Religions of South Asia

Editorial

Simon Brodbeck — 2019-10-18

Opedipal God: The Chinese Nezha and his I ndian Origins, by Meir Shahar

Brian Collins — 2019-10-18

Opedipal God: The Chinese Nezha and his I ndian Origins, by Meir Shahar. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015. 312 pp., £49.95 (hb). ISBN 9-780-824-847609.

Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of S??khya: With Sanskrit Text and English Translation of P?tañjala Yogas?tra-s, Vy?sa Bh??ya and Tattvavai??rad? of V?caspatimi?ra, by Gerald James Larson

Knut A. Jacobsen — 2019-10-18

Classical Yoga Philosophy and the Legacy of S??khya: With Sanskrit Text and English Translation of P?tañjala Yogas?tra-s, Vy?sa Bh??ya and Tattvavai??rad? of V?caspatimi?ra, by Gerald James Larson. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2018. 1040 pp., £100.00 (hb). ISBN 9-788-12084-201-4.

Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis, by Suzanne Newcomb

Christopher Patrick Miller — 2019-10-18

Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis, by Suzanne Newcombe. Sheffield: Equinox, 2019. xiv + 309 pp., £75.00 / $100.00 (hb), £24.95 / $36.00 (pb). ISBN 978-1-78179-659-7 (hb), 978-1-78179-661-0 (pb).

A Dharma Reader: Classical Indian Law, translated and edited by Patrick Olivelle

Caley Charles Smith — 2019-10-18

A Dharma Reader: Classical Indian Law, translated and edited by Patrick Olivelle. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xii + 410 pp., $80.00. ISBN 978-0-23117-956-0.

When Womanhood Matters

Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā — 2019-10-18

This article further articulates Sponberg’s (1992) seminal identification of four distinct attitudes toward women and the feminine in Buddhism, by including a sub-typology of ‘essentialist misogyny’. Textual and institutional voices in the Buddhist traditions are traced that testify to a process of essentialization of the female sex or gender that is first constructed as an entity, ‘womanhood’, and then devalued. This trend is already documented in the early Buddhist texts, where it stands in contrast to the soteriologically normative nonessentialized view of femininity. The discourse develops with misogynist positions taken in medieval Therav?da works. It is further continued, albeit under an opposite agenda, that of the ‘Sacred Feminine’, in contemporary Western Buddhism. Such contemporary instances of an essentialized feminine exemplify how doctrinal and religio-historical tensions are renegotiated leading to the emergence of new incarnations of the Therav?da, and Buddhist in general, scriptural canon, which in turn overwrite previously emerged ‘practical canons’.

Evolution of the Patterns of Cultic Encounters between Buddhism and Brahmanism in the Religious Space of Some Excavated Buddhist Religious Centres of Early Medieval Bihar and Bengal

Birendra Nath Prasad — 2019-10-18

Through an analysis of published archaeological data, this article attempts to understand the evolution of patterns of cultic encounters between Buddhism and Brahmanism in the religious space of Buddhist monastic centres of early medieval (c. 600–1200 ce) Bihar and Bengal. This article argues that the regular findings of sculptures of Brahmanical deities in the religious space of Buddhist monastic centres of this area was a manifestation of the attempts of the Buddhist Sa?gha to induce a subordinate integration of these deities to Buddhism. This attempt, however, did not evolve in the way desired by the Sa?gha. Brahmanical deities did not remain confined to the ‘outer mansions of the ma??alas’. They, rather, impacted the character of major Buddhist deities fundamentally. The non-monastic devotees, most of whom did not have any fixed religious identity, interpreted these developments as a blurring of ritual and institutional boundaries between Buddhism and Brahmanism. The end result was not the Buddhist integration of Brahmanical deities in a manner of subordinate union, but Brahmanical appropriation of Buddhism in the long run.

From Manuscript to Print

Ayesha A. Irani — 2019-10-18

This article takes the Nab?va??a—the first major work of Islamic doctrine to be written in Bangla, in the seventeenth century—as the basis for larger observations about Islamic Bangla literature and its transition from manuscript into print. The article charts three moments in the four centuries of the Nab?va??a’s textual life, reflecting on why such well-loved early modern religious texts fell into obscurity in the print era. The first phase from 1666 to 1777 marks the emergence and efflorescence of this literature, produced by Muslim intellectuals in the Ca??agr?ma (Chittagong)-Arakan region. The second period, from 1777 onwards, is marked by the emergence of print as well as dobh??? Bangla in colonial Bengal. The third phase of this survey pertains to the constitution of a literary public sphere in Bengal linked to the momentum generated by print. This period saw the formulation of the Bangla literary canon through the efforts of publishers, literary critics, anthologists, translators, editors, historiographers and manuscript collectors. All of these were sustained through print’s cultural marketplace and the public discourses it engendered. The essay examines the ways in which Islamic Bangla literature’s value was articulated by the politics of archive-building and literary historiography central to the nationalist project.

Engaging Tolerance

David J. Strohl — 2019-10-18

This article reassesses the importance given by theories of multiculturalism and religious pluralism to understanding difference. I examine Ismaili Muslims’ social interactions with other Indians in everyday life, the public sphere and civic engagement. These interactions are marked by what I call an ‘engaging tolerance’, which privatizes some forms of difference while simultaneously creating moral obligations cutting across religious and class lines. Ismaili tolerance thus encourages their solidarity with other members of Indian society, while leaving the contents of their religious differences unknown. I further analyse the ways that Ismaili tolerance pushes us to rethink some of commonplace assumptions about inter-religious and inter-cultural engagement, particularly the idea that mutual understandings of difference are necessary for social cohesion in plural societies.