The readers will find A History of Western Tibet interesting which is the outcome of scholarly enterprise and research as much as of familiarity with the country and the people.

The popular perception of yoga in the West remains for the most part that of a physical fitness program, largely divorced from its historical and spiritual roots. The essays collected here provide a sense of the historical emergence of the classical system presented by Patañjali, a careful examination of the key elements, overall character and contemporary relevance of that system (as found in the Yoga Sutra) and a glimpse of some of the tradition's many important ramifications in later Indian religious history.

The Mahotsavavidhi of the Saiva preceptor Aghorasiva, completed in 1157 c.e., provides step-by-step guidance for a Hindu priest conducting a nine-day festival in medieval India. This annotated rendering of Aghorasiva's 12th-century work is the first extensive translation of a medieval work on Hindu temple festivals into a European language.

In Hindu India both orality and sonality have enjoyed great cultural significance since earliest times. They have a distinct influence on how people approach texts. The importance of sound and its perception has led to rites, models of cosmic order, and abstract formulas. Sound serves both to stimulate religious feelings and to give them a sensory form. Starting from the perception and interpretation of sound, the authors chart an unorthodox cultural history of India, turning their attention to an important, but often neglected aspect of daily religious life. They provide a stimulating contribution to the study of cultural systems of perception that also adds new aspects to the debate on orality and literality.

The concluding volume of a critical English edition of the monumental Indian epic The seventh and final book of the monumental Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the Uttarakāṇḍa, brings the epic saga to a close with an account of the dramatic events of King Rāma's millennia-long reign. It opens with a colorful history of the demonic race of the rākṣasas and the violent career of Rāma’s villainous foe Rāvaṇa, and later recounts Rāma’s grateful discharge of his allies in the great war at Lankā as well as his romantic reunion with his wife Sītā. But dark clouds gather as Rāma, confronted by scandal over Sītā’s time in captivity under the lustful Rāvaṇa, makes the agonizing decision to banish his beloved wife, now pregnant. As Rāma continues as king, marvelous tales and events unfurl, illustrating the benefits of righteous rule and the perils that await monarchs who fail to address the needs of their subjects. The Uttarakāṇḍa has long served as a point of social and religious controversy largely for its accounts of the banishment of Sītā, as well as of Rāma’s killing of a low-caste ascetic. The translators’ introduction provides a full discussion of these issues and the complex reception history of the Uttarakāṇḍa. This translation of the critical edition also includes exhaustive notes and a comprehensive bibliography.

The chapters in this volume were originally presented in the panels on Scientific Literature at the 12th World Sanskrit Conference in Helsinki, Finland. They represent some of the most up-to-date scholarship on the history of early science in India being done today. The first part of the book focusses on the history of mathematical commentaries and the role of illustration in sanskrit mathematical manuscripts. The second part of the book investigates fundamental ayurvedic theories, ayurvedic rites for childbirth, the cultural history of medicine in the Early Modern period, the anthropology of spirit of one of the oldest surviving ayurvedic texts. This book will be of interest to historians of science, students of classical Indian history and culture, and anyone wanting to know where the cutting edge of the history of early Indian science is today.

This volume contains the most comprehensive collection of scholarly sources on Indian poetics and aesthetics (the Alaṃkāraśāstra ever published in ancient India. Entries are divided into three sections and a detailed index is provided. Reference to primary sources from several languages range from about the 5th to the 19th centuries. Secondary sources in two dozen languages are divided into two sections, viz., books and articles. These begin in the mid-19th century and continue to the present. Annotations are usually brief and descriptive.

John Nemec examines the beginnings of the non-dual tantric philosophy of the famed Pratyabhijna or "Recognition [of God]" School of tenth-century Kashmir, the tradition most closely associated with Kashmiri Shaivism. In doing so it offers, for the very first time, a critical edition and annotated translation of a large portion of the first Pratyabhijna text ever composed, the Sivadrsti of Somananda. In an extended introduction, Nemec argues that the author presents a unique form of non-dualism, a strict pantheism that declares all beings and entities found in the universe to be fully identical with the active and willful god Siva. This view stands in contrast to the philosophically more flexible panentheism of both his disciple and commentator, Utpaladeva, and the very few other Saiva tantric works that were extant in the author's day. Nemec also argues that the text was written for the author's fellow tantric initiates, not for a wider audience. This can be adduced from the structure of the work, the opponents the author addresses, and various other editorial strategies. Even the author's famous and vociferous arguments against the non-tantric Hindu grammarians may be shown to have been ultimately directed at an opposing Hindu tantric school that subscribed to many of the grammarians' philosophical views. Included in the volume is a critical edition and annotated translation of the first three (of seven) chapters of the text, along with the corresponding chapters of the commentary. These are the chapters in which Somananda formulates his arguments against opposing tantric authors and schools of thought. None of the materials made available in the present volume has ever been translated into English, apart from a brief rendering of the first chapter that was published without the commentary in 1957. None of the commentary has previously been translated into any language at all.

The essays in the volume Consecration Rituals in South Asia address the ritual procedures that accompany the installation of temple images in Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain contexts, in various traditions and historical periods.

This is a full account of Siva's Dance of Bliss, which has become a popular symbol in the West for Hinduism and Eastern Mysticism. Siva is one of the two main gods of Hinduism, and his worshippers comprise half of all Hindus. Siva's Dance of Bliss is based on a remarkable Sanskrit poem written by Umapati Sivacarya, Saiva theologian and temple priest in Cidambaram, South India, in the fourteenth century. Starting with the bronze image of Nataraja, King of Dancers, thereafter the Cidambaram temple, its myth and its priests are viewed in the light of the poem. Umapati's Saiva theology is discussed in relation to his life and also in relation to Vedanta and yoga. The iconography and mythology of the Goddess and of other forms of Siva provide necessary perspective. Art from Cidambaram and neighbouring sites illuminates the text.