Vai Ava Concepts Of God

Filling the most glaring gap in Shrivaishnava scholarship, this book deals with the history of interpretation of a theological concept of self-surrender-prapatti in late twelfth and thirteenth century religious texts of the Shrivaishnava community of South India. This original study shows that medieval sectarian formation in its theological dimension is a fluid and ambivalent enterprise, where conflict and differentiation are presaged on ""sharing"", whether of a common canon, saint or rituals or two languages (Tamil and Sanskrit), or of a ""meta-social"" arena such as the temple.

We find today in different parts of the world fierce feuds and strifes. Religious fanaticism and fundamentalism contribute in a substantial way to such strifes and conflicts among people. We also find a large number of people are steeped in superstitions, irrational beliefs, and indulge in mere ritualism. Where true religion prevails, such fanaticism and fundamentalism find no place. A deep comparative study of world religions enables one to drive away all superstitions and fanaticism. For religion, in the true sense, is an abiding faith in the values of life, and God is the embodiment of all values. Religious experience accordingly implies the realisation of the Absolute. What Prof. Nalini Kanta Brahma tries to do in this well-researched book, written in a clear and straightforward style, is to demonstrate the nobility and positive aspects of each religion he has discussed. He classifies religion into three categories: Impersonal—under which he brings in Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism; Personal—in this category he describes Christianity, Islam and Vaishnavism; and Supra-personal—under which he analyzes Vedantism, Sufism, Taoism and the Johanine Gospel (the Gospel of St. John, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ). The fundamentals of each religion are discussed with great clarity and genuine appreciation. Knowing very well there are a large number of opponents to religion, the author vigorously defends the religious view. He successfully meets the various objections of Freud, Marx and Bertrand Russel, among others. For, he says, agnosticism, atheism and scepticism are based on a narrow and limited view of life. Realisation of divinity by man is the universal characteristic of all religions, and the author contends that it should aptly be called the universal religion. This realisation of the divinity is so marked in the supra-personal religions and being a votary of such religions, he stresses that they are on a different level. If a study of this world religion is included in the course on comparative religion for students, it would certainly help towards dispelling erroneous notions about religion and drive away many superstitions, fanaticism and communalism, the last being a cancerous growth that eats into the very fabric of a nation. Besides students of philosophy who study comparative religion as one of their subjects, all enlightened persons who have an abiding faith in religion should find reading this text an exhilarating and ennobling experience.

Jacob Kinnard offers an in-depth examination of the complex dynamics of religiously charged places. Focusing on several important shared and contested pilgrimage places-Ground Zero and Devils Tower in the United States, Ayodhya and Bodhgaya in India, Karbala in Iraq-he poses a number of crucial questions. What and who has made these sites important, and why? How are they shared, and how and why are they contested? What is at stake in their contestation? How are the particular identities of place and space established? How are individual and collective identity intertwined with space and place? Challenging long-accepted, clean divisions of the religious world, Kinnard explores specific instances of the vibrant messiness of religious practice, the multivocality of religious objects, the fluid and hybrid dynamics of religious places, and the shifting and tangled identities of religious actors. He contends that sacred space is a constructed idea: places are not sacred in and of themselves, but are sacred because we make them sacred. As such, they are in perpetual motion, transforming themselves from moment to moment and generation to generation. Places in Motion moves comfortably across and between a variety of historical and cultural settings as well as academic disciplines, providing a deft and sensitive approach to the topic of sacred places, with awareness of political, economic, and social realities as these exist in relation to questions of identity. It is a lively and much needed critical advance in analytical reflections on sacred space and pilgrimage.

Part of the ancient Hindu epic The Mahabharata, The Bhagavad Gita is one of the enduring religious texts of the world The Bhagavad Gita is an early poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna, a manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, Krishna sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to understand his own role in the war he is about to fight. Krishna reveals to Arjuna his true cosmic form and counsels the warrior to act according to his sacred obligations. Ranging from instructions on yoga to moral discussion, the Gita has served for centuries as an everyday, practical guide to living well. Translated with an introduction by Laurie L. Patton

This book represents the first systematic collection and analysis of the principal legends about Kabir Das, a fifteenth-century poet-saint. It focuses on the ways in which the legends embody and reflect the often changing social and religious needs of those who created and listened to them. Particular attention is paid to the earliest known collection of legends, Ananta-das's Kabir Parachai. This book makes available for the first time an English translation of this text, with detailed notes on its variant readings, as well as a corrected Hindi edition based on a comparison of over a dozen manuscripts. The various historical synchronisms between Kabir and his leading contemporaries, including Ramananda and King Virasimhadev Baghel, are reevaluated, and a solution is proposed to the longstanding debate about Kabir's dates.

The Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy is a unique one-volume reference work which makes a broad range of richly varied philosophical, ethical and theological traditions accessible to a wide audience. The Companion is divided into six sections covering the main traditions within Asian thought: Persian; Indian; Buddhist; Chinese; Japanese; and Islamic philosophy. Each section contains a collection of chapters which provide comprehensive coverage of the origins of the tradition, its approaches to, for example, logic and languages, and to questions of morals and society. The chapters also contain useful histories of the lives of the key influential thinkers, as well as a thorough analysis of the current trends.

Analyzing the ways in which ideas of heroic discourse and the socio-religious and political needs of the period moulded iconography, this book explores the evolution of the iconography of the early mediaeval Hindu temples of the Indian peninsula, over the course of the sixth-twelfth centuries C.E. In order to study the socio-religious and political atmosphere in which the early mediaeval temple iconography grew and developed its specific forms, the author makes use of the inscriptions, archaeological and the literary materials ranging from the fourth centuries B.C.E. to the thirteenth century C.E., as these give an idea of the continuities and discontinuities in the ideas of heroic and political discourses which lie at the back of the visual art forms that they created. Of particular interest are the royal charters, issued in Sanskrit and Tamil, the religious narratives from the Sanskrit epics and the Puranas, iconographic canons that form a part of the religious texts known as the Agamas, written in Sanskrit, the court literature of the early mediaeval period and the early historical Sangam Tamil literature, apart from the archaeological material from the Indian peninsula. The author focuses particularly on exploring the ideas of power current in the society that created the narrative iconography of the period and the region studied.

The tales of the mi'raj describe the prophet Muhammad's journey through the heavens, his encounters with prophets and angels, and his visit to heaven and hell. The tales are among Islam's most popular, appearing in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature, and in later adaptations throughout the Muslim world. Often serving as narratives designed to promote the worldview of particular Muslim groups, the tales were also a means for communities to construct rules of normative behavior and ritual practices, and were used to assert the superiority of Islam over other religions. The essays in this collection discuss the formation of this narrative, the mi'raj as a missionary text, its various adaptations, its application to esoteric thought, and its use in performance and ritual. -- Book jacket.