Lajjagauri is perhaps one of India's oldest goddesses with images of her in South Asia dating back to the Indus Civilisation c. 3,000 to 1,500 BC. Her devotees can be traced back even earlier to the Ukraine c. 10,000 BCE. In India, new finds continue to expand the geographical spread of Lajjagauri's devotees, most recently to Odisa. Dhere's work on Lajjagauri is based on a tireless pursuit of her image throughout western India. In contrast to the other thousands of Indian goddesses whose images are super abundant, Lajjagauri has become more reclusive as other deities have risen. This work by the towering Marathi cultural specialist Ramcandra Cintaman Dhere is a unique and important study, painstakingly and lovingly translated here by Dr Jayant Bapat.

Hindu Diasporas presents the histories and religious traditions of Hindus with a South Asian ancestral background living outside of South Asia. Hinduism is a global religion with a significant presence in many countries throughout the world. The most important cause of this global expansion is migration. This book presents and analyses the most important of the geographies, migration histories, religious traditions and developments, rituals, places, institutions, and representations of Hinduism in the diasporas, capturing some of the great plurality of Hindu religious traditions. The first part of the book concentrates on the major regions in the world in which Hindu diasporas are found. The main focus is the modern period, but the book discusses also the possibility of premodern Hindu diasporas in Southeast Asia. The second part focuses on specific central themes such as Vaishnava, Shaiva, and Shakta traditions in diasporas, temples, and traditions of sacred sites and pilgrimage outside of South Asia, Hindutva organizations and the diaspora, as well as relations between Hindu diasporas and new followers of Hindu traditions. The chapters in this book show some of the global presence of the Hindu diasporas and some of the dynamic developments in multiple geographical spaces. Analysing specific spaces and themes, the chapters of the book offer a foundation for understanding the Hindu traditions in its most important global diasporic contexts and the dynamic developments around the world.

Asian Horizons is published in honour of the great scholar of Asia, Professor Giuseppe Tucci (1894–1984). Through the work of present-day scholars, both senior and emerging, this volume represents their efforts to maintain the impetus of the profound legacy Tucci left. Renowned to this day as a founding scholar in an extraordinarily wide variety of disciplines, as well as being an explorer of hitherto largely unknown lands, such as Tibet, Tucci gained a deep knowledge of Asia through a familiarity with its people, places and literature. His contribution to modern scholarship is nothing less than remarkable. The volume reflects the broad variety of topics in which Tucci himself displayed deep interest and serves as an homage to his work.

This multidisciplinary collection presents 11 essays ranging from the pre-Vedic to the modern era and incorporating research on Hindu, Buddhist and tribal cultures. Authors ask whether the worship of goddesses, strongly linked to fertility rituals, might have mitigated the ecological decline of South Asia in the pre-British and post-colonial eras.

An Imperial Affair, by award-winning author John Rickard, takes us into the marriage of an Australian couple during a time when private lives were properly private but divorce a scandal. It shines a light on the family values and sexual dynamics of this period, conditioned as they were by the imperial relationship and cultural dependence on ‘the mother country’, which inevitably helped shape hopes, fears and desires. This is also the beautifully told story of the writer’s sensitive and courageous quest to understand his parents, Philip and Pearl, and the world he came from and grew up in, its fragile reality filtered through the prism of memory. Part biography, part autobiography, part social history, An Imperial Affair is also a complex, quintessentially Australian meditation on the nature of love.

The energy of the goddess fills every facet of Indian life. To her devotees, the goddess appears in myriad forms: mother, boon-giver, destroyer of evil, divine lover, protector and/or bloodthirsty ogress. The more that is discovered about her, the more teasingly complex and multivalent the Devi appears. She is both constant and changing, loved and feared, worshipped and forgotten, only to be re-discovered and worshiped again. In this book, for the first time, ten Australian researchers, working on many aspects of the Devi, have come together and offered, in a single collection, new research on the divine female. This book begins a renewed quest for the iconic Devi who continues to emerge in her many, unpredictably powerful forms.

Buru Island was the site of Indonesia's most remote and infamous prison camp. In the wake of the 1965 repression of the political Left, between 1969 and 1979, approximately 12,000 men were held on Buru without formal charge or trial. During their detention prisoners suffered torture, forced labour and malnourishment, as well as social isolation. This book is an edited translation of the Indonesian language memoir by the writer Hersri Setiawan (b.1936) who was detained for nine years, including seven on Buru Island. As a young writer filled with hope and optimism for Indonesia's future he joined the left-wing cultural organisation Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, Institute of People's Culture) and was a permanent representative of the Indonesian National Committee to the Asia-Africa Writer's Bureau in Colombo. Setiawan shares an intimate account of his life story leading up to and during his detention. In beautifully crafted prose he brings into stark light the horrors of the period after 1965, which included disappearance, murder, torture, betrayal and loss and his own capture and incarceration on Buru Island. This is a moving and at times harrowing account of human cruelty and, at the same time, a story of survival and hope. The Herb Feith Translation Series publishes high-quality non-fiction manuscripts not yet available in English, which enhance scholarship and teaching about Indonesia. Published by the Herb Feith Foundation in conjunction with Monash University, the books are available 'open access' or for free download. This will be the final book in the series.