Religion and Aging in the Indian Tradition

Shrinivas Tilak is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.

"The author's primary insight is of extreme meaningfulness: every culture must confront the deterioration and death accompanying aging. How this confrontation has occurred in Indian culture has significance for understanding all cultures including contemporary advanced industrial cultures." — Sheldon S. Tobin"The topic of aging in the Indian traditional has not before been given a systematic scholarly examination. India has important wisdom to offer, and this book sets that wisdom forth in a way that makes its history and content clearly available to modern scholars. Tilak does this in a thoroughly competent way using primary source documents in a careful and comprehensive way. He does not shy away from taking all aspects of aging into consideration: physical, social, cultural, spiritual." — Harold Coward"Outstanding and fascinating." — Edmund Sherman

• Foreword Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction 1. Historical Dialectic 2. Growing Old 3. Between Life and Death 4. Coping with Stress 5. Interpretations Conclusion Notes Bibliography Subject Index Author Index Primary Works Index Sanskrit Terms and Proper Names Index