Three mountains and the seven rivers is a collection of 56 essays to felicitate the sixtieth birthday of Doctor Musashi Techikawa, Professor at Aichi gakuin University in Nagoya. This volume consist of thirteen Sections; (1) Ancient Geography, (2) Buddhism, (3) Madhyamika, (4) Iconography, (5) Jainism, (6) Logic, (7) Poetics, (9) Social Practice, (10) Tibetan Themes, (11) Vedanta and Mimamsa, (12) Samkhya and Yoga and (13) Tantrism. these saetions throw new light on enduring themes in Indian studies as well as raises fresh issues.

DID THE GREAT FLOOD OF INDIAN LEGEND ACTUALLY HAPPEN? WHY DID THE BUDDHA WALK TO SARNATH TO GIVE HIS FIRST SERMON? HOW DID THE EUROPEANS MAP INDIA? The history of any country begins with its geography. With sparkling wit and intelligence, Sanjeev Sanyal sets off to explore India and look at how the country’s history was shaped by, among other things, its rivers, mountains and cities. Traversing remote mountain passes, visiting ancient archaeological sites, crossing rivers in shaky boats and immersing himself in old records and manuscripts, he considers questions about Indian history that we rarely ask: Why do Indians call their country Bharat? How did the British build the railways across the subcontinent? Why was the world’s highest mountain named after George Everest? Moving from the geological beginnings of the subcontinent to present-day Gurgaon, Land of the Seven Rivers is riveting, wry and full of surprises. It is the most entertaining history of India you will ever read.

From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a region encoded with deep meaning, one approached by millions of Hindus as a primary locus of pilgrimage. Nachiket Chanchani’s innovative study explores scores of stone edifices and steles that were erected in this landscape. Through their forms, locations, interactions with the natural environment, and sociopolitical context, these lithic ensembles evoked legendary worlds, embedded historical memories in the topography, changed the mountain range’s appearance, and shifted its semiotic effect. Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains also alters our understanding of the transmission of architectural knowledge and provides new evidence of how an enduring idea of India emerged in the subcontinent. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/mountain-temples-and-temple-mountains

In this unprecedented guide to the Vedas, Frits Staal, the celebrated author of Agni- The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altarand Universals- Studies in Indian Logic and Linguisticsexamines almost every aspect of these ancient sources of Indic civilisation. Staal extracts concrete information from the Oral Tradition and Archaeology about Vedic people and their language, what they thought and did, and where they went and when. He provides essential information about the Vedas and includes selections and translations. Staal sheds light on mantras and rituals, that contributed to what came to be known as Hinduism. Significant is a modern analysis of what we can learn from the Vedas today- the original forms of the Vedic sciences, as well as the perceptive wisdom of the composers of the Vedas. The author puts Vedic civilisation in a global perspective through a wide-ranging comparison with other Indic philosophies and religions, primarily Buddhism. For Staal, originally a logician, the voyage of discovering the Vedas is like unpeeling an onion but without the certainty of reaching an end. Even so, his book shows that the Vedas have a logic all their own. Accessible, finely-argued, and with a wealth of information and insight, Discovering the Vedas is for both the scholar and the interested lay reader.

Relating to Tibetan Buddhism and Indian religion, this work is a collection of articles. These articles are linked by their subject matter, and they are also linked by a common approach to religion.

"This is the first book in over a thousand years to approach the Mahābhārata and the Harivaṃśa via rasa theory. It argues that both texts put adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder," to work as their dominant rasa, in a way that takes readers from their heroes' rollicking adventures to the text's profoundest moments. Two Kashmiris, Ānandavardhana (9th century) and Abhinavagupta (10th century), launched such inquiry, claiming that the Mahābhārata's dominant rasa was śāntarasa, the "mood of peace." Both worked the Harivaṃśa as a related text into their argument, which emphasized peace along with dispassion and the quest for liberation. Although they used some textual highjinks to make their case, their argument prevailed, and has remained the only serious contestant for rasic interpretation. This book disputes their claim, and can expect controversy. Some may continue to favor śāntarasa. Some may cite the two Kashmiris' view that adbhuta cannot sustain a major work. This book contests that by putting "the work of adbhutarasa" into its title and arguing for the hard work it does. Some may also be uncomfortable with a temporal incongruity the book poses in that the Mahābhārata and Harivaṃśa are probably four or five centuries earlier than the first text to explore rasas, the Nāṭyaśātra. Śāntarasa faced the same problem but Ānandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, lacking a modern sense of the relative dates, overlooked it. The answer here goes to the heart of this book's argument: our texts deploy the "proper terms" adbhuta, "wonder" and vismaya, "surprise," to work adbhutarasa through rich and contrasting textual strategies. They must have worked out their program with these terms before the śāstra"--

Michael Witzel persuasively demonstrates the prehistoric origins of most of the mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas ('Laurasia').