Every day millions of Tamil women in southeast India wake up before dawn to create a kōlam, an ephemeral ritual design made with rice flour, on the thresholds of homes, businesses and temples. This thousand-year-old ritual welcomes and honors Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and alertness, and Bhudevi, the goddess of the earth. Created by hand with great skill, artistry, and mathematical precision, the kolam disappears in a few hours, borne away by passing footsteps and hungry insects. This is th...
Includes brief biographies of Aghoris.
Hindu Ritual at the Margins explores Hindu forms of ritual activity in a variety of "marginal" contexts. The contributors collectively examine ritual practices in diaspora; across gender, ethnic, social, and political groups; in film, text, and art; in settings where ritual itself or direct discussion of ritual is absent; in contexts that create new opportunities for traditionally marginalized participants or challenge the received tradition; and via theoretical perspectives that have been under...
Belonging and Believing: My Hindu Family (Belonging and Believing:)
by Gill Vaisey
Re-envisioning Siva Nataraja
Re-envisioning Siva Nataraja. A Multidisciplinary Perspective offers new insights into the dancing Siva as icon and concept. Each of the seven essays in this volume addresses an aspect of the Nataraja (a specific form of the dancing Siva) that has been until now untouched by scholars, or one for which the research is here moved substantially forward. Through the use of hitherto unexplored materials - murals, prints, icons, Sanskrit iconographic and ritual texts, Tamil inscriptions, and the analy...
Durga Puja, Lakshmi Puja, Saraswati Puja, Navratri Puja
by Santhi Sivakumar
The Power of the Sacred Name (Library of Perennial Philosophy)
by V. Raghavan
Throughout the world, and encompassing all of the great religious traditions, repeating or singing a sacred name is a fundamental spiritual practice. For millions of people, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu, invoking a sacred name is an integral part of prayer and daily life. This collection of writings by renowned Indian scholar, V. Raghavan, examines the lives and contributions of the main exponents of the tradition in India, including Mahatma Gandhi, and Guru Nanak, the founde...
The beneficial effect of practising yoga is well-cited and further evident in its phenomenal growth in recent years. The ancient philosophy behind yoga practice, however, is less well known in the west. In this spiritual book, the authors introduce the wisdom of yoga that leads to a way of life that is at least 5,000 years old in India. The word 'yoga' means union, and the teachings of yoga convey a union on all levels of being as the person is at one with itself, with the divine, and with natur...
Hanuman Chalisa Legacy Book - Endowment of Devotion (Legacy Book - Endowment of Devotion)