SUNY series in Hindu Studies

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Awakening a Living World on a Kūṭiyāṭṭam Stage

Explores the cultural dynamics of this ancient form of Sanskrit theater.

The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya

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

The Festival of Indra

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

Nine Nights of Power

Explores the rich diversity of narratives, rituals, and participants connected with one of the most important celebrations for Hindus in South Asia and in the diaspora.

Singing the Goddess into Place

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.

Many Mahābhāratas

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

Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds

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

The Other Rāma

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

Words of Destiny

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

The Science of Satyug

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

Himalayan Histories

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

Essays of a Lifetime

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

Empires between Islam and Christianity, 1500-1800

A wide-ranging consideration of early modern Muslim and Christian empires, covering the Iberian, Ottoman and Mughal worlds, including questions of political economy, images and representations, and historiography.

The Concept of Bharatavarsha and Other Essays

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.

Nine Nights of the Goddess

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

Text and Tradition in South India

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

Re-ending the Mahābhārata

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

The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena

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

Somatic Lessons

Looks at narrative in the history of ayurvedic medical literature and the perspectives on illness and patienthood that emerge.

Kāma's Flowers

Explores the transformation of Hindi poetry as it reflects a changing society during the period from 1885 to 1925.

Engaging South Asian Religions

Looks at Western understandings of South Asian religions and indigenous responses from pre-colonial to contemporary times.

Colonizing the Realm of Words

Details the transformation of Tamil literary culture that came with colonialism and the encounter with Western modernity.

The Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One

A study and translation of a tantric contemplative manual and the commentary on it.

Poems on Life and Love in Ancient India

The oldest surviving anthology of lyric poems from India, the Sattasai presents the many aspects of love and provides a realistic counterpart to the Kāmasūtra.

Tamil Geographies

How perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India.

The Encounter Never Ends

A reconsideration of the relationship between fieldwork and anthropological knowledge.

The Character of the Self in Ancient India

Explores the narratives and dialogues of the Upanisads and shows that these literary elements are central to an understanding of Upanishadic philosophy.

Gender and Story in South India

Indian women scholars present and discuss tales about women, bringing new insights about gender and the moral universe of the folk narrative.

God of Desire

Presents Kamadeva, the Hindu god of desire, in tales, art, and ritual. Also covers Kamadeva's appearance in Buddhist lore.

The Demon's Daughter

This sixteenth-century work has a modern sensibility, presenting characters' inner worlds and understanding love as the fullest realization of the individual.

Gurus in America

A fascinating look at Hindu gurus with significant followings in the United States.

Female Ascetics in Hinduism

Provides both a first-hand look at and an insightful analysis of a little-known world—that of female ascetics in India.

Women in Ochre Robes

Focuses on the lives of female Hindu ascetics and the significance of gender to the tradition of renunciation.

The Living and the Dead

Explores the social treatment of death in South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and other traditions. Includes material on women and marginalized groups.

Tales for the Dying

Explores death and dying in the Bhagavata-Purana and in the Indian religious imagination using insights from myth, semiotics, and depth psychology as well as the Indian commentarial tradition.

Popular Christianity in India

Explores the lived experience of Christianity in India.

Rapt in the Name

An introduction to the Ram bhakti tradition and a fascinating account of its practice among a group of Central Indian Untouchables.

Silence Unheard

Explores the experience of yoga in the Yogasutra of Patanjali.

Open Boundaries

Enlarges our understanding of Jainism, one of the oldest yet least-studied of the world's living religions, by challenging the standard scholarly portraits of both Jains and South Asian religion and culture.

Untouchable Pasts

Constructs a history of an untouchable and heretical community, the Satnamis of Central India.

Devoted to the Goddess

Examines the legendary life and poetic works of Ramprasad, the eighteenth-century Bengali devotee of the Goddess, whose songs were influential in his own time and remain popular today.

The Artful Universe

Provides an accessible introduction to the Vedic religious world by focusing on the role of divine and human imagination in sacred texts.

Literary India

This book analyzes a variety of materials from the Indian literary tradition. examining both its indigenous development and its relation to the West, and developing ideas from cultural criticism, literary theory, linguistics, and Indology.

Language and Style of the Vedic Ṛṣis

Elizarenkova, perhaps the greatest living scholar of the Rand certainly its greatest linguist, explains here the relationships between a very complicated grammatical system and the peculiarities of style ...

Authority, Anxiety, and Canon

Authority, Anxiety, and Canon elucidates a principle fundamental to Hinduism's self-understanding—the Veda—while at the same time examining the methodological issues of the role of canon in religious ...

Living Banaras

By focusing on contemporary popular religious traditions, the book represents a substantial contribution to the study of modern religious practices in Banaras, holy city of India. This book offers in-depth, ...

The Eternal Food

The interdisciplinary approaches presented here investigate food in India and Sri Lanka for its wide ranging cultural meaning and uses. The authors examine food in religious and literary contexts, where ...

The Myths of Narasiṁha and Vāmana

The Sanskrit Puranas and epics are replete with stories of the avatars, incarnations of the god Visnu in various forms to rid the universe of malevolent forces and to restore the proper cosmic balance. ...

The Disguises of the Demon

Among the most ancient deities of South Asia, the yaksha straddle the boundaries between popular and textual traditions in both Hinduism and Buddhism and both benevolent and malevolent facets. As a figure ...

Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das's Kabir Parachai

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 ...

Encountering the Goddess

Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the Sanskrit of this fifteen-hundred-year-old text. Drawing on field work and literary evidence, he illuminates the process by which the Devī-Māhātmya ...

Translating the Orient

This book examines the emplotment of India in the Western literary imagination. Basing her discussion on the reception of an emblematic Sanskrit text, Kālidāsa's Śākuntala, Figueira studies how and ...

The Triumph of the Goddess

The authors of the Devī-Bhāgavata Purāna endeavored to demonstrate the superiority of the Devī over competing masculine deities, and to articulate in new ways the manifold nature of the Goddess. Brown's ...

Āṇṭāḷ and Her Path of Love

This book is a translation and study of the poems of a ninth-century woman saint and mystic. The Introduction is designed to make the translations accessible to a non-specialist audience, while the Notes ...

The Ritual of Battle

This book is a study of India's great epic, the Mahābhārata, against the background of Indo-European myth, epic, and ritual. It builds upon the pioneering studies in these areas by Georges Dumezil and ...

The Vedic Origins of Karma

In this book, the author seeks access to Karma's origins by following several clues suggested by the doctrine's earliest formulation in the Upanistexts (circa 600-500 B.C.) These clues lead back to the ...