Understanding the Brahma Kumaris

Understanding the Brahma Kumaris
Author: Frank Whaling
Publisher: Dunedin Academic Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Brahmakumari
ISBN: 9781903765517

The Brahma Kumaris are a new spiritual tradition. The movement currently has over 450,000 worldwide adherents in more than 100 countries. As with all spiritual traditions, the Brahma Kumaris are different, bewildering, and fascinating in their newness and in their complexity. In 1936, in Hyderabad, India, a millionaire diamond merchant named Lekhraj Khubchand began to have visions at around the age of 60. The visions led him to hold meetings in his own home which were attended mainly by women. This was the beginning of the Brahma Kumaris. Dada Lekhraj, as he became affectionately known, used his fortune to set up a trust composed of 11 women. One of the young women, who became known as Om Radhe, became the leader of the new movement, while Dada Lekhraj remained a key figure. Following the Partition, the Brahma Kumaris moved to Mount Abu in Rajasthan, India, and this remains their headquarters. Through phenomenology, this book examines the Brahma Kumari tradition. Phenomenology involves firstly putting one's own world-view aside in order to understand the world-view of others. Applying 'epoche' (to avoid bias) and 'empathy' (to engage sympathetically), the objective of this study is to understand the Brahma Kumaris, as far as is possible, from within. The book, along with others in the Understanding Faith series by Dunedin Academic Press, is intended for students of comparative religion and is a basic source of essential information about the major world faiths in the 21st century for those who seek to understand this aspect of influence on our lives today. (Series: Understanding Faith)

The Cult of Brahmā

The Cult of Brahmā
Author: Tārāpada Bhaṭṭācāryyeṇa
Publisher: Varanasi : Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1969
Genre: Brahman
ISBN:

The Cult of Jagannatha

The Cult of Jagannatha
Author: Jose Carlos Gomes da Silva
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 8120834623

The Cult of Jagannatha: Myths and Rituals offers a new approach to Orissan ethnography. In sharp contrast with dominant explanations, centred on tribal influences and the history of aryan-isation, this book provides extensive evidence on the importance of religious orthodoxy. The transition from the coastal to the inland regions of Orissa is characterised by sharp demographic and sociological discontinuities. Such regional differences are probably a reflection of aryan-isation. Ethnological accounts have most commonly relied on the historical reconstruction of this process. It has been assumed that native communities exercised a decisive influence on the traditions that flourished in the delta plain, especially those related to its vital centres-the city of Puri and the temple of Jagannatha. Myths and rituals show that sacrificial symbolism is at the core of Puri's religious system. Explicitly associated with an inaugural asvamedha (the Vedic horse sacrifice), the building of the great temple is still seen as a transformation of the brick-fire altar. These correlations are further supported by an impressive web of orthodox representations, both Vedic and Hindu. This acknowledgement of orthodoxy takes us back to the so-called singularities of local traditions. How to interpret the iconographic "specificity" of Puri's deities? What status should be attributed to the Sudra ritualists of the great temple? The present book provides new answers to these old questions. Puzzling as it may appear, the "strangeness" of Orissan ethnography is a particular, yet extremely coherent expression of Indian traditions.

Brahman

Brahman
Author: Michael Warren Myers
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001
Genre: Brahman
ISBN: 9780700712571

The book examines the traditional topics of systematic theology - such as the existence and nature of God, revelation and reason, religious ethics and human practice, the relation of God to the world - and allows these topics to grow in conversation with India and to change according to dialogical insights.

Brahma Creator Of The Universe : Large Print

Brahma Creator Of The Universe : Large Print
Author: Om Books Editorial Team
Publisher: Om Books International
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2015
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9382607668

The Hindus consider Lord Brahma as the Creator of the Universe. Along with Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva, he forms the Holy Trinity. As creation is the work of the mind and the intellect, Lord Brahma symbolises the Universal Mind. From the standpoint of an individual, he symbolises one’s own mind and intellect. However, Lord Brahma has lost his claim to being a supreme deity. Today, there is no cult or sect that exclusively worships him, but there are a few temples dedicated to him. There are many myths around his origin and powers; his life reverberates with symbolism which needs to be understood. This beautifully-illustrated book explores all these aspects and serves as an excellent introduction to the Father of the gods, humans and demons.

The Cult of Draupadī

The Cult of Draupadī
Author: Alf Hiltebeitel
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Total Pages: 520
Release: 1991
Genre: Draupadī (Hindu mythology)
ISBN: 9788120810006

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume work on the little known South Indian folk cult of the goddess Draupadi and on the classical epic, the Mahabharata, that the cult brings to life in mythic, ritual and dramatic forms. It focuses on the Draupadi cult's own double mythology, moving from its storieis about Draupadi's 'primal temple' near the capital of the medieval South Indian Kingdom of Gingee to its version of the Mahabharata war on the North Indian plain of Kuruksetra. Throughout, Hiltebeitel intertwines 'regional' data, gathered from both oral and written sources, with the 'epic', drawn from the cult's own performative traditions as well as from classical versions of the Mahabharata in both Tamil and Sanskrit. He re-examines many issues critical to Indological studies and takes up them while breaking new ground in investigating the further rapport between the Hindu goddess and the Indian epic. Future volumes will treat the rituals of the Draupadi cult and the Mahabharata as seen through a Draupadi cult retrospective. Contents List of Maps, List of Plates, List of Tables, Preface, Acknowledgements, Conventions, PART I: From Gingee: Introduction: Invocatory Songs to Draupadi, 'The Lady Who Resides in Gingee', The Draupadi Cult: Its Historical and Regional Settings, Social Background, Diffusion, Variation, and Change, The Sources of the Gingee Kingdom: The Living River and the Tree of Gold, Myths of the Melacceri Draupadi Temple, Muttal Ravuttan: Draupadi's Muslim Devotee, PART II: To Kuruksetra: The Draupadi Cult's Mahabharata: An Introduction, The Death of Baka: Prelude to the Drama Cycle, Additional Marriages, The two Sabhas: 'The Rajasuya Sacrifice' and 'Dice Match and Disrobing' , Arjuna's Tapas, Draupadi's Forest Exile and the Period in Disguise: Virapancali, Puvalicci, and Kuravanci, Krsna the Messenger, Aravan's Sacrifice, Pormannan's Fight: Pottu Raja at Kuruksetra, Pormannan's Flight: The War Kings Weapons and Their Mythical Sources, Kuruksetra: The Mahabharata War, When Draupadi Walked on fire, Appendix 1: The Lunar Dynasty from its origins to draupadi's Second Advent at Gingee, Appendix 2. An outline History of Gingee, Abbreviations, Bibliography, Index.

The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra

The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra
Author: Aleksandar Uskokov
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2022-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350150037

The Brahma-sutra, attributed to Badaraya (ca. 400 CE), is the canonical book of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition which became the doctrinal backbone of modern Hinduism. As an explanation of the Upanishads, it is principally concerned with the ideas of Brahman, the great ground of Being, and of the highest good. The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra is the first introduction to concentrate on the text and its ideas, rather than its reception and interpretation in the different schools of Vedanta. Covering the epistemology, ontology, theory of causality and psychology of the Brahma-sutra, and its characteristic theodicy, it also: · Provides a comprehensive account of its doctrine of meditation · Elaborates on its nature and attainment, while carefully considering the wider religious context of Ancient India in which the work is situated · Draws the contours of Brahma-sutra's intellectual biography and reception history. By contextualizing the Brahma-sutra's teachings against the background of its main collocutors, it elucidates how the work gave rise to widely divergent ontologies and notions of practice. For both the undergraduate student and the specialist this is an illuminating and necessary introduction to one of Indian philosophy's most important works.