The Minaksi Temple is one of the largest, most celebrated and most popular Hindu temples in India. Situated in the ancient south Indian city of Madurai, it is dedicated to the goddess Minaksi and her husband the god Sundaresvara, a form of the great god Śiva. Minaksi's principal servants in the Temple are the priests who carry out all the elaborate rituals for her and Sundaresvara, and these priests are the subject of this book. Drawing upon his extensive field research in the Temple, Dr Fuller discusses the role of the priests in the Temple and their place in the wider society. He looks at their rights and duties in the Temple, and at the changes in their position that have occurred since the establishment of a modern government and legal system. Throughout his book, the author situates his detailed analysis of the Minaksi Temple priesthood within its wider social and historical context, and relates it to the previous work of anthropologists, as well as of historians, Sanskritists and legal scholars.

"This book reconstructs the tantalizing tale of Sri Sabhapati Swami (ca. 1828-1923/4), today a little-known swami who was originally from Tamil Nadu in southern India, and historically contextualizes a fascinating type of yoga that Sabhapati claimed would lead to an experience of being "like a tree universally spread." The practical method of having this experience, in technical terms called the samadhi or "composure" of sivarajayoga or the "Royal yoga for siva," was published in English and multiple Indic languages and lavishly illustrated in diagrams on subtle and physical bodies. This book is the first book-length treatment on Sabhapati Swami, scholarly or otherwise, and uses critically-edited sources printed in Tamil, Devanagari, and Bengali scripts to reveal the expansion of his literature across South Asia and globally, the vast majority of which has never before been considered in any scholarly work to date. The book shows how intertwined Sabhapati's yoga is with historical Tamil saiva and Siddha movements, including the mythos of the rishi Agastya, and also with Hathayoga and mantra-based ritual. It also takes into account his and his followers' wrestling with the Victorian scientific worldview and their rationalization of Hindu philosophical discourses in the colonial period. Finally, the book demonstrates the extent to which Sabhapati's teachings were integrated into esoteric religious movements such as the Theosophical Society, the Thelema of Aleister Crowley, and New Thought, and suggests that a reappraisal of scholarship on the roots of yoga in these movements is long overdue"--

The land of temples is South India, the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It's been called the last surviving classical civilization, a land where there is room for temples large and small and time for rituals passed down for millennia. In four brief essays and two dozen evocative black-and-white photographs scholar and devotee Michael Steinberg takes readers into the inner sanctuaries of ancient temples and out again into the teeming streets of contemporary Chennai. A big book in a little package, his deeply personal story also sheds light on the enduring importance of a way of life that has its roots in the dawn of civilization itself.

The famous JyotirLinga of MahaakaaLeshwar is situated over the bank of the sacred river Shipra. Lord Omkaareshwar's temple is situated over an Island inside the river Narmadaa. On the other side of Narmada is the temple of Lord Maamaleshwar. Lord Baeidyanath's temple, situated in Deoghar. One of the old Tapovana also exists near Deoghar. This book talks in detail of all these deities, the places around them and their spiritual and scriptural significance.