[INDOLOGY] Publication Announcement

[Aleksandar Uskokov]

It is, nevetheless, interesting to see Vaishnavas writing at roughly the
same time as Vijnanabhiksu, Sanatana Goswami for instance, in his Brhad
Bhagavatamrta, presenting a path in which those who we would classify as
Hindus today find a place in the progression towards Krishna, and others --
Buddhists, Jains, what to say of Muslims -- do not. Do we see such schemes
before the 16th century? If not, the question is, what has changed to allow
for such a paradigm.

Kind regards
Aleksandar
On Dec 17, 2013 7:00 PM, "Howard Resnick" <hr at ivs.edu> wrote:

> Thank you Andrew, and congratulations on your prize-winning publication.
> Forgive me for commenting based on the blurb, but I assume it to be
> accurate.
> "…thinkers treated the philosophies of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along
> with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva, and Sakti, as belonging to a single
> system of belief and practice. Instead of seeing such groups as separate
> and contradictory, they re-envisioned them as separate rivers leading to
> the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate reality."
> This is certainly true in the case of some thinkers, and these thinkers
> did eventually emerge as powerful shapers of what one might call unified
> Hindu thought.
> It bears mentioning that some of the involuntarily "unified" communities,
> certainly strict Vaishnava groups, perceived this development with
> something akin to theological horror. Indeed the greatest Vaishanva
> Vedantists, including Ramanuja, Madhva, and Baladeva, explicitly sought to
> refute the notion that all paths lead as rivers into the ocean of Brahman,
> unless by that one meant Krishna as param brahman (Gita 10.12)
> Thus for centuries there has been strong tension, and theological battles,
> between on the one hand the unifying Hindu view, including what Halbfass
> called the "Neo-Hindu" thought of Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan etc, with
> their roots in Sankara et all, and on the other hand the various Vaishnava
> traditions including the Sri Vaishnava followers of Ramanuja, the
> Dvaita-vadi followers of Madhva, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava followers of
> Caitanya.
> I present all this not as an argument against your thesis, which I
> basically accept, but rather to elicit your learned view on the matter.
> Thanks!
> Howard
>
>
> On Dec 17, 2013, at 2:07 PM, Andrew Nicholson <
> andrew.nicholson at stonybrook.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear list members,
>
> I am pleased to announce that my first book, *Unifying Hinduism:
> Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History, *is now available
> in an affordable paperback edition from Columbia University Press.
>
> In addition, if you enter the discount code UNINIC when ordering the
> paperback edition from the Columbia University Press website you will
> receive $8.40 off the normal list price of $28.
>
> For more information on the contents of the book, please click on the link
> or see below.
>
> http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14986-0/
>
> Warmest season's greetings,
> Andrew
> _____________________________________
> Andrew J. Nicholson
> Associate Professor
> SUNY Stony Brook
> Stony Brook, NY 11794-5343  USA
> Tel: (631) 632-4030  Fax: (631) 632-4098
> http://sbsuny.academia.edu/AndrewNicholson
>
> --------
> Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
> Paper, 280 pages,
> ISBN: 978-0-231-14987-7
> $28.00 / £19.50
>
> *Winner of the Book Award for Best First Book in the History of Religions,
> American Academy of Religion*
>
> Some postcolonial theorists argue that the idea of a single system of
> belief known as "Hinduism" is a creation of nineteenth-century British
> imperialists. Andrew J. Nicholson introduces another perspective: although
> a unified Hindu identity is not as ancient as some Hindus claim, it has its
> roots in innovations within South Asian philosophy from the fourteenth to
> seventeenth centuries. During this time, thinkers treated the philosophies
> of Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga, along with the worshippers of Visnu, Siva,
> and Sakti, as belonging to a single system of belief and practice. Instead
> of seeing such groups as separate and contradictory, they re-envisioned
> them as separate rivers leading to the ocean of Brahman, the ultimate
> reality.
>
> Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early
> modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana
> Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta
> philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project
> paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda,
> Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all
> world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson
> also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts—like monism and
> dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and
> heterodoxy—have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy.
>
>
>
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