Classical chinese

Classical Chinese is the most comprehensive and authoritative textbook on the language, literature, philosophy, history, and religion of premodern China. Rigorously and extensively field-tested and fine-tuned for years in classroom settings, it sets a new standard for the field. Originally publis...

Comparative journeys

Throughout his academic career, Anthony C. Yu has employed a comparative approach to literary analysis that pays careful attention to the religious and philosophical elements of Chinese and Western texts. His mastery of both canons remains unmatched in the field, and his immense knowledge of the ...

Early medieval china

Capturing the unusual cultural character of a formative period and its intellectual ferment across multiple disciplines.

Living with gandhi

Living with Gandhi: Experiments in Utopia tells the story of everyday life at four of Gandhi’s communities in India and South Africa.

Lust, commerce, and corruption

An anonymous samurai author's detailed 1816 critique of Edo society.

Muslim environmentalisms

Anna M. Gade explores the religious and cultural foundations of Islamic environmentalisms. She blends textual and ethnographic study to offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of the legal, ethical, social, and political principles underlying Muslim commitments to the earth.

Oriental mythology (the masks of god, volume 2)

The legendary exploration of Eastern mythology, and its evolution into the distinctive religions of Egypt, India, China, and Japan, packaged to introduce a new generation to this masterwork

Politics and religion in ancient and medieval europe and china

Shintō in the history and culture of japan

This book is a concise overview of Shintō through a survey of its key concepts, related archeological finds, central mythology, significant cultural sites, political dimensions, and historical developments. Its goal is to promote an understanding of Shintō as an enduring cultural phenomenon centr...

Spells, images, and mandalas

Koichi Shinohara traces the evolution of Esoteric Buddhist rituals from the simple recitation of spells in the fifth century to complex systems involving image worship, mandala initiation, and visualization practices in the ninth century. He presents an important new reading of a seventh-century ...

Spiritual transmission

Interviews with leading spiritual teachers and their students probe the promise and perils of the teacher-student relationship.

The body incantatory

The Body Incantatory reveals the histories and logics of practice of deeply embodied forms of Buddhist ritual. Paul Copp vividly captures the diversity of Buddhist practice among medieval monks, ritual healers, and other individuals lost to history, offering a corrective to accounts that have ove...

The cult of the fox

For more than five centuries the shamanistic fox cult has attracted large portions of the Chinese population and appealed to a wide range of social classes. Deemed illicit by imperial rulers and clerics and officially banned by republican and communist leaders, the fox cult has managed to survive...

The fifty years that changed chinese religion, 1898–1948

This book demonstrates that transformative processes occurred in Chinese religions during the last decade of the Qing dynasty and the entire Republican period. Focusing on Shanghai and Zhejiang, it delves into the workings of social structures, religious practices, and personal commitments as the...

The philosophy of the mòzĭ

Mohism was an ancient Chinese philosophical movement founded in the fifth century BCE by the charismatic artisan Mòzi, or "Master Mo." Its practitioners advanced a consequentialist ethics, along with fascinating political, logical, and epistemological theories, that set the terms of philosophical...

The politics of postsecular religion

Ananda Abeysekara contends that democracy, along with its cherished secular norms, is founded on the idea of a promise deferred to the future. Rooted in democracy's messianic promise is the belief that religious—political identity-such as Buddhist, Hindu, Sinhalese, Christian, Muslim, or Tamil—ca...

Yoga

A groundbreaking account of the theory and practice of yoga, from the Vedas to the twentieth centuryIn this landmark book, renowned scholar of religion Mircea Eliade lays the groundwork for a Western understanding of yoga. Drawing on years of study and experience in India, Eliade provides a compr...

Yoga in practice

Primary texts in yoga, from ancient times to todayYoga is a body of practice that spans two millennia and transcends the boundaries of any single religion, geographic region, or teaching lineage. In fact, over the centuries there have been many "yogas"—yogas of battlefield warriors, of itinerant ...

Zhuangzi: basic writings

Only by inhabiting Dao (the Way of Nature) and dwelling in its unity can humankind achieve true happiness and freedom, in both life and death. This is Daoist philosophy's central tenet, espoused by the person—or group of people—known as Zhuangzi (369?–286? BCE) in a text by the same name. To be f...

Zoroastrian women in the united states of america

This book examines how ancient Zoroastrianism is practiced in the US diaspora and how it has evolved dynamically.