South India is a land of many temples and shrines, each of which has preserved a local tradition of myth, folklore, and ritual. As one of the first Western scholars to explore this tradition in detail, David Shulman brings together the stories associated with these sacred sites and places them in the context of the greater Hindu religious tradition. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The land of temples is South India, the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It's been called the last surviving classical civilization, a land where there is room for temples large and small and time for rituals passed down for millennia. In four brief essays and two dozen evocative black-and-white photographs scholar and devotee Michael Steinberg takes readers into the inner sanctuaries of ancient temples and out again into the teeming streets of contemporary Chennai. A big book in a little package, his deeply personal story also sheds light on the enduring importance of a way of life that has its roots in the dawn of civilization itself.