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
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Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History
Paper, 280 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14987-7
$28.00
/ Ł19.50
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.