Essays on Religion Literature and Law

Essays on Religion Literature and Law

By- Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer

Heidrun Bruckner, Anne Feldhaus, Aditya Malik (eds.)

The present volume contains fourteen selected papers in English by the late G.-D. Sontheimer and follow up on his earlier volume King of Hunters, Warriors, and Shephers: Essays on Khandoba (Delhi 1997). The articles chosen for publication here pan a wide thematic and temporal range and will be of interest to students of Hinduism. The volume contains essays on the juristic personality of Hindu deities, the history and religion of pastoral groups in the Deccan and the interdependence of folk and scriptural religion. The articles reflect Sontheimer’s multidisciplinary approach, combining the methodologies of philosophy, anthropology, history, archaeology, epigraphy and iconography. Three other articles, illustrated by over a hundred photographs, focus on hero and sati-stones of the Deccan and Western India. Sonteimer identified the worship of heroes and satis as an important element of folk religion. He analyses the memorial stones in the context of other historical, social and religious references, physical ecology and literary sources. Yet another set of articles deals with aspects of oral literature. Two papers can be considered building blocks for a model of Hinduism that was finally worked out in ‘Hinduism- The Five Components and their Interaction’ (1989), the article which concludes the present volume.

Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer died in 1992. He was Professor of Indian Religion and Philosophy at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany.

Heidrun Bruckner is Professor of Indology and South Asian Studies at the University of Wurzurg.

Anne Feldhaus is Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University.

Aditya Malik is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

ISBN  81-7304-521-6    2004   468p.   Rs.755/ pounds 65

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