Books in the Cambridge Studies in Religious Traditions series

A lively and innovative exploration of the traditional Indian religions and cultures, by a leading scholar.

Recent immigrant Christians from India are changing the face of American Christianity. This is a comprehensive study of these Christians, their churches, and their adaptation. Williams reveals some of the reverse effects on churches and institutions in India.

Through a careful analysis of the primary texts, Jacobs conducts a thorough survey of some of the most important instances where the individual is discussed in the Jewish religious tradition.

This study draws on textual and archaeological evidence to examine the place of relic veneration in the history of South Asian Buddhism. By analysing the abstract ideas, emotional orientations, and ritualized behaviours centred on the Buddha's material remains, the author contributes to the 'rematerializing' of Buddhism presently under way among Western scholars.

The book makes an significant contribution to comparative theology, and explores the wide-ranging implications of a religious symbol whose potency is perennial, cross-cultural, and of continuing contemporary importance.

In this book, Julia Ching offers a magisterial survey of over four thousand years of Chinese civilisation through an examination of the relationship between kingship and mysticism. Lucidly written, the book will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand how today's China continues to draw on its past.

Complete account of Siva's Dance of Bliss, which is based on a Sanskrit poem written by Umapati Sivacarya about 1300 AD. It deals with the famous Chola Nataraja bronze - the best-known Hindu image - the key location of Siva's Dance in south India, and the temple of Cidambaram. With thirty illustrations.

This book discusses nirvana, Buddhist utopias, textuality and the study of premodern civilizations. By setting nirvana in the wider category of Buddhist Felicities and integrating Buddhist texts with South Asian and World history, Steve Collins has developed an interesting approach to the the question: what is nirvana?

This book is the first to engage Zen Buddhism philosophically on crucial issues from a perspective that is informed by the traditions of western philosophy and religion. While deeply sympathetic to the Zen tradition, it raises serious questions about the kinds of claims that can be made on its behalf.

This work is a critical interpretation of Sikh literature from a feminist perspective, and puts a new interpretation on a relatively unexplored religious tradition, while reversing the predominantly androcentric hermeneutics which has prevailed in Sikh scholarship.

Tessa Bartholomeusz explores the relationship between female world-renunciation in Buddhist Sri Lanka and attitudes about women and the religious vocation more generally. A lively history of Buddhist female renouncers on the island is combined with insights derived from the experiences of modern Buddhist women.

This book highlights the distinctive and unfamiliar ways in which diverse religious traditions understand the 'body', and raises to greater consciousness some of the assumptions and problems of contemporary attitudes. It is a rich source for comparative studies of the 'body', and of its relation to society and the divine.

In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people?

This book highlights the distinctive and unfamiliar ways in which diverse religious traditions understand the 'body', and raises to greater consciousness some of the assumptions and problems of contemporary attitudes. It is a rich source for comparative studies of the 'body', and of its relation to society and the divine.