Preface and Acknowledgments
The purpose of this volume is to make available to a wide audience some of the
most recent scholarship on the religions of South Asia within the broad cate-
gory of Hinduism. While many scholars here would wish to place that category
under scrutiny, there are nevertheless continuities of tradition and common fea-
tures that have persisted over very long periods in South Asia. The intention of
the book is to cover the major historical trajectories of the traditions that have
led to Hinduism and to present accounts of recent developments of Hinduism
along with some of the contemporary traditions that comprise it. There are, of
course, problems in applying the term “religion” to the history of South Asia,
implying as it does in the West a distinction between religion and governance or
between religion and science, which have not been universal distinctions. For
this reason the book includes an account of historical developments in Indian
science along with discussions of philosophy, religion, and politics.
The book contains essays both about the past – stretching back to the time
of the composition of the Veda – and about the contemporary situation. Text-
historical, anthropological, philosophical, theological, and cultural-critical
approaches are therefore represented. This is in line with the broad belief that
textual study can contribute to anthropology in South Asia and anthropology
can illumine texts. And tools derived from more recent cultural criticism – espe-
cially feminism and postcolonial discourse – reveal dimensions to history and
the study of texts that would not otherwise be seen. In these pages we also find
theological and philosophical engagement with Hindu traditions. There are
many ways of studying past cultures and civilizations, but arguably the best
means of gaining access to the thoughts and feelings of people in the past and
the institutions they inhabited is through the texts they produced. There has
been discussion in recent years about the rematerialization of culture and the
need to examine material culture in history. While archaeology, epigraphy, and
the history of art are undoubtedly important, the emphasis of most scholars in