An ideal resource for courses on Hinduism or world religions, this accessible volume spans the entire field of Hindu studies. It provides a forum for the best scholars in the world to make their views and research available to a wider audience.

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• Comprehensively covers the textual traditions of Hinduism
  
• Features four coherent sections covering theoretical issues, textual traditions, science and philosophy, and Hindu society and politics
  
• Reflects the trend away from essentialist understandings of Hinduism towards tradition and regional-specific studies
  
• Includes material on Hindu folk religions and stresses the importance of region in analyzing Hinduism
  
• Ideal for use on university courses.

About the Author
Gavin Flood is Head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Stirling. Among his publications are Beyond Phenomonology: Rethinking the Study of Religion (1999), An Introduction to Hinduism (1996), and Body and Cosmology in Kashmir OEaivism (1993).

Reviews
"This collection offers a new way to parse the multiple entryways into the vast arena of Hinduism. Using the general divisional categories of theoretical issues, text and tradition, systematic thought, and society, politics and nation, Flood has achieved significant breadth in disciplines, subjects and historical perspectives." Choice

"This is a most welcome, timely, and authoritative assessment of the entire field of study, a most commendable response to an enormous challenge." Journal of Contemporary Religion

"It effectively serves to condense the proliferation of scholarship on Hinduism... The approach is interdisciplinary and places Hinduism not within a sphere of its own, but within a larger context, reading it as a dynamic product of historical global exchange. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism also has an important section devoted to the Indian Sciences (language, mathematics, astrology, astronomy and medicine) which collectively destabilize colonialism's claim that Hinduism was arbitrary and irrational. ... A handsome addition to academic and personal libraries." Asian Studies Review

Book Information
ISBN 9781405132510
Author Gavin Flood
Format Paperback
Page Count 624
Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 1089g
Dimensions(mm) 248mm * 172mm * 46mm