Located in the city of Dwaraka, on the west coast of India in Gujarat, is the famous temple of Dwarakadhish, which is dedicated to Lord Krishna, the Lord of Dwaraka. Among the seven holy cities of India, it is considered to be one of the most sacred. Another list includes Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Varanasi, Kanchipuram, and Ujjain. It is believed that the original temple of Dwarakadhish was built by the great-grandson of Krishna, Vajranabha, on the ruins of Krishna's own palace, which survived the tsunami intact. The ancient, famed city of Dwaraka did exist during the Krishnavatara's reign some five thousand years ago. It is no longer visible since it lies at the bottom of the ocean. The poets, writers, saints, and sages of ancient India have all praised the majesty and beauty of Dwaraka. Several Hindu texts, including the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Skanda Purana, the Vishnu Purana, Harivamsha, and the Mahabharata, refer to it as the "Golden City.". A verse in the Bhagavatam says: "The golden fort of Dwaraka City had its yellow glitter all around it, as if the flames of Vadavagni (the fire of eternity) had come out and tore the sea asunder." It was a thriving port and had a harbor on an island nearby. Dwaraka must have been the largest port on the Indian coast during the third millennium BC according to the number, size, and variety of stone anchors. Some fifty stone anchors are visible, but hundreds have been buried in the sediment. It is probably because of this that the city received its name. Dwaraka, which means "gate" in Sanskrit, was perhaps the gate that enabled ancient civilizations to access the ports. Cities of the West used seafaring to enter India's vast subcontinent. Ka in Sanskrit also means "Brahma," so perhaps it was devoted to Brahma, the creator of the Hindu trinity.

The complete collection of Sangharakshita’s early essays (1944 - 1964). This volume contains the previously published collections Crossing the Stream and Early Writings, plus other articles long since out of print. All the essays are fully annotated, and those previously published in Early Writings come with a detailed commentary and extensive introduction by Kalyanaprabha. A foreword by Nagabodhi introduces the collection. The insights and ideas expressed in these brief passages are as illuminating, as stimulating and as indispensable as anything Sangharakshita was ever to produce.

A study of ‘AbhijñānaŚākuntalam’ has to situate the contexts in ancient through medieval Indian literature and scholarship before it comes to the colonial and the contemporary. In epistemological privileging, this text has become either a Hindoo play in the colonial, Hindu drama in the Hindutva and a love story in the Western theoretical paradigms of scholarship. The essays in ‘Memory, Metaphor and Mysticism in Kalidasa’s ‘AbhijñānaŚākuntalam’ attempt to restore contexts, especially philosophical contexts, for reading this play.

As many places around the world confront issues of globalization, migration and postcoloniality, travel writing has become a serious genre of study, reflecting some of the greatest concerns of our time. Encompassing forms as diverse as field journals, investigative reports, guidebooks, memoirs, comic sketches and lyrical reveries; travel writing is now a crucial focus for discussion across many subjects within the humanities and social sciences. An ideal starting point for beginners, but also offering new perspectives for those familiar with the field, The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing examines: Key debates within the field, including postcolonial studies, gender, sexuality and visual culture Historical and cultural contexts, tracing the evolution of travel writing across time and over cultures Different styles, modes and themes of travel writing, from pilgrimage to tourism Imagined geographies, and the relationship between travel writing and the social, ideological and occasionally fictional constructs through which we view the different regions of the world. Covering all of the major topics and debates, this is an essential overview of the field, which will also encourage new and exciting directions for study. Contributors: Simon Bainbridge, Anthony Bale, Shobhana Bhattacharji, Dúnlaith Bird, Elizabeth A. Bohls, Wendy Bracewell, Kylie Cardell, Daniel Carey, Janice Cavell, Simon Cooke, Matthew Day, Kate Douglas, Justin D. Edwards, David Farley, Charles Forsdick, Corinne Fowler, Laura E. Franey, Rune Graulund, Justine Greenwood, James M. Hargett, Jennifer Hayward, Eva Johanna Holmberg, Graham Huggan, William Hutton, Robin Jarvis, Tabish Khair, Zoë Kinsley, Barbara Korte, Julia Kuehn, Scott Laderman, Claire Lindsay, Churnjeet Mahn, Nabil Matar, Steve Mentz, Laura Nenzi, Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Manfred Pfister, Susan L. Roberson, Paul Smethurst, Carl Thompson, C.W. Thompson, Margaret Topping, Richard White, Gregory Woods.

Agriculture and philosophy have been parts of a whole across history and remain so. Philosophy informs wellbeing and contentment amidst the vagaries of existence, the primary concern of which has always been security of food. Science, once known as natural philosophy, is a major means of philosophical advance today. Agricultural science is presented as comprising all of these components. The philosophical quest to be at ease in nature extends from pre-historical times into our unknown future, and employs diverse vehicles to convey insights across generations via myths, legends religion, academic study and ritual practices. Expressing esoteric concepts has employed agricultural metaphor across the historical era as it has been our most common interaction with nature. Continuing as our most widespread human interaction within nature, agriculture’s role in creating civilization, and later its writing, eventually led to an urban separation from nature including food production. Unifying the philosophy, agriculture and agricultural science across cultures and traditions from pre-agricultural times through the European Enlightenment to today, this work builds on neglected ancient insights. Perhaps the most profound of these insights is that our thoughts and actions may be seen as an integral part of nature. Rather than being independent agents with free will, our fears and guilt may be seen as active forces in the dynamics of nature itself, which includes our procurement of food. This conception offers a wider interaction than can be comprehended from current popular approaches.

The Sociology of Greed examines crises in financial institutions such as banks from the vantage point of the greed of the people at their helm. It offers an intensive analysis of the banking crises under the conditions of colonial capitalism in early twentieth-century Bengal that led to institutional and social collapse. Breaking new ground, the book looks at the moral economy of capitalism and money culture by focusing on the victims of banking crises, hitherto unexplored in Western empirical research. Through sociological analyses of political economy, it seamlessly combines archival records, survey and statistical data with literary narratives, realist fiction and performing arts to recount how the greed of bank owners and managers ruined their institutions as well as common people. It argues that greed turns perilous when the state and the market facilitate its agency, and it examines the contexts and histories, the indifference of the fledgling colonial state, feeble political response, and the consequences for those who were impacted and the losses, especially the refugees, the lower-middle class and women. The volume also re-composes relevant elements of Western sociological scholarship from classical theories to early twenty-first-century financial sociology. An insightful account of the social history of banking in India, this book will greatly interest researchers and scholars in sociology, economics, history and cultural studies.

On the completion of fiftieth year of Sahitya Akademi.