This book offers a comprehensive description of the ‘doctrine of salvation’ (niḥśreyasa/ mokṣa) and Vaiśeṣika, one of the oldest philosophical systems of Indian philosophy and provides an overview of theories in other related Indian philosophical systems and classical doctrines of salvation. The book examines liberation, the fourth goal of life and arguably one of the most important topics in Indian philosophy, from a comparative philosophical perspective. Contextualising classical Greek Philosophy which contains the three goals of life (Aristotle’s Ethics), and explains salvation as first understood in the theology of the Hellenistic and Patristics periods, the author analyses six classical philosophical schools of Indian philosophy in which there is a marked emphasis on the ultimate ontological elements of the world and ‘self’. Analysing Vaiśeṣika and the manner in which this lesser known system has put forward its own theory of salvation (niḥśreyasa), the author demonstrates its significance and originality as an old and influential philosophical system. He argues that it is essential for the study of other Indian sciences and for the study of all comparative philosophy. An extensive introduction to Indian soteriology, this book will be an important reference work for academics interested in comparative religion and philosophy, Indian philosophy, Asian religion and South Asian Studies.

This book analyzes the diverse facets of the social history of health and medicine in colonial India. It explores a unique set of themes that capture the diversities of India, such as public health, medical institutions, mental illness and the politics and economics of colonialism. Based on inter-disciplinary research, the contributions offer valuable insight into topics that have recently received increased scholarly attention, including the use of opiates and the role of advertising in driving medical markets. The contributors, both established and emerging scholars in the field, incorporate sources ranging from palm leaf manuscripts to archival materials. This book will be of interest to scholars of history, especially the history of medicine and the history of colonialism and imperialism, sociology, social anthropology, cultural theory, and South Asian Studies, as well as to health workers and NGOs.

Investigates the social contradictions, class forces and efforts at political organization that lay behind the powerful nationalist movement in Uttar Pradesh the 1920s and '30s.

There are innumerable ways of cultivating life’s many abundant harvests, but none more fruitful, fulfilling and freeing than a regimen of sedulous striving in the realm of spiritual practice. Why is this so? Assuredly, nothing other than purification of mind can facilitate the most subtle and sought after freedom that the human being longs for, either consciously, secretly or unconsciously. And this purification is achieved via sadhana, spiritual disciplines prescribed by an adept and esteemed religious preceptor according to revealed scripture, which cuts every man and woman in the image of abiding perfection inherent in each individual. Every man, Shiva incarnate, desires to break free of all the binding fetters of life and mind, but life itself is predicated upon a duality-fraught existence created by the manifold mind. Each woman, Shakti in manifest form, dreams of a life shorn of its weights and limitations, but the restrictive modes of nature and the constricting conventions of church, family and society unwittingly fashion the very chains that bind existence into painfully predictable scenarios and boring rounds of sleepy and sterile routine. Given this conundrum, it is no wonder that the key of innate spirituality and its superlative aim is held out again and again, from age to age and lifetime to lifetime, by truly compassionate beings who have tasted freedom and spare no efforts in order to share it with suffering humanity. And they often initiate the process of its discovery in seeking and suffering beings by pointing out the need for an intense yearning to be free. “Cry, oh mind, with a real cry,” sings Ramprasad Sen, “and the Mother of the Universe will not be able to withhold Her sweet Presence from you any longer.” “Beings cry jugs of tears for mates, money and materials,” states Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, “but shed not one tear for God.” Furthermore, our intense yearning to be free must lead us straightaway to the path, the teacher and the specific formula for the attainment of divine life which best suits each individual’s karmas, abilities, and capacities. The thorough breakdown of all that impedes — doubt, fear, misconception, inordinate desire — is brought to bear in life by the cultivation of spirituality via hands-on practice. Without it, there adheres in the mental body a whole host of various forms of attachment, call them what you will, many of them masquerading meekly as freedom. As Sri Shankaracharya poignantly puts it: “When I was a baby I was attached to my mother’s breast; when I was a young man I was attached to a young woman; when I was old I was attached to anxiety; but to the Supreme Brahman, alas, I was never attached."

This is the first scholarly book devoted to the study of the term dharma with in the broad scope of Indian cultural and religious history. Most generalizations about Indian culture and religion upon close scrutiny turn out to be inaccurate. An exception undoubtedly is the term dharma. This term and the notions underlying it clearly constitute the most central feature of Indian civilization down the centuries, irrespective of linguistic, sectarian, or regional differences. The nineteen papers included in this collection deal with many significant historical manifestations of the term dharma. These studies by some of the leading scholars in the respective fields will both present a more nuanced picture of the semantic history of dharma by putting contours onto the flat landscape we have inherited and spur further studies of this concept so central for understanding the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent.

With reference to India.