Author: Somadeva BhattaPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folk literature
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
The Ocean of Story, Being C. H. Tawney's Translation of Somadeva's Kathā Sarit Sāgara (or Ocean of Streams of Story) No Edited with Introduction, Fresh Explanatory Notes and Terminal Essay
Author: Somadeva BhattaPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folk literature
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
The Strangled Traveler
Author: Martine van WœrkensPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226850862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
British colonists in 1830s India lived in terror of the Thugs. Reputed to be brutal criminals, the Thugs supposedly strangled, beheaded, and robbed thousands of travelers in the goddess Kali's name. The British responded with equally brutal repression of the Thugs and developed a compulsive fascination with tales of their monstrous deeds. Did the Thugs really exist, or did the British invent them as an excuse to seize tighter control of India? Drawing on historical and anthropological accounts, Indian tales and sacred texts, and detailed analyses of the secret Thug language, Martine van Woerkens reveals for the first time the real story of the Thugs. Many different groups of Thugs actually did exist over the centuries, but the monsters the British made of them had much more to do with colonial imaginings of India than with the real Thugs. Tracing these imaginings down to the present, van Woerkens reveals the ongoing roles of the Thugs in fiction and film from Frankenstein to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Orientalia
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Middle Eastern philology
Languages : en
Pages : 708
Book Description
The Ocean of Story
Author: Somadeva BhaṭṭaPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folk literature
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
Lost Knowledge
Author: Benjamin B. OlshinPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004352724
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Book Description
Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories examines the idea of lost knowledge, reaching back to a period between myth and history. It investigates a peculiar idea found in a number of early texts: that there were civilizations with knowledge of sophisticated technologies, and that this knowledge was obscured or destroyed over time along with the civilization that had created it. This book presents critical studies of a series of early Chinese, South Asian, and other texts that look at the idea of specific “lost” technologies, such as mechanical flight and the transmission of images. There is also an examination of why concepts of a vanished “golden age” were prevalent in so many cultures. Offering an engaging and investigative look at the propagation of history and myth in technology and culture, this book is sure to interest historians and readers from many backgrounds.
The Alchemical Body
Author: David Gordon WhitePublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226894997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 620
Book Description
Beginning in the fifth century A.D., various Indian mystics began to innovate a body of techniques with which to render themselves immortal. These people called themselves Siddhas, a term formerly reserved for a class of demigods, revered by Hindus and Buddhists alike, who were known to inhabit mountaintops or the atmospheric regions. Over the following five to eight hundred years, three types of Hindu Siddha orders emerged, each with its own specialized body of practice. These were the Siddha Kaula, whose adherents sought bodily immortality through erotico-mystical practices; the Rasa Siddhas, medieval India's alchemists, who sought to transmute their flesh-and-blood bodies into immortal bodies through the ingestion of the mineral equivalents of the sexual fluids of the god Siva and his consort, the Goddess; and the Nath Siddhas, whose practice of hatha yoga projected the sexual and laboratory practices of the Siddha Kaula and Rasa Siddhas upon the internal grid of the subtle body. For India's medieval Siddhas, these three conjoined types of practice led directly to bodily immortality, supernatural powers, and self-divinization; in a word, to the exalted status of the semidivine Siddhas of the older popular cults. In The Alchemical Body, David Gordon White excavates and centers within its broader Indian context this lost tradition of the medieval Siddhas. Working from a body of previously unexplored alchemical sources, he demonstrates for the first time that the medieval disciplines of Hindu alchemy and hatha yoga were practiced by one and the same people, and that they can only be understood when viewed together. Human sexual fluids and the structures of the subtle body aremicrocosmic equivalents of the substances and apparatus manipulated by the alchemist in his laboratory. With these insights, White opens the way to a new and more comprehensive understanding of the entire sweep of medieval Indian mysticism, within the broader context of south Asian Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Islam. This book is an essential reference for anyone interested in Indian yoga, alchemy, and the medieval beginnings of science.
The Ocean of Story
Author: Somadeva BhaṭṭaPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folk literature
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
Bibliotheca Asiatica
Author: Maggs BrosThe Mādhavanidāna and Its Chief Commentary, Chapters 1-10
Author: Gerrit Jan MeulenbeldPublisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004645594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 721
Book Description
A Supplementary Catalogue of Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit Books in the Library of the British Museum Acquired During the Years 1892-1928
Author: British Museum. Department of Oriental Printed Books and ManuscriptsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pali literature
Languages : en
Pages : 864
Book Description