Encyclopaedia of Hinduism (Volume 16 to 30)

The Encyclopaedia of Hinduism aims to provide comprehensive and investigatory information about Hindu religio-philosophical and cultural tradition from pre-historic time to post-modern period, which has been covered in hundred comprehensive volumes in six sections. First section of this encyclopaedia covered in fifteen volumes is intended to provide in itself a complex overview of Vedic religio-cultural tradition, which includes Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and other subsidiary scriptures. In this encyclopaedia, the attempt is made to describe Hinduism as the living faith of the Hindus, a tradition with its own logic and with a purpose of its own. Our intention is to reproduce Hinduism in such a way that contemporary Hindus would be able to recognise themselves in it, and outsiders would be helped to understand something of this tradition, which is alien to them but about which they are curious, the tradition they encounter on a visit to India. The Encyclopaedia highlights numerous hidden facts and figures of Hinduism as a whole. The vastness and heterogeneity of Hinduism offer many challenges to everyone attempting to describe it. Before venturing to compile the encyclopaedia of Hinduism for readers seeking an initiation into the subject, the editor has to make a judicious selection of mattter and, how to qualify statements in order to make them appear unjustified dogmatic and how to arrange the material that is to be presented as the essentials of Hinduism. However, a great many questions are still open regarding the origin and chronological development of Hinduism. The traditional Hindu’s negligency in searching of chronological evolution of Hinduism makes it often impossible to date persons or literary scriptures within less than five hundred years margin. Due to numerous complexities Hinduism cannot be presented in a non-controversial manner.