In 783 CE, Jinasena, a Digambara Jaina, composed the Harivaṃśapurāṇa, a text best known as the first Jaina retelling of Vyāsa’s Mahābhārata and Harivaṃśa. In it, Jinasena narrates the birth of Kṛṣṇa and the origin of Kṛṣṇa devotion in a world cohabited by Jainas. However, Jinasena does not confine his text to a discussion of Vaiṣṇavism and Vyāsa’s epics. Nor does he present...
This article is a conceptual exploration of a central argument developed by Ghanshamdas Rattanmal Malkani (1892–1977) to indicate that ignorance (ajñāna) does not have any nature and it should not be invested with any measure or degree of substantiality. In his writings in English, we find a contemporary way of working through some of the key problems that appear on premodern...
This essay explores the ways in which two distinct spiritual traditions, Ghazālī’s Ṣūfīsm and Śaṅkarian Advaita Vedānta, articulate an exclusive metaphysical affirmation of the Ultimate Reality with an empirical recognition of relative existence. Both perspectives are shown to be radically absolutist in their discernment of the Real and in their denying metaphysical reality to...
Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the...
This article analyzes the complex ways in which religious practices influence the formation of identity and community among tirunaṅkais, male-to-female transgender people in Tamil Nadu. I argue that tirunaṅkais draw on longstanding religious resources to enact nonnormative identities that operate outside of the secular constructions of the modern subject that undergird...
Arvind Sharma has made immensely significant contributions in the fields of both comparative religion and the study of Hinduism through his methodology of “reciprocal illumination” and his prominent role in international conversations on women and religion, religion and human rights, freedom of religion, and religious tolerance and conflict. Aware of the power of religion and its...
This essay presents Arvind Sharma’s concept of “reciprocal illumination” as an innovative defense of interreligious comparison, showing that the comparative approach is still meaningful despite its currently widespread critique. In discussing Sharma’s concept, the essay focuses on the internal diversity of religious traditions, asking whether “reciprocal illumination” is possible...
Adapting the SWOT matrix used in the study of the effectiveness of organizations, this article employs the notion of “strategic fit” to examine reasons frequently put forward to explain the positive reception of Swami Vivekananda’s message by sympathizers during his visits to the United States and England. The article suggests that Vivekananda maximized the strategic fit of his...
This article is an exploration of the dialectic of this-worldly activism and the practice of self-effacement in Swami Vivekananda’s discourses. He often exhorts his audiences to cultivate the vigorous strength to live courageously in the world on the basis of their spiritual conviction that they are rooted in the true self (ātman) beyond all spatiotemporal limitations. The...
The great eleventh-century figure, Rāmānuja, belonged to the Śrīvaiṣṇava community that worshiped the divine as Viṣṇu-with-Śrī, the Lord-and-Consort. But he also embarked on a project to develop an interpretation of the first-century Vedāntasūtra, which presented the supposedly core teachings of the major Upaniṣads, traditionally the last segment of the sacred corpus of the Vedas...
This article explores the nature and genealogy of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s concept of conscience/antarātmā (inner soul/spirit), the cardinal principle of his religious politics. Much previous scholarship, solely relying upon English materials, has explained the nature of Gandhi’s concept of conscience in relation to Western and Christian Protestant traditions. By chronologically...
Līlā, as a concept and term, has a long and complex history in Sanskritic Hinduism, yet, irrespective of context, it has routinely been translated by words signifying “play,” “sport,” and “game” in English and other languages. Focusing mainly on the term’s philosophical and theological connotations in Sanskritic Hinduism, this article challenges these facile and often misleading...
This article discusses the nineteenth-century debate between German and British Indologists on ancient Indian commentators, shedding light on how Italian Indologists received and responded to this discussion. It reveals why Italian scholars, although trained under the most eminent German philologists, often disagreed on the status of native commentaries, sometimes viewing them as...
This article addresses Bhaktamar Mantra Healing (BMH), a healing practice based on a popular Jain stotra. After a preliminary discussion of Tantra and Tantric elements in Jainism, BMH is introduced as the most recent layer in a complex tradition that grew around the Bhaktāmar Stotra and conceptualized as a “Tantric reconfiguration”: a relatively recent creative blending of Jain...
Many scholars have identified sūkṣma dharma (subtle dharma) as a central theme of the Mahābhārata. However, beyond recognizing it as an understanding of dharma that is elusive and ambiguous, there has been relatively little investigation into the meaning and implications of sūkṣma dharma. As this article shows, even if the central episodes of the main story leave sūkṣma dharma...
In a comparative study of karma theodicy and atonement theodicy, as developed by some Hindu and Christian theologians, this article argues that they present teleological visions where individuals become purged, purified, and perfected in and through their worldly suffering. A karma theodicy operates with the notion that there is some form of proportionality between past evil and...
Svāmī Vivekānanda’s (1863–1902) relationship with his guru Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa (ca. 1836–1886), and his role in the creation of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission in the final decade of the nineteenth century, has attracted far more scholarly attention than the meanings invested in Vivekānanda after his death by devotees and admirers beyond the Math and Mission and by the...