Books in the South Asia Research series

This volume presents two examples of ovi, a genre typical of the oral literature of the Dhangar shepherds of theMarathi-language region of India. The extensive introduction discusses the literary art of the ovis and thecosmology, geography, society, administrative structures, economy, and values of their performers' world.

The Mahotsavavidhi, a twelfth-century Sanskrit text, provides detailed guidelines for a Saiva temple priest in performing a nine-day "great festival" for the god Siva. The author, Aghorasiva, is one of the most esteemed and influential authors in the Saiva Siddhanta school, and his lengthy work on ritual procedures, Kriyakramadyotika, (of which the Mahotsavavidhi is a part), is by all accounts the Agama work most employed by modern templepriests and pious Saivas in their practice of worship. Richard Davis''s translation of this important text is the first translation into a European language of any medieval work on temple festivals. Because the text was intended for an expert audience of working twelfth-century priests, Aghorasiva employs a highly technicalidiom. For that reason, Davis annotates his translation extensively with explanations and expansions drawn from other Agama works. There have been numerous studies of temple festivals and processions based on ethnographic observations and on recent historical data, but the historical study of this dramatic religious practice during earlier periods has relied on speculation. Davis''s groundbreaking volume will provide a new foundation for the study of the history of South Indian temple festivalsas a cultural practice.

This is a translation of a 12th century Sanskrit legal text, with the original text. The Dayabhaga was one of the most important texts in the history of Indian law. It is important because the British elevated it to prominence in their new colony in the early 19th century. This new translation makes this text available to those without Sanskrit.

Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India, and suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman -- and of the role of women in Indian religion and society.

Salomon surveys all the inscriptional material - documents written in ink on various surfaces, or carved into stone and metal, as well as seals - in the Indo-Aryan languages. He presents the entire corpus of these inscriptions in a way accessible to specialists in the field as well as non-specialists.

This edition of the early "Upanisads", the central scriptures of Hinduism, includes the complete Sanskrit text, as well as scholarly emendations and explanations of Patrick Olivelle's choices of particular readings. The volume also contains a concordance of the recensions of Brhadaranyaka Upanisad.

Offers a study of "Devnarayan ki par", along with an English translation of this Rajasthani oral narrative. Using the narrative, this book explores a range of questions relevant to the study of Indian folk culture and Hinduism as a whole: how is orality conceptualized and practiced? What is the relationship between spoken and visual signs?

The town of Deopatan, three kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, is above all famous for its main sanctum, the temple of Paśupati, the ''lord of the animals,'' a form of Śiva and the tutelary deity of the kings of Nepal since ancient times. By its name alone, the temple attracts thousands of pilgrims each year and has made itself known far beyond the Kathamndu Valley. However, for the dominant Newar population the town is by no means merely the seat ofŚiva or Paśupati. It is also a city of wild goddesses and other deities. Due to this tension between two strands of Hinduism - the pure, vegetarian Smarta Hinduism and the Newar Hinduism which implies alcohol and blood sacrifices - Śiva/Paśupati has more than once been in trouble, as the many festivals and rituals descripbed and analyzed in this book reveal. Deopatan is a contested field. Different deities, agents social groups, ritual specialists, and institutions are constantly seeking dominance, challenging and even fighting each other, thuscontributing to social and political dynamics and tensions that are indeed distinct in South Asia. It is these aspects on which Axel Michaels concentrates in this book.

Buddhist monks are almost always imagined as ascetic spiritual practitioners, indifferent to mundane concerns. In fact, however, like any other institution, a monastery must be governed and the burden of these administrative duties necessarily falls on monks. This raises the interesting question of the status of monastic administrators. Looked at in one light, they are at the top of the monastic hierarchy. From another perspective, however, they are divorced from themain purpose of monastic life. In this book, Jonathan Silk examines the way in which this question was debated in the formative years of Indian Buddhism. He shows how various texts reveal ambivalent and controversial attitudes towards monastic administrators.

"Manu's Code of Law" is an important text in the Sanskrit canon. It paints a picture of ancient Indian life. This volume assembles the text of Manu, including an apparatus containing the significant manuscript variants, along with a translation, notes, and an introduction on the structure, content, and socio-political context of the treatise.

Between 300 and 200 BCE, the concept and practice of dharma attained prominence across India. Both Buddhist and Brahmanical authors sought to clarify and classify their central concerns, and dharma proved a means of thinking through and articulating those concerns. Alf Hiltebeitel shows the different ways in which dharma is interpreted over time. His insightful study explores the diverse and changing signifcance of dharma in classical India in nine major dharmatexts, as well as two pieces of writing that have traditionally been considered minor.

This volume is the result of an international conference organized by the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas. The purpose of the conference as to bring together the world's leading Indologists representing a variety of disciplines to discuss and share recent research on hitherto neglected period of Indian history.

This in-depth study of the classical Hindi tradition brings Mughal-period court culture alive for an English readership. Busch draws on diverse perspectives from literary, social, and intellectual history and brings a major precolonial archive into dialogue with postcolonial theory.

This is the first dedicated English translation of the songs of the Bengali poet and mystical philosopher Lalan Sai to closely follow the original Bangla text, with all of its dialectical variations, and is here produced alongside the original text. Dr. Carol Salomon used multiple written and oral texts to arrive at a meaning as close as possible to the original works.