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Subject Area: Hindu Studies

A History of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim, Perspectives on War and Peace: Volume I The Bible to 1914
 Frost, J. William
2004 0-7734-6561-8 520 pages
This massive, two-volume work is an extensive survey of the interactions between organized religions and war from the Exodus to Gulf War II. The major emphases are on Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with additional chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, and sections on Shinto, Quakerism, and others. It will attract scholars in a variety of disciplines: peace studies, religion, history, and political science.

BHAGAVADGITA
Exegetical and Comparative Commentary with Sanskrit Text, Translation, Interlinear Transliteration with Parsing, Mini Lexicon, and Text-Critical Notes
Volume V ( Chapters 13-15)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2012 0-7734-4546-3 368 pages
This is the first study to offer local Indian knowledge of Sanskrit, and mythology in addition to translations given by other scholars to form a reference guide as a definitive translation.

Bhagavadgita Volume III ( Chapters 7 - 9)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2010 0-7734-1369-3 380 pages
This work explores the meaning of each verse of the Bhagavadgita; by providing the Sanskrit text, translation, and transliteration in interlinear format with grammatical analysis, a word list containing alternate meanings for each word, variant readings with select analyses, interpretation by the author, and interaction with several ancient and modern commentators and translators.

Bhagavadgita: Volume I ( Chapters 1-3)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2007 0-7734-5290-7 440 pages
This work explores the meaning of each verse of the Bhagavadgita; by providing the Sanskrit text, translation, and transliteration in interlinear format with grammatical analysis, a word list containing alternate meanings for each word, variant readings with select analyses, interpretation by the author, and interaction with several ancient and modern commentators and translators. As a result, readers not only obtain the author’s translating and interpretation but have before them the tools necessary to form independent conclusions if they so choose.

Bhagavadgita: Volume II ( Chapters 4-6)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2008 0-7734-5291-5 452 pages
This work explores the meaning of each verse of the Bhagavadgita; by providing the Sanskrit text, translation, and transliteration in interlinear format with grammatical analysis, a word list containing alternate meanings for each word, variant readings with select analyses, interpretation by the author, and interaction with several ancient and modern commentators and translators.

Bhagavadgita: Volume IV ( Chapters 10-12)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2012 0-7734-2635-3 420 pages
This work enables scholars to analyze more deeply the meanings of these foundational verses of ancient Hindu wisdom. The text allows readers not only to utilize the author’s adept translation and interpretation, but affords them the tools necessary to form independent conclusions.

Bhagavadgita: Volume VI ( Chapters 16-18)
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2015 1-4955-0339-9 516 pages
This work explores the meaning of each verse of the Bhagavadgita; by providing the Sanskrit text, translation, and transliteration in interlinear format with grammatical analysis, a wordlist containing alternate meanings for each word, variant readings with select analyses, interpretation by the author, and interaction with several ancient and modern commentators and translators.

Among millions of Hindus the Bhagavad Gita is their most treasured of holy books and the primary source of their religious inspiration. This volume includes instruction on divine existence, demonic existence, the role of faith in actions, as well as concern with the performance of such actions.

Foundations of Political Order in Genesis and the Chandogya Upanisad. Vol. 1
 
2006 0-7734-5712-7 444 pages
This two-volume work, first published as one volume in 1987, is the product of a 14-year collaboration by the authors in developing a method for the reading of ancient religious tests. Their method is derived from the work of Leo Strauss and Robert Sacks, who had pointed out that the liberal-democratic philosophers were careful commentators on Genesis. The method taught by Dr. Combs and Dr. Post is to begin with the religious text and make the assumption that it is written carefully and deliberately – do not interject an interpretation unless it is in conformity with the details of the text; only reject that assumption when the text fails to make sense as written. This method is shown to be warranted by the careful structure and order of each text. Such careful attention illuminates an inherent comparative structure to each text, which in turn warrants a comparison with the other text, which in turn reveals deeper philosophical and theological issues latent with these texts.

Foundations of political order in Genesis and the Chandogya Upanisad. Vol. 2
 
2006 0-7734-5713-5 328 pages
This two-volume work, first published as one volume in 1987, is the product of a 14-year collaboration by the authors in developing a method for the reading of ancient religious tests. Their method is derived from the work of Leo Strauss and Robert Sacks, who had pointed out that the liberal-democratic philosophers were careful commentators on Genesis. The method taught by Dr. Combs and Dr. Post is to begin with the religious text and make the assumption that it is written carefully and deliberately – do not interject an interpretation unless it is in conformity with the details of the text; only reject that assumption when the text fails to make sense as written. This method is shown to be warranted by the careful structure and order of each text. Such careful attention illuminates an inherent comparative structure to each text, which in turn warrants a comparison with the other text, which in turn reveals deeper philosophical and theological issues latent with these texts.

Hindu and Jain Mythology of Balarma
 Vemsani, Lavanya
2006 0-7734-5723-2 244 pages
This book studies the evolution of Balarma in Vaiavism through comparative analysis of Balarma stories from selected Hindu puras: the Harivama (HV), the Viu pura (Vi.pu), the Brahma pura (Br.pu), and the Bhgavata pura (Bh.pu). Through careful analysis of Balarma stories from these texts, the author argues that Balarma was a multifaceted deity of considerable importance in early Vaiavism. The modifications introduced in the earliest stories reveal a process whereby Balarma’s popularity and status declined, and he became a minor deity as Ka grew in importance. In this process, Balarma’s personality is modified from his association with food, abundance, fertility and protection to that of an ordinary warrior.

The author demonstrates that the early supremacy and personality of Balarma is reflected in the depiction of this deity in select Jain texts: the Vasudevahid (VH), the Harivamapurna (HVP), the Cauppannamahpurisacariyam (CMC) and the Trialpuruacaritra (TSP). A comparison of Hindu and Jain pura stories of Balarma also reveal that the Jain Balarma stories are derived from independent sources other than the Hindu puras.

A study of the Balarma stories also contributes to current scholarship on the textual history of the Hindu puras. The stories are analyzed, divided into a series of plots and compared across the different texts. The author shows that changes to these basic plots indicate the evolution of the story and suggests that the more different a story is from the basic story, the later it must be while the less different the story, the closer to contemporary it must be. A comparison of the stories indicates that the HV was the source of the Vi.pu, which served as the source for the Br.pu and Bh.pu. A comparison of the latter two texts reveals that the Bh.pu is the last of the texts, while the Br.pu shows a combination of early and late stories. This pattern is consistent with what scholars working on the puras have described.

Hindu and Muslim Inter-Religious Relations in Malaysia
 Gabriel, Theodore
2000 0-7734-7713-6 192 pages
This study focuses on the minority Hindus and their interaction with the majority Malay-Muslim community. The Hindus of Malaysia since independence from colonial rule have been seriously marginalized owing to their lack of demographic, economic and political power. Current Islamic resurgence and strident calls for Islamicization of the state have adversely affected the Hindus and created apprehension in the community. This has resulted in augmenting Hindu religiosity and sense of identity. The alienation, ghettoization and economic decline of the Hindus are pressing problems that the Malaysian nation has to tackle.

Hindu-Muslim Relations in North Malabar, 1498-1947
 Gabriel, Theodore
1996 0-7734-8961-4 396 pages
This volume studies the dynamics of Hindu-Muslim relations in a hitherto little-known part of the province in India, North Malabar, paying special attention to the impact of external political powers on the communal situation. Besides the political history, it also examines social organization, habits of communality, intermarriage, mutual adaptations in literature, music, architecture, and other indications of cultural osmosis. Previously unused sources in the regional language, Malayalam, and the Alexander Bowland Papers on Malabar held by the National Library of Scotland provide important information of use to historians, sociologists, anthropologists, scholars of comparative religion, and political science.

Islamic, Hindu, and Christian Fundamentalism Compared - Public Policy in Global Perspective
 Saha, Santosh C.
2003 0-7734-6769-6 340 pages
These essays examine the extent of religious influence on governmental and public policies, covering recent issues and many countries. The authors are highly-recognized scholars in religious, historical and political science disciplines.

MONASTICISM IN THE CHRISTIAN AND HINDU TRADITIONS:
A Comparative Study
 Creel, Austin
1990 0-88946-502-9 608 pages
Papers focusing, from the viewpoints of history, history of religions, sociology , and anthropology, on a comparative study of monasticism in the two traditions.

Pilgrim Experiences the World's Religions: Discovering the Human Faces of the Hidden God
 Milavec, Aaron
1983 0-88946-010-8 87 pages
Covers the spiritual pilgrimage to the holy sites of six major world religions undertaken by the Youth Seminar on World Religions, an event during which 150 young people and professors from 31 nations traveled around the world together to view the historical settings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

Seven Hindu Goddesses of Spiritual Transformation: The Iconography of the Saptamatrikas
 Harper, Katherine Anne
1990 0-88946-061-2 336 pages
An iconological exploration of the seven Hindu female deities known as the Saptamatrikas ("Seven Mothers"), undertaken in order to inquire into the nature of Saptamatrikas icons, identify the inchoate elements that gave rise to their introduction into the Hindu pantheon, and offer an interpretation of their religious function.

Studies in the Ontology of the Bhagavad Gita: What is One’s View of God, the Universe, and the Soul?
 Tsoukalas, Steven
2015 1-4955-0274-0 288 pages
The Bhagavad Gita is India’s most treasured of holy books. The present volume concerns itself with ontology. In this book the Gita’s ontology is deeply probed and the difficult task of its careful exegesis is accomplished by the contributors to the volume who know the Sanskrit language very well. This book is an outstanding accomplishment in the study of this remarkable text.

The Decline of Civilization: A Vedic Philosophy of History
 Mohanty, Nirode
2024 1-4955-1233-9 352 pages
"The world is spiraling toward conflict, belligerence, and disharmony and is now going through an unprecedented social and spiritual crisis, class confrontation, calamity, and nuclear and terrorist threats. The rise of drug use, broken families, the number of single parents, the rise of school and public place mass shootings, suicides, and depression, the rise of sexual scandals among priests and media. The rise in the overuse of iPads and spartphones by young kids are threatening our home, society, schools, and the environment with vicious violence, menacing insecurity, wild protests, and rampant immorality. ...Based on the Vedas, the Upanishad, the Brahma Sutra, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedic values are declining." -Nirode Mohanty ("Preface")

The Vedic View of Life: The Path to Perfection (Softcover)
 Mohanty, Nirode
2021 1-4955-0903-6 161 pages
Dr. Nirode Mohanty describes how the Vedic view of perceiving life, and living according to the universal principles that are inherent to the philosophy, would improve the spiritual and mental well-being of the world in general.

Thought World of Hindu Nationalism
 Karner, Christian
2006 0-7734-5626-0 408 pages
This book makes two major contributions. First, it analyses textual material and qualitative data on Hindu nationalism: in doing so, it reveals the co-existence of several ‘self-other category relations’ and of more elaborate schemas of interpretation in a transnationally circulating discourse often reduced to a cognitive pattern of binary ‘us versus them’ distinctions (frequently dominant though this ‘logic’ is). Second, the analysis is theoretically informed by a newly constructed framework; critically revisiting Claude Lévi-Strauss’s legacy, the author argues that a neo-structuralist paradigm capable of illuminating the structures and workings of (ethno-nationalist) discourses of identity can be constructed if the classically Lévi-Straussian indebtedness to structural linguistics is replaced by conceptual borrowings from social and cognitive psychology. The result is a theoretical approach capable of addressing the blind spots in traditional structuralism — structural diversity, meaning, history and agency. Further complemented by recent work on identity and the cognitively informed study of ethnicity, the analysis reveals the ‘structural possibilities’ and schemas underpinning the discourse of Hindutva, conceptualizes the latter as a way of interpreting, and acting in, the world, and stresses the role of human agency in relation to a particular specimen of the kind of identity politics that has shaped recent history.

Worship and the Ceremonial Economy of a Royal South Indian Temple
 Good, Anthony
2004 0-7734-6397-6 358 pages
The temple of the god Kalugacalamurtti – the local name for Murugan, Siva’s younger son – is the largest economic enterprise in the town of Kalugumalai, South India, yet ostentatious display and devotionalism loom far larger in the conduct of its affairs than economic rationality, despite attempts at bureaucratic rationalism by successive governments.

This book describes this Hindu temple’s complex patterns of public liturgy and private worship, and explores the metaphysical themes which underlie them according to the Saiva Sidhhanta philosophy governing temple worship. It shows how temple rituals portray and enact the sexuality, kinship, and regality of the gods. It then recounts how temple economy and administration have changed over the past two centuries, how groups and interests within Kalugumalai town challenged the temple’s hegemony over their affairs, and how and why the Rajas of Ettaiyapuram, the temple’s hereditary Trustees, successfully resisted repeated government attempts to assume control of the temple over the past 50 years.

There have relatively few previous ethnographic studies of large Hindu temples and no other fieldworker has access to such detailed information on the orthodox and ceremonial economies of any Hindu temple in South India. The result is a unique synthesis of ethnographic and historical material.

Writings of Swami Sivananda
 Pyle, Tilak
2007 0-7734-5262-1 96 pages
This study provides an enumerative bibliography of the works attributed to Swami Sivananda Saraswati (1887-1963). Containing extensive bibliographic information not found elsewhere, this study can be utilized as either a central research tool or valuable resource for studies relating to Swami Sivananda across a great many research areas. This study provides considerable insight into the composition of Sivananda’s literary corpus, while also raising important questions, such as the issue of authorship and corporate authorship within religious organizations and institutions of India and, more specifically, within the context of the guru-disciple relationship. Appendices include Title Index, Titles by Series, Supplementary Sources, and Guru-Disciple Resources.