classical Sanskrit poetics. It was composed by the famous eleventh-century King Bhoja of Malwa (West India), a patron of traditional learning. The text has never received a complete critical edition. It is important not only because of the theoretical treatment of the erotic sentiment (&#347;&#7771;&#7749;g&#257;ra) in classical Sanskrit texts. It is also a mine of quotations from extant and also from lost Sanskrit and Prakrit poetical texts.

S??garaprakasa of Bhoj (Harvard Oriental Series) (Part 2)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

The Yogacarabhumi, a fourth-century Sanskrit treatise, is the largest Indian text on Buddhist meditation. Its enormous scope exhaustively encompasses all yoga instructions on the disciplines and contemplative exercises of sravaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva practitioners. The thoroughness of the text meant that the Yogacarabhumi became the fundamental source for later Buddhist writings on meditation across Asia. The present edited volume, conceived by Geumgang University in South Korea, brings together the scholarship of thirty-four leading Buddhist specialists on the Yogacarabhumi from across the globe. The essays elaborate the background and environment in which the Yogacarabhumi was composed and redacted, provide a detailed summary of the work, raise fundamental and critical issues about the text, and reveal its reception history in India, China, and Tibet. The volume also provides a thorough survey of contemporary Western and Asian scholarship on the Yogacarabhumi in particular and the Yogacara tradition more broadly. The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners aims not only to tie together the massive research on this text that has been carried out in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States up to now, but also to make this scholarship accessible to all students and scholars of Buddhism.

The Foundation for Yoga Practitioners: The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise and Its Adaptation in India, East Asia, and Tibet (Harvard Oriental Series)

History & Criticism

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Books by Harvard University Department of South Asian Studies