The Hindu World.

Knipe, David M.

The Hindu World. Edited by SUSHIL MITTAL and GENE THURSBY. The Routledge Worlds. New York: ROUTLEDGE 2004. Pp. xi + 657. $210.

The Hindu World is a volume in "The Routledge Worlds" series that includes nine published works and four others forthcoming. Aside from two volumes on the Biblical and the Babylonian worlds, and the eastern fringes of their respective empires covered in the Greek and Roman worlds, there is no member of the series other than The Hindu World based in Asia. The editors of this impressive and up-to-date work on Hinduism have organized twenty-four chapters into seven parts. An introduction is followed by parts two and three, traditional surveys that reflect attention to chronological developments. The first, "Oral Teachings and Textual Traditions," takes the reader through four chapters (Veda and Upanisads, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Puranas), by Laurie Patton, James Fitzgerald, Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland Goldman, and Velcheru Narayana Rao respectively. The second, "Theistic and Devotional Movements," also covers four chapters (Saiva, Sakta, Vaisnava, and Bhakti traditions, in that order), by Gavin Flood, Kathleen Erndl, Francis Clooney and Tony Stewart, and David Lorenzen. Thus far, with up-to-date and engagingly written essays, we are on familiar ground in a one-volume survey of Hinduism.

The remaining parts, four through seven, however, contain fifteen chapters marshalled in a different scheme. These chapters constitute a lexicon of Hindu categories, each one under the heading of a single Sanskrit word. The editors have attempted to locate what is "classical" and enduring in Hindu culture with clusters of key terms. Dharma, artha, kama, and moksa, the four "life-deals," the caturvarga or purusartha that makes a natural set to open this lexicon, merit a chapter each. Titled "Cosmic Order and Human Goals," this part covers the successive pursuits of dharma, worldly goods, pleasure or desire, and liberation, explored respectively by Barbara Holdrege, Hartmut Scharfe, Dermot Killingley, and Klaus Klostermaier.

Part five, "Social Action and Social Structure," contains another four chapters, devoted to karma, samskara, varna and jati, and asrama. The authors of these essays on action and its consequences, life-cycle rites, class and caste (or "birth networks"), and stages of life are, respectively, Herman Tull, Mary McGee, McKim Marriott, and Walter Kaelber. The sixth part, "Vitality in Persons and in Places," includes chapters on anna, grama, alaya, and tirtha, the words for 'food', 'village', 'house' (here apparently indicating devalaya, the house of god or "temple"), and 'sacred site of pilgrimage', with R. S. Khare, Susan Wadley, Vasudha Narayanan, and Surinder Bhardwaj and James Lochtefeld providing the essays. The final set of chapters is the seventh part, "Linguistic and Philosophical Analysis," with three essays, bhasa, darsana, and kala, the Sanskrit words for 'language', 'viewpoint' or 'philosophical perspective', and 'time'. Authors here are Madhav Deshpande, John Grimes, and Randy Kloetzli and Alf Hiltebeitel.

The "lexicon" format is an arresting one in the sense that the fifteen terms employed as titles in parts four through seven are fluid, multilayered, and resistant to accurate rendition in a single English word. Therefore each Sanskrit term serves the design of the book well as a conduit for large-scale expression in multiple directions. For example, bhasa 'speech' allows the author to expand into discussions of language in South Asia in general, from Vedic Sanskrit to the vernaculars. Dharma, variously glossed as 'religion', 'law', 'duty', is well known as a lens-opener permitting a comprehensive view of the Hindu tradition, as P. V. Kane's rambling, encyclopedic History of Dharmasastra (1930-62) suggests. Alaya is a somewhat curious choice where the standard puja (not in text or index) might have served to extend the discussion to domestic ritual, as well as that of the temple.

Some may argue that Hindu tradition rests on two classical languages and literatures, Tamil as well as Sanskrit, and the role here for the former is slight. Although the lexicon arrangement is entirely Sanskrit, Tamil traditions are discussed in several chapters, particularly with regard to the Tamil poet saints of the sixth to ninth centuries, Saiva Siddhanta, and Srirangam temple festivals with Tamil recitations.

The editors have designed their book as a "learning resource for intermediate students and general readers as well as a point of departure for further empirical studies" (p. 1). The thirty authors (including the editors) are all well-qualified South Asianists presenting trustworthy scholarship. Inevitably, however, some chapters are stylistically lively and appealing while others may prove forbidding to "intermediate students." At 657 pages the work appears more as an excellent, indeed indispensable, reference work than a textbook for undergraduate courses. Probably its greatest utility will be to bring scholars, graduate students, and advanced readers up to speed with new ideas and publications, particularly in interdisciplinary studies. A thirty-page index divided into Indie, non-Indie, and secondary works serves the reference purpose well.

Given the comprehensive character of the book, the introduction is crucial. Julius Lipner, author of the 1994 book, Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, is given the task. He invokes his familiar banyan-tree model to describe the complex, multi-trunked nature of Hinduism and attempts "to provide grounds, in nonessentializing terms, for describing Hinduism under its own rubric" (p. 34, n. 23). He includes himself among contemporary scholars "who maintain that traditional Hinduism in its religious aspects is appropriately conceptualized as a group of related religions rather than as one homogenized faith" (p. 15). Early on he treads with what may be an excessively timid foot among proponents of partisan positions on Aryan origins and homeland. The reader may have difficulty learning precisely what is the "received scenario" among archeologists and historical linguists, as opposed to immigration deniers. Nowhere is there mention of the Indo-European or Indo-lranian languages or cultures of prehistory. This seeming reluctance to offend potentially sensitive readers extends into discussion of the Vedas, declared quite sensibly to be "our starting point" (p. 25) but nowhere defined. Description is confined to mention of four collections "in canonical formation from about 1200 BCE," prior to a relatively long description of "alternative Vedas" such as the Mahabharata, the "Tamil Vedas," and the Puranas. Fortunately, if the reader waits until chapters 2 and 22 by Patton and Deshpande, respectively, there is excellent coverage of that textual "starting point."

Lipner dismisses insider/outsider descriptions as "missing the point" and celebrates critical detachment and empathy on the part of the non-Hindu scholar. But the insider Vaidika Brahman today who continues the multimillennial task of oral transmission regards the Vedas as unitary and eternal, surely a perspective that is crucial to outsider understanding, but one that no outsider scholars, Indian or non-Indian, can afford to take in the academic world of historical-critical scholarship. Such a heuristic device is perhaps useful to retain.

Most of the authors bring illustrations from contemporary Hindu beliefs and practices into their discussions, but it is with chapters 18 to 21 in part six that this reviewer appreciated the full scope and substance of the work. Previously, while reading along, there was an alternative Sanskrit lexicon running through the mind, one that locates living Hinduism from another direction. Where are avesa, bhuta, daiva, drsti, naga, puja, for example? Where could more opportunities have been taken to detail the myriad ways in which "classical" slides into "folk" or "popular" Hinduism, as illustrated, for example, in the work of Gunther Sontheimer (not in the bibliography or index)? But part six generally satisfies those queries. Rather than allow the "classical" design to rest alone on the spines of the great books, the editors have wisely assigned to authors well known for persistent and extensive fieldwork the task of presenting Hindu tradition as it lives and breathes among contemporary folk. Still, the Sanskrit terms chosen, having to do with food cycles, cosmic models, caste rules, village worship, calendars and festivals, temple architecture and rituals, images, endowments, pilgrimage, and so much more, take the reader back into "classical" structures and worldviews, thereby validating once more the choice of a lexicon format. One recommendation for a future edition might be the inclusion of domestic rituals (other than life-cycle rites) to match the excellent coverage of temple rituals, festivals, and pilgrimage traditions.

In sum, this is an excellent publication, no doubt the best available single volume on the Hindu tradition, and one that will serve well as reference and stimulation to a generation of scholars and general readers.

DAVID M. KNIPE UNIVERSITY OF WIDSCONSIN