Shows / New Books in Indian Religions
New Books in Indian Religions
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Indian Religions
John Nemec, "Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures (Oxford UP, 2025) examines some of the most well-known and widely circulated narratives…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Christopher Key Chapple, "The SāṃKhya System: Accounting for the Real" (SUNY Press, 2024)
The SāṃKhya System: Accounting for the Real (SUNY Press, 2024) brings new life to an ancient Hindu system of thought. Sāṃkhya spans the fields of philosophy…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Lavanya Vemsani, "Reframing India in World History" (Lexington Books, 2024)
Reframing India in World History breaks the stereotypical portrayal of India based on misconstrued historical theories. Prevalent constructions of Indian…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Kiyokazu Okita, "The Building of Vṛndāvana: Architecture, Theology, and Practice in an Early Modern Pilgrimage Town" (Brill, 2023)
The small town of Vṛndāvana is today one of the most vibrant places of pilgrimage in northern India. Throngs of pilgrims travel there each year to honour the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jon Chapple, "Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer" (Blazing Sapphire Press, 2024)
Sri Krishna Prem: A Wing and a Prayer is an in-depth, spiritual biography of a British fighter pilot (WW I), Ronald Nixon (1898-1965). Raised in an…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Mick Brown, "The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement with Eastern…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Patrick Beldio, "The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga" (Lexington Books, 2024)
The Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Co-Creator of the Integral Yoga (Lexington Books, 2024) analyzes the contributions of the Mother (née Mirra Alfassa…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Daemons, Tantra, and Cultural Exchange with David Gordon White
In this episode, Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with David Gordon White, a distinguished indologist and scholar of Tantra. Our conversation focuses on David’s…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Anna Lise Seastrand, "Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India" (Princeton UP, 2024)
An astonishing variety of murals greet visitors to the temples and palaces of southern India. Beautiful in execution and extensive in scope, murals painted on…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Manu Pillai, "Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity" (Allen Lane, 2025)
What is Hinduism? For centuries, that question was particularly thorny, both for local Indians and for colonial outsiders. People inside and outside the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Violent Majorities 2.3: Long-Distance Ethnonationalism Roundup (LA, AS)
John joins Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian for the roundup episode of the second series of Violent Majorities, focusing on long-distance ethnonationalism…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Material Religion, Assemblage, and the Agency of Things in South Asia
This special issue of Nidan: International Journal for Indian Studies is the product of a collective experiment with materials that are assembled, imagined…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Claire C. Robison, "Bringing Krishna Back to India" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Hare Krishnas have long been associated with American hippie culture and New Age religious movements. But they have developed deeply rooted communities in…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Violent Majorities 2.2: Subir Sinha on Hindutva as Long-Distance Ethnonationalism
Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian continue their second series on Violent Majorities. Their previous episode featured Peter Beinart on Zionism as…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Sunila S. Kale and Christian Lee Novetzke, "The Yoga of Power: Political Thought and Practice in India" (Columbia UP, 2025)
In Indian languages from Sanskrit to Marathi, yoga has an enormous range of meanings, though most often it refers to philosophy or methods to control the mind…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Lavanya Vemsani, "Handbook of Indian History" (Springer, 2024)
Handbook of Indian History (Springer, 2024) comprehensively examines the extensive history of India by focusing on the unifying themes of history. The profound…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Anand Venkatkrishnan, "Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap?…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Gidi Ifergan, "The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga" (Equinox, 2024)
Gidi Ifergan's The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga (Equinox, 2024) explores the road map of yoga as reflected in the Yogasūtra of Patañjali (third century CE)…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Roger R. Jackson, "Saraha: Poet of Blissful Awareness" (Shambhala, 2024)
The life and works of the mysterious Indian yogin, Saraha, who has inspired Buddhist practitioners for over a thousand years. Saraha, “the Archer,” was a…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Richard H. Davis, "Religions of Early India: A Cultural History" (Princeton UP, 2024)
From its earliest recorded history, India was a place of remarkable and varied religious activity, ranging from elaborate sacrificial rituals and rigorous…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Alastair Gornall, "Rewriting Buddhism: Pali Literature and Monastic Reform in Sri Lanka, 1157–1270" (UCL Press, 2020)
Rewriting Buddhism: Pali Literature and Monastic Reform in Sri Lanka, 1157–1270 (UCL Press, 2020) is the first intellectual history of premodern Sri Lanka’s…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Ilanit Loewy Shacham, "Empire Inside Out: Religion, Conquest, and Community in Kṛṣṇadevarāya's Āmuktamālyada" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Examining the interplay of religion, history, and literature through a case study of King Krsnadevaraya's celebrated Telugu poem Āmuktamālyada, Ilanit Loewy…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Arvind Sharma, "From Fire To Light: Rereading the Manusmriti" (Harper Collins, 2024)
Why yet another book on the Manusmriti? In From Fire To Light: Rereading the Manusmriti (Harper Collins, 2024), acclaimed academic Arvind Sharma argues that…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Antoinette Denapoli and June McDaniel, "Gurus, Priestesses, Saints, Mediums and Yoginis: Holy Women as Influencers in Hindu Culture" (MDPI, 2024)
Applying the "influencer" concept to the study of religion, Gurus, Priestesses, Saints, Mediums and Yoginis: Holy Women as Influencers in Hindu Culture (MDPI…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Nathan McGovern, "Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Pankaj Jain, "Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond" (Routledge, 2024)
Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond (Routledge, 2024) provides a unique insider’s look…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Mou Banerjee, "The Disinherited: The Politics of Christian Conversion in Colonial India" (Harvard UP, 2025)
An illuminating history of religious and political controversy in nineteenth-century Bengal, where Protestant missionary activity spurred a Christian…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Nissim Mannathukkaren, "Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala" (Routledge, 2024)
Hindu Nationalism in South India: The Rise of Saffron in Kerala (Routledge, 2024) engages with a range of factors that shapes the trajectory of Hindu…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Kāvyacandrikā: A Hitherto Unknown Work of Sanskrit Poetics
A hitherto unknown work of Sanskrit poetics edited and published for the first time based on manuscripts at the National Library (Paris), the India Office…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Russell T.. McCutcheon, "Religious Studies Beyond the Discipline: On the Future of a Humanities Ph.D." (Equinox, 2024)
Given the continued challenges that face the higher education job market in the Humanities in North America, this multi authored volume offers (i) a critical…
- New Books in Indian Religions
James Mallinson, "The Dattatreyayogasastra" (Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, 2024)
This book introduces, edits and translates the Dattātreyayogaśātra, a Sanskrit text on yoga composed in about 1200 CE in South India. It teaches four types of…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Allen James Fromherz, "The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present" (U California Press, 2024)
Whether it’s in commerce or conflict, today’s world pays rapt attention to the Persian Gulf. But the centrality of the Gulf to world history stretches far…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Shalini Kakar, "Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)
Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) examines how fans worship…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Owen Ware, "Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany" (Routledge, 2023)
Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany by Owen Ware (Routledge, 2024) takes the reader on a tour through the reception of Yoga philosophies in…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Tyler W. Williams, "If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi" (Columbia UP, 2024)
In If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi (Columbia UP, 2024), Tyler W. Williams puts questions of materiality, circulation, and…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Roberto Morales-Harley, "The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater” (Open Book, 2024)
The Embassy, the Ambush, and the Ogre: Greco-Roman Influence in Sanskrit Theater (Open Book, 2024) presents a sophisticated and intricate examination of the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Subhashini Kaligotla, "Shiva's Waterfront Temples: Architects and Their Audiences in Medieval India" (Yale UP, 2022)
The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Daniela Bevilacqua, "From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus' Understanding of Embodied Practices" (Equinox, 2024)
Extensively based on fieldwork material, From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus' Understanding of Embodied Practices (Equinox, 2024) primarily analyses embodied…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Lauren Tober, "Mental Health Aware Yoga: A Guide for Yoga Teachers" (Singing Dragon, 2024)
When taught properly, yoga can be a healing and life-affirming practice for students experiencing mental illness. Lauren Tober's book Mental Health Aware Yoga…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jennifer Lang, "Landed: A Yogi's Memoir in Pieces & Poses" (Vine Leaves Press, 2024)
In her latest memoir, Landed: A Yogi's Memoir of Places & Poses (2024, Vine Leaves Press), American-born Jennifer traces her journey-both on and off the yoga…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Suganya Anandakichenin, "The Monsoon Cloud: Poet Kāḷamēkam and His Irreverent Poetry" (Primus, 2024)
A wordsmith, an extempore poet and a satirist, Kāḷamēkam (also known as Kāḷamēka Pulavar; fifteenth century) is widely known for his taṉippāṭals or…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Michael Thomas Williams, "Existence and Perception in Medieval Vedānta: Vyāsatīrtha's Defence of Realism in the Nyāyāmṛta" (de Gruyter, 2024)
Existence and Perception in Medieval Vedānta: Vyāsatīrtha's Defence of Realism in the Nyāyāmṛta (de Gruyter, 2024) focuses on discussions of metaphysics and…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Deepa Das Acevedo, "The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India (Oxford UP, 2024) tells the story of one of contemporary India’s most contentious…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, "Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood" (India Viking, 2024)
Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav’s book Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood (Penguin Random House India, 2024) undertakes a systematic…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Michael C. Baltutis, "What is Hinduism?: A Student's Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)
Michael C. Baltutis' book What is Hinduism?: A Student's Introduction (Routledge, 2024) is an engaging introduction to the complex religious tradition of…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Rafal K. Stepien, "Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy: Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Hari Dutt Sharma, "Gulmini: An Anthology of Sanskrit Lyrics and Gazals" (Rākā Prakāśana, 2023)
Today I talked to Hari Dutt Sharma about Gulmini: An Anthology of Sanskrit Lyrics and Gazals (Rākā Prakāśana, 2023). The book presents 51 lyrical poems in…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Cogen Bohanec, "Bhakti Ethics, Emotions, and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics" (Lexington, 2024)
Bhakti Ethics, Emotions, and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics (Lexington Books, 2024) explores the broader implications of understanding bhakti, “devotional…
- New Books in Indian Religions
The Body in Classical Hathayoga, with Ruth Westoby
In this episode Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Ruth Westoby a scholar, teacher, and practitioner of yoga. We discuss Ruth’s work on the body in early hatha…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Christopher P. Miller et al., "Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age" (Lexington, 2019)
Today’s globalized society faces some of humanity’s most unprecedented social and environmental challenges. Presenting new and insightful approaches to a range…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019)
Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and practicality of…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Tracy Pintchman, "Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan serves as a site of worship for the Hindu goddess Karumariamman, whose origins are in South India. In her American…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Karl Hoffmann and Johanna Narten, "Vedic Sentences: Edited from the Literary Estate" (Heidelberg Asian Studies, 2024)
The ancient Indian Vedas contain sentences of rather varied content, including religious statements ("Varuṇa truly is the king of the gods"), words of wisdom…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Jeffery D. Long et al., "Hinduism and Tribal Religions" (Springer, 2021)
Hinduism and Tribal Religions (Springer, 2021) offers an overview of Hinduism as found in India and the diaspora. Exploring Hinduism in India in dynamic…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Dalpat Rajpurohit, "Sundar's Dreams: Ārambhik Ādhunikatā, Dādūpanth and Sundardās's Poetry" (Rajkamal, 2022)
Dalpat Rajpurohit's book Sundar's Dreams: Ārambhik Ādhunikatā, Dādūpanth and Sundardās's Poetry (Rajkamal, 2022) explores the making and lifespan of a…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Anthony P. Stone, "Hindu Astrology: Myths, Symbols, and Realities" (Pippa Rann Books, 2023)
Does Hindu astrology work? If so, why? When does it not work? Why? Where and how did Hindu astrology arise and develop? What are its similarities with other…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Murad Khan Mumtaz, "Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting, 1500-1800" (Brill, 2023)
Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for South Asian…
- New Books in Indian Religions
D. E. Osto, "Paranormal States: Psychic Abilities in Buddhist Convert Communities" (Columbia UP, 2024)
A number of converts to Buddhism report paranormal experiences. Their accounts describe psychic abilities like clairvoyance and precognition, out-of-body…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Steven E. Lindquist, "The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya" (SUNY Press, 2024)
In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary production…
- New Books in Indian Religions
Francis X. Clooney, S.J., "Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
This autobiography--Hindu and Catholic, Priest and Scholar: A Love Story (Bloomsbury, 2024)--traces Francis X. Clooney's intellectual and spiritual journey…