Description: This is the third and last volume of a series, dealing with the history and culture of ancient India, which is intended to fulfil the needs of the University student as well as of the general readers who desire to know the past history of India. The series consist of three volumes dealing respectively with (1) Political History (2) Political Theory, Administration and Economic Life and (3) Hinduism : Society Religion and Philosophy. The present volume deals with religion, philosophy and society. Historians writing on Indian history are mostly content with devoting a single chapter to cover these three topics. This has created problems for those readers, who want to know more, but have no ready access to the vast number of books required for a thorough grasp of the subject. Dr. Majumdar has solved this problem by devoting an entire volume to these topics. Each and every aspect of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions and their philosophy have been thoroughly dealt with. Even remote and minor religious practices are not left out, the ripples and upheavals in society caused by the oscillating political fortunes are brought in sharp focus.

The Historical Dictionary of Hinduism relates the history of Hinduism through a chronology, an introductory essay, photos, an extensive bibliography, and over 1,000 cross referenced dictionary entries on Hindu terminology, names of major historical figures and movements, gods and goddesses, prominent temples, terms for items used in Hindu practice, major texts, philosophical concepts, and more. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Hinduism.

Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.