- Identity Reflections
- Brian R. Dott
- Mount Tai in northeastern China has long been a sacred site. Throughout history, it has been a magnet for both women and men from all classes--emperors, aristocrats, officials, literati, and villagers. This book examines the behavior of those who made the pilgrimage to Mount Tai and their interpretations of its sacrality and history, as a means of better understanding their identities and mentalities.
- Hardcover 2005
- Katha Aranyaka
- Edited and translated by Michael Witzel
- Dating to the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., the Katha Aranyaka is a ritualistic and speculative text that deals with a dangerous Vedic ritual that provides its sponsor with a new body after death. In a new critical edition, Michael Witzel presents this work which transitions the Vedic ritual into the philosophy of the Upanishads. The text is preceded by an extensive introduction in English and followed by a German translation.
- Hardcover 2005
- Out of the Cloister
- Mark Halperin
- This book demonstrates that representations of Buddhism by lay people underwent a major change during the T'ang-Sung transition. These changes built on basic transformations within the Buddhist and classicist traditions and sometimes resulted in the use of Buddhism and Buddhist temples as frames of reference to evaluate aspects of lay society. Buddhism, far from being pushed to the margins of Chinese culture, became even more a part of everyday elite Chinese life.
- Hardcover 2006
- Rebuilding Buddhism
- Sarah LeVine
- David N. Gellner
- Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
- Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church
- Andrea Sterk
- Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. Focusing on four foundational figures--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom--Sterk explores the social, political, intellectual, and theological grounding for this development.
- Hardcover 2004
- Steps of Perfection
- Donald S. Sutton
- Despite Taiwan's rise as an economic force in the world, modernity has not led to a Weberian process of disenchantment or curbed religiosity. To the contrary, other factors--social, economic, political--have stimulated religion. How and why this has happened are central issues in this book. One part of Taiwan's flourishing religious culture is the elaborate and colorful procession of local gods accompanied by troupes of musicians and dancers. Concentrating on the stylistic variations in performances, the author describes the troupes as organizations shaped by the "market forces" of supply and demand in the culture of religious festivals. By focusing on performances as the nexus of market and art, he shows how bodily performance is the site where religious statements are made and the power of the gods made visible.
- Hardcover 2003