Explores the music of the Tibetan Chöd tradition.

A literary and historical investigation into an ancient Indian religious thinker, tracing his rise in importance in the Hindu tradition.

A comparative study of wonder in South Asian religions.

Presents Tantra from an ethnographic vantage point, through a series of case studies grounded in diverse settings across contemporary Asia.

Offers a portrait of India as seen through the eyes of a sensitive, sharp-eyed, and witty young scholar in the early 1960s.

Details the textual and performative history of the South Asian festival of Indra and its role in the development of classical Hinduism.

Reveals how the persona of India's most famous emperor was constantly reinvented in ancient times to suit a variety of social visions, political agendas, and moral purposes.

A richly scholarly yet accessible and imaginative account of society in the time of the Buddha.

Contextualizes Sabha Theatre historically, politically, and aesthetically, revealing how it expresses a Tamil Brahmin identity that is at once traditional and modern.

Examines the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the durability of Portuguese rule.

Rejects Hindu nationalism and pluralist secularism in favor of a revitalized politics of Indian federalism.

Examines the place of history in the political thought of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the key architects of modern Hindu nationalism.

Chronicles the astonishing and counterintuitive spread of Christianity among a group of previously isolated tribes in a remote and hilly part of Northeastern India.

Documents how the premodern techniques of narrating the past in South Asia were deeply transformed by colonial modernity, resulting in newer forms of truth-telling within the Sikh community.

Describes the profound social impact of the overthrow of the Thai absolute monarchy in 1932, and explains the importance of democracy in a country long known for authoritarian politics.

Explores how a folk ballad in southern India transforms the landscape and embeds the deities that are its subject within the social worlds of their devotees.

Examines the relationship between Mughal political culture and the two dominant strains of Islam's Sufi traditions in South Asia: one centered around orthodoxy, the other focusing on a more accommodating and mystical spirituality.

A major contribution to the study of South Asian literature, offering a landmark view of Mahābhārata studies.

Examines English-language Indian newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century and their role in simultaneously sustaining and probing British colonial governance.

Examines the key role of a hagiographer within a charismatic religious movement.

Unique interdisciplinary analysis of gendered and racialized economies of care in South Asia and the Americas.

Essays on modern Indian history and the legacy of Partition.

A systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma (“Rāma with the Axe”), an avatára of Viṣṇu with a much darker reputation.

Broadens the parameters of religious studies by accounting for material acts that help shape religious worlds.

Critical essays on the transnational Kashmiri-American poet.

The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement.

The first book to offer a detailed framework, a fine-grained history, and an analytically nuanced understanding of one of the rarest branches of Hindu worship.

Sets out the challenges presented to Muslim societies by Western dominance over the past two hundred years, and explores Muslim responses, particularly in the context of South Asia.

A comprehensive and theory-rich investigation of the history and philosophy of yoga, from its Indian origins to the contemporary context.

Investigates the professional practices of astrologers in urban India and their popularity among the educated middle and upper classes.

Uses a cross-national comparison of Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Hong Kong to develop strategies universities should employ to strengthen democracy and resist fascism.

Examines representations of surplus enjoyment in postcolonial literature and film to focus on self-other relations rather than difference.

An interdisciplinary dialogue with Shūsaku Endō’s last novel offering new perspectives on Japanese culture, Christian doctrine, Hindu spiritualities, and Buddhist worldviews.

Groundbreaking analysis of how colonialism created new conceptual categories and spatial forms that reshaped rural societies.

An accessible introduction to the centrality of word, chant, and song in the Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Sikh traditions.

Explains the Hindi novel’s role in anticipating and creating the story of middle-class modernity and modernization in North India.

Argues for postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice.

Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga.

Reveals how the expanding world-system entangled the non-western world in global economies, yet did so in ways that were locally articulated, varied, and, often, non-European in their expression.

Analyzes the breadth of representations of the mythic figure of Māra in Buddhism to reveal how closely tied such narratives are to the social and historical concerns of Buddhist communities.

A distillation of the historian’s finest writings on modern Indian historical themes.

A rare look at the history of Himalayan peasant society and the relationship between culture and environment in the Himalayas.

This exploration of key terms related to social and political order, found in early Indian texts, challenges the idea of a unified ancient India and a unified national identity at that time.

Presents rare biographies of traditional Indian scholars during the nineteenth century, a critical moment of transition for the Indian intellectual tradition.

Explores the contemporary nature and the diverse narratives, rituals, and performances of the Navarātri Festival.

Adds new voices to the feminist conversation and brings a rich variety of diverse approaches to Buddhist women’s identities, “the feminine,” and Buddhist feminism.

Challenges the monolithic view of Hinduism in the nineteenth century, and instead offers a vision of India that contains a rich multiplicity of Hinduisms, women’s stories, and cultural histories.

Captures how Indian Protestant Christians negotiate their religious and cultural identities within the Indian diaspora.

Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends.

Explores how religious travel in India is transforming religious identities and self-constructions.

Short stories that reflect the complexities of contemporary Tibetan life, written by Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden.

Essays on Telugu and South Indian literature and culture by distinguished Telugu scholar Narayana Rao.

Illuminates the contradictions that emerge within conscious capitalism initiatives that are designed to empower women.

First work to address the legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and his influence on the development of religious studies and Islamic studies in the twentieth century.

A collection of Raj’s groundbreaking ethnographic studies of “vernacular” Catholic traditions in Tamil Nadu, India.

Offers a fresh perspective on the Mahābhārata based on an exploration of its ending, the Svargārohaṇa parvan.

Examines various Tibetan interpretations of the Uttaratantra, the most authoritative Indic commentary on buddha-nature.

Explores why authoritarian regimes bother to hold elections.

Examines how embodiment is conceived and experienced in South Asian religions.

Uses two case studies to demonstrate how neoliberal reforms in India have de-democratized labor politics.

Explores the activities and political personas of women activists in Shiv Sena, a militant Indian political party.

Creates a new space for hybrid feminist analysis of Asian Muslim women’s lives.

Presents multifaceted aspects of Asian Muslim women’s lives and agencies.

An anthology of primary texts on meditation and contemplative prayer from a wide range of religious traditions.

Argues that Indian cinema’s deep nineteenth-century past continues to play a vital role in its twenty-first-century present.

A critical examination of the impact of BRAC, the world's largest NGO, on the status of women in Southern Bangladeshi cultural life.

A wide-ranging analysis of the Mokṣopāya, the Indian literary classic that teaches through storytelling how to enjoy an active, successful, worldly life in a spiritually enlightened way.

Explores how objects shape the worlds of religious participants across a range of South Asian traditions.

Discusses the journey of Buddhist ideas on awareness and personhood from India to China.

Thorough exploration of the distinct culture of the Mappila Muslims of Kerala, India.

Discusses Hindu Advaita Vedānta as a philosophy of social justice for the modern world.