Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online
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Subject: Asian Studies
Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism presents the latest research on all the main aspects of the Hindu traditions. Its 438 essays are original work written by the world’s foremost scholars on Hinduism. The encyclopedia presents a balanced and even-handed view of Hinduism, recognizing the divergent perspectives and methods in the academic study of a religion that has ancient historical roots with many flourishing traditions today. Including all essays from the heralded printed edition, Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism is now to be regularly updated with new articles and available in a fully searchable, dynamic digital format.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Edited by: Knut A. Jacobsen (Editor-in-Chief), University of Bergen, and Helene Basu, University of Münster, Angelika Malinar, University of Zürich, Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida (Associate Editors)
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Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism presents the latest research on all the main aspects of the Hindu traditions. Its 438 essays are original work written by the world’s foremost scholars on Hinduism. The encyclopedia presents a balanced and even-handed view of Hinduism, recognizing the divergent perspectives and methods in the academic study of a religion that has ancient historical roots with many flourishing traditions today. Including all essays from the heralded printed edition, Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism is now to be regularly updated with new articles and available in a fully searchable, dynamic digital format.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Hagiography
(8,943 words)
Hagiography is the recording of the lives of holy men and women. It has a very long history in the literatures of India. In those literatures hagiographical writing is found in three genres: Purāṇa ("Legend"), Carita ("Biography") and Kathā ("Story"). While all of these genres include hagiographies, none of them is exclusively hagiographic. Although some Indian hagiographies are outstanding works of literature, their main purpose is religious and hagiographies have a place in the spiritual life…
Date:
2020-05-18
Hair
(5,384 words)
Embedded within India’s most ancient text, the
Ṛgveda, there is a hymn portraying a conversation of a young girl, Apālā, with the god Indra. She makes this request: Indra, make these three surfaces grow forth – the head of my Papa, the field, and this on my belly. That field of ours, this body of mine, and my Papa’s head – make all these hairy. (
ṚV. 8.91; trans. Brereton & Jamison, 2014; for an examination of this text, see Schmidt, 1987; Vajracharya, 1988) We have in this ancient text a clear link among grass or grain in a field, the hair on a man’s head, and the pubic hair…
Date:
2020-05-18
Hans Ji Maharaj and the Divya Sandesh Parishad
(4,369 words)
Any attempt to document Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (1900–1966) runs into the immediate challenge of the paucity and reliability of available sources. To date four websites provide information on his biography and his teachings. In addition to the academic challenge of hagiography, the websites, with one exception, represent the viewpoints of religious movements that all claim to be his legitimate successors. In general, there is little disagreement about the content of each source, except where they d…
Date:
2020-05-18
Hanumān
(4,983 words)
Hanumān is a complex deity who is venerated today throughout the Hindu world. Although he is best known as the prominent
vānara or “monkey” hero who reverently serves the human prince Rāma, the seventh
avatāra of Viṣṇu, and his wife, Sītā, in the body of epic narratives, visual representations, and performances that collectively comprise the
Rāmāyaṇa storytelling tradition, Hanumān is also widely worshipped in diverse mythological roles and religious contexts – for example, as an
avatāra of Rudra-Śiva, as an immortal
yogin, and as the guardian and intimate companion of nu…
Date:
2020-05-18
Haridāsī Sampradāya
(6,643 words)
The Haridāsī Sampradāya is a Vaiṣṇava lineage that has flourished for nearly five hundred years within the Braj area of northern India, and should not be confused with the Haridāsa movement of western and southern India (see Smārta). It was inaugurated in Vrindavan in the 16th century by Svāmī Haridās (c. 1480–1575 CE), a poet-saint and musician who discovered and established the worship of the Kṛṣṇa deity Śrī Bāṅke Bihārī. Vrindavan (Vṛndāvana), a popular pilgrimage town in Braj, is consi…
Date:
2020-05-18
Hariharananda Aranya
(5,165 words)
Swami Hariharananda Aranya (1869–1947) was a
saṃnyāsī, a practitioner of Sāṃkhyayoga (the combined teaching of Sāṃkhya and Pātañjala Yoga), and the founder of the Kāpil Maṭh, a monastic institution in Madhupur, Jharkhand. Hariharananda Aranya’s title is Sāṃkhyayogācārya (“Teacher of Sāṃkhyayoga”), and he and his disciples considered themselves Sāṃkhyayogīs. He was a monk and scholar, and wrote a number of books in Bengali and Sanskrit. The best known are his commentaries on the
Yogasūtra and the
Vyāsabhāṣỵa, the
Kapilāśramīyapātañjalayogadarśana in Bengali (partly transl…
Date:
2020-05-18
Harivaṃśa
(5,076 words)
The
Harivaṃśa is a series of textual materials at the end of the Sanskrit
Mahābhārata, credited, like the larger work, to the sage Vyāsa. The nature of the
Harivaṃśa in relation to the
Mahābhārata is indicated by the word
khila, which is used in the singular to denote the
Harivaṃśa as a whole (Vaidya, 1969–1971) and in the plural to label the
parvans (books) that constitute it, and which has usually been translated as “supplement” or “appendix” (Couture, 1996; Matchett, 1996). However, the
Mahābhārata’s lists of contents show that whatever the nuances of the relationship, the
Harivaṃśa is …
Date:
2020-05-18
Healers
(3,252 words)
All cultures are characterized by medical pluralism, that is, by a situation where multiple forms of healing exist side by side. The health system of South Asia is especially pluralistic, with a wide variety of healers and healing traditions. This is partly due to the sheer number of different communities in the subcontinent: not only its many religions (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Animist) but also its numerous linguistic groups, regional cultures, castes, classes, and tribe…
Date:
2020-05-18