Preface
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Nowhere is this old adage more
appropriate than in the development of this volume. The study of religion
in India has become the work of a vast array of specialists who have carved
the subcontinent into sub-regions or eras. Theories have come and gone as
to how Indian religion should be studied. Indeed, to attempt to put into a
single brief volume a “history” of Indian religion that will be accessible to
the beginning student has proven to be an enterprise that cannot possibly
do justice to the complex developments in South Asia or to the scholars who
study them.
Nonetheless, this book has emerged out of years of teaching and listening
- listening, on the one hand, to the concerns of undergraduates beginning
the process of understanding Indian religions, but also, on the other hand,
listening to scholars, Indian savants, and hundreds of regular folks in the
villages and cities of the Indian subcontinent. My intention in these pages
is to provide a skeletal panorama of the development of India’s rich religious
heritage, starting from its prehistory and working into the present.
Certain themes and concerns that have engaged me for some years spiral
their way through these pages. I have become convinced, for example, that
one of the most fundamental ways religious persons in India have expressed
their identities, passed on their “traditions,” and made manifest their
religious orientations is through their ritual life. So, time and again, the
reader will find reference to religion that is enacted and embodied, perhaps
more than to the religion expressed in conceptual terms. Another concern
has been to reflect the transnational character of India’s religious landscape - to suggest how the subcontinent has been informed by currents, both
indigenous and external, and, how in turn, the subcontinent has impacted
the rest of the globe.
Yet another concern has been to depict something of the enormous
diversity and plurality in India’s religious experience, and especially how
religious minorities have been transplanted to and grow in India, as well as
spawned therein. The interactions between these communities teach us
much about the way people do or can interact with those with alternative
commitments. I have also tried on occasion to weave in the voices of those