In Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, anthropologist and journalist Jonah Blank gives a new perspective to this Hindu classic -- retelling the ancient tale while following the course of Rama's journey through present-day India and Sri Lanka. Ultimately, Blank's journey -- like that of Lord Rama -- evolves into a quest: to understand the chimerical essence of India itself, in all its overwhelming beauty and paradox. "Quite possibly the most perceptive book that I have come across on India since the British Raj ended." -- Pranay Gupte, The Washington Post"What Hollywood attempted on the big screen with casts of thousands in Gandhi and A Passage to India, Jonah Blank has achieved in 350 stylistically rich pages." -- Los Angeles Times"This informative and entertaining book is something to be thankful for." -- The New York Times Book Review

    In the book, Ayodhya retains its importance, but it does not occupy the center of discussion. In dealing with its subject, it exercises complete fidelity to truth; unlike secularist and Marxist writers, it does not believe in re-writing and fabricating history.

    Gods disguised as beggars and beasts, animals enacting Machiavellian intrigues, sagacious jesters and magical storytellers, wise counselors and foolish kings--all inhabit a fabular world, yet one that is also firmly grounded in everyday life. Here is an indispensable guide to India's ageless folklore tradition.With black-and-white illustrations throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    Barks rescues them from obscurity and restores their author to her rightful place among the greatest mystical poets.

    Here, the distinct yet complementary voices of Mother Teresa and Brother Roger honor prayer as the wellspring of love and compassion and illuminate it as an integral part of everday life."In reality, there is only one true prayer, only one substantial prayer: Christ himself," writes Mother Teresa. "There is only one voice of Christ. Prayer is oneness with Christ."Mother Teresa and Brother Roger first met in 1976 in Taize, France. Several months later, in Calcutta, they collaborated on what became the first of several joint appeals for Christian reconciliation. Their mutual agenda is clear -- a passionate commitment to the alleviation of human suffering and the use of prayer as a source of comfort, strength and communion with God.In their work and travels, both Mother Teresa and Brother Roger perceived a great hunger for guidance in prayer. The result is this inspirational text of short commentaries on how to use prayer in daily life. Comprised of 12 chapters, each written half by Brother Roger, Seeking the Heart of God&nbsp is their wise and lyrical offering to those whose hunger is that of the spirit.

    Soldiers, mercenaries, free-booters. Europeans all, braving the heat and dust of India. They fought for wealth, for glory, and for sheer fun. Their glorious and inglorious exploits are full of thrill, romance, and violence. Ruskin Bond has recreated the turbulent and colourful India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the soldiers of fortune strutting across the subcontinent. The saga of their lives and loves in Delhi, Jaipur, Aligarh, Sardhana, and Lucknow reads stranger than fiction.

    

    

    The revolutionary social movement launched by their leader Dr Ambedkar was paralleled by a wave of writing that exploded in poetry, prose, fiction and autobiography of a raw vigour, maturity, depth and richness of content, and shocking in its exposition of the bitterness of their experiences. One is jolted, too, by the quality of writing by a group denied access for long ages to any literary tradition. This important collection is the first anthology of Dalit literature. The writers more than eighty of them—presented here in English translations, are nearly all of the most prominent figures in Marathi Dalit literature, who have contributed to this unique phenomenon.

    This book has greatly influenced Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi,whose many books are best sellers on amazon.com

    India's 'problem state' of the 1950s has become 'the Kerala model'. The collapse of a matrilineal social structure and a rigid caste system contributed to widespread politicization. Women retained a circumscribed but influential position in social life. The result is an instructive analysis for students of politics, development policy and women's issues.

    The author finds it efficacious to combat social and political upheavals which are brought about by prolonged political revolutions, associated with autocratic oppression and economic deprivation. This second of two volumes starts with a brief discussion of the mystical philosophy of Ibn Arabi. The work then deals with the Qadiriyya, Shattariyya, Naqshbandiyya and the Chichtiyya orders. It also analyses the role of Indian sufis in the wider Islamic world.

    This instructional guidebook, used by the world's largest population of Muslims, is a vital source for those interested in modern Indian social and intellectual history, in Islamic reform, and in conceptions of gender and women's roles.The Bihishti Zewar was written in northern India in the early 1900s by a revered Muslim scholar and spiritual guide, Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi (1864-1943), to instruct Muslim girls and women in religious teachings, proper behavior, and prudent conduct of their everyday lives. In so doing, it sets out the core of a reformist version of Islam that has become increasingly prominent across Muslim societies during the past hundred years. Throughout the work, nothing is more striking than the extent to which the book takes women and men as essentially the same, in contrast to European works directed toward women at this time.Its rich descriptions of the everyday life of the relatively privileged classes in turn-of-the-century north India provide information on issues of personality formation as well as on family life, social relations, household management, and encounters with new institutions and inventions. Barbara Metcalf has carefully selected those sections of the Bihishti Zewar that best illustrate the themes of reformist thought about God, the person, society, and gender. She provides a substantial introduction to the text and to each section, as well as detailed annotations.

    Each book in the World Religions and Ecology series deals with the teachings, beliefs, history and present-day attitudes and contribution of a particular faith to the environment.

    

    1337) and his disciples. This second edition has a preface in which Ernst details the advances in the study of Sufism since the appearnance of this path-breaking book.

    In a series of mishaps, he searches for the perfect name for himself. A story for every immigrant or child of immigrants who struggles to be an American.

    

    Tracing its evolution, he shows how Hindu art has come to embrace widely varying styles, reflecting differences between regions from Nepal to Afghanistan, from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh.

    Historians are identified ...according to whether one is a 'subaltern' or not.' The Telegraph

    Taken together, the essays suggest that a much wider range of socio-cultural practices must be taken into account if we wish to understand how the world of dominated groups is constrained, modified and conditioned by power relations.Topics range from the form of resistance represented by the lifestyle of the courtesans of Lucknow (Veena Oldenberg), to the interaction between overt and indirect resistance by millworkers of Bombay (Raj Chandavarkar), and the indirect way of influencing political events exercised by merchants who did not want to appear dominant. Unconventional sources and methods have been used to supplement traditional archival research, such as the analysis of three forms of an origin myth to illustrate the ways in which the very act of narrativizing an event automatically provides contestation (Gyan Prakash).

    Lewis Rowell reconstructs the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as a thematic analysis and interpretation of India's magnificent musical heritage. In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music theorists, and Indologists.

    This unique selection of the heart-rending expression in prose and poetry by contemporary Dalit poets are passionate protests of the rejected.