Showing all 3 books
The volume is a collection of writings that discuss the origins and development of multiple religious traditions and their role in the evolution of a complex socio-religious matrix in pre-colonial India.
The book focuses on rarely-studied aspects like dominance of the Brahmanical tradition in the mainstream religious culture and marginalisation of Jainism and Buddhism. It presents a well-evaluated approach to different aspects of religion—the social base, ...
The scholarship in this collection spans half a century of engagement with south India by one of its most prominent historians. The essays discuss the origins and development of multiple religious traditions and their role in the evolution of a rich and complex socio-religious matrix in pre-colonial South India.The emergence of the Brahmanical (Sanskritic) tradition as the dominant or mainstream tradition and the marginalization of the Sramanic religions-Jainism ...
The Hindu Temple is a comprehensive expose on the evolution of a simple and sacred place of worship to a monument, which over the centuries became the pivot of Indian religiosity, culture and aesthetic significance; the superordinate ideological focus of society and polity. Tracing its origin to the pre-Christian era, its sanctity, and the unwavering reverence accorded to it even today, is manifested in the elaborate rituals performed within its precincts by ...