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
Ravidāsīs
(5,029 words)
Raidās (Hind.) or Ravidās (Punj.) belongs to a now immortalized group of poet-saints in Hinduism’s devotional (
bhakti) stream that flowered in northern India from the 14th to 16th century. He was contemporaneous with Kabīr, the most well known of the North Indian figures in this tradition. Ravidās’ earliest surviving poems are enshrined in Sikhism’s most sacred text, the
Gurū Granth Sāhib or
Ādigranth, in the section belonging to devotees (
bhagats). The means by which the community of followers coalesced around figures like Ravidās and other prominent poet-saints…
Date:
2020-05-18
Ravidās/Raidās
(6,336 words)
Ravidās, who is also known as Raidās in Hindi and Rohidās in Marathi, is remembered in India as the greatest poet-saint of the
bhakti tradition from an untouchable community. He was a younger contemporary of Kabīr, but the precise dates of Kabīr’s and Ravidās’s lives are not known, although contemporary scholarship suggests that Ravidās probably lived from around 1500 to 1550 CE (Callewaert & Friedlander, 1992). Ravidās and Kabīr are thought to have lived and worked within communities where oral traditions, rather tha…
Date:
2020-05-18
Regions and Regional Traditions
(6,858 words)
The term “region” refers to the characteristic features of the social groups that belong to a distinct geographical realm or territory. Ideas about what would define such a realm vary considerably. Modern concepts of the region are often based on a scientific mapping of the earth with its continents and poles, perceived as parts of nation-states with fixed territorial boundaries and a commitment to preserving each area’s territorial integrity. Seen from a historical perspective, regions are thou…
Date:
2020-05-18
Religious Endowments and Gift Giving
(3,740 words)
Within the vast and extremely important category of the gift, we may distinguish gifts of a particular type, for which the English word “endowment” is a convenient label. An endowment is a gift where the transfer of property is accompanied by the expectation that the gift will be able to provide permanent and ongoing support to its recipient or for the gift’s intended purpose. The two aspects of such a gift that make it distinctive are the donor’s expectation, and the gift’s nature as permanent and ongoing. These characteristics are lacking in the case of an act of “pure”
dāna, such as the do…
Date:
2020-05-18