In the title essay of this enthralling collection, Sanjay Subrahmanyam sets a provocative ball rolling: "At the heart of the matter", he says, "is the notion that at some distant point in the past, say about AD 500, the concept of "Indian civilization" had already been perfected. Everything of any importance was in place: social structure, philosophy, the major literary works ... The central idea here is of India-as-civilization, and it very soon becomes the same as a notion of closed India". Demolishing some of the myths which sustain the notion of the wonder that was India, he shows us a region that was always more a crossroads, a rendezvous for concepts, cultures, and worldviews. Subrahmanyam's book is itself a meeting point for a dazzling variety of ideas. It provides the cosmopolitan perspective of a multilingual world scholar who, having begun life in New Delhi, has gone on to live in several thought-provoking cities, including Paris, Lisbon, and Oxford. He is witty, debunking, iconoclastic, and polemically entertaining in all that he anatomizes here Indian history and fiction, South Asian cultural forms, imperialism and imperialists, secularism and Hindu nationalism, travel writing, and the central conceits in Hemingway, Rushdie, Naipaul, and Márquez. Subrahmanyam is renowned as a historian and biographer. This book, which makes us rethink India and the world around it, is the first to reveal that he is also a writer of accessible and delightful English prose.

This book interprets for the Western mind the key motifs of India`a legends myth, and folklore, taken directly from the sanskrit, and illustrated with seventy plates of Indian art. It is primarily an introduction to image thinking and picture reading in Indian art and thought and it seeks to make the profound Hindu and Buddhist intuitions of the riddles of life and death recongnizable not merely as Oriental but as universal elements.

A collection of Daniélou's writings that builds a bold and cogent defense of India's caste system • Looks at the Hindu caste system not as racist inequality but as a natural ordering of diversity • Reveals the stereotypes of Indian society invented to justify colonialism • Includes never-before-published articles by the internationally recognized Hindu scholar and translator of The Complete Kama Sutra (200,000 copies sold) In classical India social ethics are based on each individual's functional role in society. These ethics vary according to caste in order to maximize the individual's effectiveness in the social context. This is the definition of caste ethics. The Indian caste system is not a hierarchy with some who are privileged and others who are despised; it is a natural ordering, an organizing principle, of a society wherein differences are embraced rather than ignored. In the caste system it is up to the individual to achieve perfection in the state to which he or she is born, since to a certain extent that state also forms part of a person's nature. All people must accomplish their individual spiritual destinies while, as members of a social group, ensuring the continuity of the group and collaborating in creating a favorable framework for all human life--thereby fulfilling the collective destiny of the group. The notion of transmigration provides an equalizing effect on this prescribed system in that today's prince may be reborn as a woodcutter and the Brahman as a shoemaker. In India: A Civilization of Differences, Daniélou explores this seldom-heard side of the caste debate and argues effectively in its favor. This rare collection of the late author's writings contains several never-before-published articles and offers an in-depth look at the structure of Indian society before and after Western colonialism.

In this pathbreaking book, the authors show that the ancient Indians were no primitives but possessed a high spiritual culture, which not only influenced the evolution of the Western world in decisive ways but which still hs much to teach us today. India's archaic spirituality is codified in the rich symbols, metaphors and myths of the magnificent Rig-Veda, which is shown to be much older than has been widely assumed by scholars. The present book also unravels the astonishing mathematical and astronomical code hidden in the Vedic hymns. Anyone interested in ancient cultural history, India, archaeo-astronomy or spirituality will find this well researched and cross-cultural work spellbinding and enriching.