Hinduism
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Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott (Author) 
Hinduism is practised by nearly eighty per cent of India's population, and by some seventy million people outside India. In this Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott offers a succinct and authoritative overview of this major religion, and analyses the challenges facing it in the twenty-first century. add to cauldron £8.99 
Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott (Author) Series:Very Short Introductions Format: Paperback / softback 176 pages, 14 black and white halftones Publisher:Oxford University Press Imprint:Oxford University Press Edition:2 Revised edition ISBN:9780198745549 Published:25 Feb 2016 Dimensions:172 x 103 x 10 (mm) Pub. Country:United Kingdom Country of Origin:GB Description Hinduism is practised by nearly eighty per cent of India's population, and by some seventy million people outside India. In this Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott offers a succinct and authoritative overview of this major religion, and analyses the challenges facing it in the twenty-first century. She discusses key preoccupations of Hinduism such as the centrality of the Veda as religious texts, the role of Brahmins, gurus, and storytellers in the transmission of divine truths, and the cultural and moral importance of epics such as the Ramayana. In this second edition Knott considers the impact of changes in technology and the flourishing of social media on Hinduism, and looks at the presence of Hinduism in popular culture, considering pieces such as Sita Sings the Blues. She also analyses recent developments in India, and the impact issues such as Hindu nationalism and the politicization of Hinduism have on Hindus worldwide. |
The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran (Author) 
The Bhagavad Gita, "The Song of the Lord," is probably the best known of all the Indian scriptures, and Easwaran's clear, accessible translation is the best-selling edition. add to cauldron £9.99 
The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran (Author)Series:Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality Format: Paperback / softback 296 pages, Illustrations, unspecified Publisher:Nilgiri Press Imprint:Nilgiri Press Edition:Second Edition ISBN:9781586380199 Published:28 Jun 2007 Dimensions:129 x 206 x 23 (mm) Pub. Country:United States Country of Origin:CA Description The Bhagavad Gita, "The Song of the Lord," is probably the best known of all the Indian scriptures, and Easwaran's clear, accessible translation is the best-selling edition. The Gita opens dramatically, with prince Arjuna collapsing in anguish on the brink of a war that he doesn't want to fight. Arjuna has lost his way on the battlefield of life, and turns to his spiritual guide, Sri Krishna, the Lord himself. Krishna replies in 700 verses of sublime instruction on living and dying, loving and working, and the nature of the soul. This book includes an extensive and very readable introduction, which places the Gita in its historical setting, explains the key concepts, and brings out the universality of its teachings. Individual chapter introductions prepare the reader for the main themes, and notes, a Sanskrit glossary, and an index are included. Although the battlefield is a perfect backdrop, for Easwaran the Gita's subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage. Arjuna's dilemma is acutely modern, and the Gita's message remains as relevant for us now as it was for ancient India. |
Kamasutra by Mallanaga Vatsyayana (Author) 
'When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full motion, there is no textbook at all, and no order.' The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. add to cauldron £9.99 
Kamasutra by Mallanaga Vatsyayana (Author)Format: Paperback / softback 304 pages Publisher:Oxford University Press Imprint:Oxford University Press ISBN:9780199539161 Published:26 Mar 2009 Dimensions:196 x 129 x 15 (mm) Pub. Country:United Kingdom Country of Origin:GB Description 'When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full motion, there is no textbook at all, and no order.' The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is about the art of living - about finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs - and also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century CE. It combines an encyclopaedic coverage of all imaginable aspects of sex with a closely observed sexual psychology and a dramatic, novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation, and disentanglement. Best known in English through the highly mannered, padded, and inaccurate nineteenth-century translation of Sir Richard Burton, the text is presented here in an entirely new translation into clear, vivid, sexually frank English, together with three commentaries: translated excerpts from the earliest and most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) and from a twentieth-century Hindi commentary, and explanatory notes by the two translators. |
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Mahabharata : A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti (Author) , Vinay Dharwadker (Afterword By) , Wendy Doniger (Foreword By) 
The Mahabharata, originally composed some two thousand years ago is an epic masterpiece, "a hundred times more interesting" than the Iliad and the Odyssey (Wendy Doniger), it is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love and spiritual freedom. add to cauldron £16.99 
Mahabharata : A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti (Author) , Wendy Doniger (Foreword By) , Vinay Dharwadker (Afterword By) Format: Paperback / softback 928 pages, Map Publisher:WW Norton & Co Imprint:WW Norton & Co ISBN:9780393352498 Published:5 Feb 2016 Dimensions:199 x 139 x 41 (mm) Pub. Country:United States Country of Origin:US Description The Mahabharata, originally composed some two thousand years ago is an epic masterpiece, "a hundred times more interesting" than the Iliad and the Odyssey (Wendy Doniger), it is a timeless work that evokes a world of myth, passion and warfare while exploring eternal questions of duty, love and spiritual freedom. A seminal Hindu text, it is one of the most important and influential works in the history of world civilisation. This new English retelling, innovatively composed in blank verse, covers all the books of the Mahabharata. It masterfully captures the beauty, excitement and profundity of the original Sanskrit poem as well as its magnificent architecture and extraordinary scope. |
The Hindus : An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger (Author) 
An engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions. add to cauldron £20.99 
The Hindus : An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger (Author) Format: Paperback / softback 800 pages, 4 maps, 12 black and white illustrations Publisher:Oxford University Press Imprint:Oxford University Press ISBN:9780199593347 Published:30 Sep 2010 Dimensions:230 x 157 x 59 (mm) Pub. Country:United Kingdom Country of Origin:GB Description An engrossing and definitive narrative account of history and myth that offers a new way of understanding one of the world's oldest major religions, The Hindus elucidates the relationship between recorded history and imaginary worlds. Hinduism does not lend itself easily to a strictly chronological account: many of its central texts cannot be reliably dated even within a century; its central tenets karma, dharma, to name just two arise at particular moments in Indian history and differ in each era, between genders, and caste to caste; and what is shared among Hindus is overwhelmingly outnumbered by the things that are unique to one group or another. Yet the greatness of Hinduism - its vitality, its earthiness, its vividness - lies precisely in many of those idiosyncratic qualities that continue to inspire debate today. Wendy Doniger is one of the foremost scholars of Hinduism in the world. With her inimitable insight and expertise Doniger illuminates those moments within the tradition that resist forces that would standardize or establish a canon. Without reversing or misrepresenting the historical hierarchies, she reveals how Sanskrit and vernacular sources are rich in knowledge of and compassion toward women and lower castes; how they debate tensions surrounding religion, violence, and tolerance; and how animals are the key to important shifts in attitudes toward different social classes. The Hindus brings a fascinating multiplicity of actors and stories to the stage to show how brilliant and creative thinkers - many of them far removed from Brahmin authors of Sanskrit texts - have kept Hinduism alive in ways that other scholars have not fully explored. In this unique and authoritative account, debates about Hindu traditions become platforms from which to consider the ironies, and overlooked epiphanies, of history. |
Ka by Roberto Calasso (Author) 
'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times'. add to cauldron £10.99 
Ka by Roberto Calasso (Author) Series:Penguin Modern Classics Format: Paperback / softback 432 pages Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd Imprint:Penguin Classics ISBN:9780241399224 Published:25 Jul 2019 Dimensions:129 x 196 x 25 (mm) Pub. Country:United Kingdom Country of Origin:GB Description 'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times'. Who?' - or 'ka' - is the question that runs through Roberto Calasso's retelling of the stories of the minds and gods of India; the primordial question that continues to haunt human existence. From the Rigveda to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata to the life of Buddha, this book delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature to re-imagine the ancient Indian myths and how they resonate through space and time. 'The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written' Wendy Doniger. 'Dazzling, complex, utterly original ...Ka is his masterpiece' Sunday Times. |