Re-imagining South Asian Religions. Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt

Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hardcover. near fine. Octavo. xxv, (1), 302pp. Index. Pictorial boards with lilac/gray spine lettered in white. Illustrated with several text figures (some in color). A fine but ex-library copy (with minimal markings; i.e. rubber stamps on title page & bottom of text block).

Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences. Moving away from canonical texts, established authorities, and received historiography, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological perspectives including philosophy, history, hermeneutics, migration and diaspora studies, ethnography, performance studies, lived religion approaches, and aesthetics. Reflecting a balance of theory and substantive content, the papers in this volume call into question key critical terms, challenge established frames of reference, and offer innovative and alternative interpretations of South Asian ways of knowing and being. (Publisher)

Contents: Acknowledgments; List of Contributors; List of Figures; Preface and Introduction: Re-imagining South Asian Religions; Part I Reflections on the Field; Traditional Sanskrit and Modern Scholarship:A Personal Journey; A Modest Retrospective; Part II New Orientations, Globalization, and Pedagogy; Re-Imagining Sikhi ('Sikhness') in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a Paradigm Shift in Sikh Studies; The Politics of Perspectivalism: Anekāntavādaas a Counter-anthropologising Strategy; Rewriting the Hindu Traditions from Global Perspectives.; Pedagogyin the Janam-sakhis: 'Teaching Texts' Moving Past Old CategoriesPartIII Performance and Memory; Re-imagining Religious History through Women's Song Performance at the Kāmākhyā Temple Site; Tibetan Buddhist Monastic Performance: Ritual Practice and Cultural Preservation in the Tibetan Diaspora; 'Performance' and 'Lived Religion' Approaches as New Ways of 'Re-imagining' Sikh Studies; Part IV History, Encounter, and Exchange; Re-Imagining Theosophy through Canadian Art: Theosophical Influences on the Painting and Writingof Lawren Harris; Re-imagining Hindu Beginnings in Canada.; The Indianness of Christianity: The Task of Re-imaginationM. K. Gandhi and the Sikhs: Violence, Religious Identity, and Competing Modernities; Index.

Volume 141 in the Brill's series, "Numen Book Series. Studies in the History of Religions."