Sanctum Books – förlag

In an increasingly global world where convenient modes of travel have opened the door to international and intraregional tourism and brought together people from different religious and ethnic communities, religious journeying in India has become the site of evolving and often paradoxical forms of self-construction. Through ethnographic reflections, the contributors to this volume explore religious and nonreligious motivations for religious travel in India and show how pilgrimages, missionary travel, the exportation of cultural art forms, and leisure travel among coreligionists are transforming not only religious but also regional, national, transnational, and personal identities.

This is the first book to examine the development of the figure of Mara, who appears across Buddhist traditions as a personification of death and desire. Portrayed as a combination of god and demon, Mara serves as a key antagonist to the Buddha, his followers, and Buddhist teaching in general. From ancient India to later Buddhist thought in East Asia to more recent representations in Western culture and media, Mara has been used to satirize Hindu divinities, taken the form of wrathful Tibetan gods, communicated psychoanalytic tropes, and appeared as a villain in episodes of Doctor Who. Michael D. Nichols details and surveys the historical transformations of the Mara figure and demonstrates how different Buddhist communities at different times have used this symbol to react to changing social and historical circumstances.

In the field of the life sciences, China and India are seen as both emerging ‘dragons’ and as ‘elephants’. Both countries have formidable resources and are determined to have their presence felt, but do these scientific ‘dragons’ abide by the rules? This book provides essential insight into the logic of science governance and strategic disobedience, exploring critical events including gene research, stem cell therapies, GM crops, CRISPR technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues that as science outgrows traditional colonies of expertise and authority, good governance must be decolonised to acquire the capacity to think from and with others.

Beginning in the late eighteenth century, British rule transformed the relationship between law, society, and the state in South Asia. But qazis and muftis, alongside ordinary people without formal training in law, fought back as the colonial system in India sidelined Islamic legal experts. They petitioned the East India Company for employment, lobbied imperial legislators for recognition, and built robust institutions to serve their communities. By bringing legal debates into the public sphere, they resisted the colonial state’s authority over personal law and rejected legal codification by embracing flexibility and possibility. With postcards, letters, and telegrams, they made everyday Islamic law vibrant and resilient and challenged the hegemony of the Anglo-Indian legal system.

Ancient India: Insights into Social & Economic Dynamics begins with a survey of Vākāṭakas epigraphy reflecting the society and religion of the Vākāṭakas. This book further discusses certain social and economic issues, and also deals with some important issues such as sea and sea-faring as reflected in the Ṛigveda and agrarian relations in early medieval India. Buddhist community: elements of social change, teacher-taught relationship as enshrined in Upaniṣads, and social organisation as reflected in Manusmṛti. The sacred waters: rain’s significance in the Vedās and reflections of Satī in literary and epigraphical traditions are some of the major themes taken up. The contributors of this book reconstruct the social and economic dynamics in ancient India.