Sources of Indian Traditions - (Introduction to Asian Civilizations) 3rd Edition (Paperback)

About the Book

Contains an essential selection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious history of India from the decline of Mughal rule in the eighteenth century to today.

Book Synopsis

For more than fifty years, students and teachers have made the two-volume resource Sources of Indian Traditions their top pick for an accessible yet thorough introduction to Indian and South Asian civilizations. Volume 2 contains an essential selection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious history of India from the decline of Mughal rule in the eighteenth century to today. It details the advent of the East India Company, British colonization, the struggle for liberation, the partition of 1947, and the creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and contemporary India.

This third edition now begins earlier than the first and second, featuring a new chapter on eighteenth-century intellectual and religious trends that set the stage for India's modern development. The editors have added material on Gandhi and his reception both nationally and abroad and include different perspectives on and approaches to Partition and its aftermath. They expand their portrait of post-1947 India and Pakistan and add perspectives on Bangladesh. The collection continues to be divided thematically, with a section devoted to the drafting of the Indian constitution, the rise of nationalism, the influence of Western thought, the conflict in Kashmir, nuclear proliferation, minority religions, secularism, and the role of the Indian political left. A phenomenal text, Sources of Indian Traditions is more indispensable than ever for courses in philosophy, religion, literature, and intellectual and cultural history.

Review Quotes

The third edition of Sources of Indian Traditions will assuredly be, like the earlier versions, an indispensable resource for teaching South Asia across a wide range of disciplines. The revisions are extensive and substantially reflect scholarly advances of recent years. Specialists and novices alike will learn from the texts that are included, and the organization and commentaries are bound to stimulate productive conversation and even controversy.--Barbara D. Metcalf, University of California, Davis

Anthologies come and go, and India becomes South Asia, but Sources of Indian Traditions remains the best--the best selected, best translated, and best annotated. It is to South Asian texts what the Oxford English Dictionary is to the English language: the gold standard.--Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago

About the Author

Rachel Fell McDermott is professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College. She is a specialist in Bengali goddess worship whose books include Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals; Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal; and Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kali and Uma in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal.

Leonard A. Gordon is professor of history emeritus of the City University of New York and the author of Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Subhas and Sarat Chandra Bose and Bengal: The Nationalist Movement, 1876-1940. He is also the director of the Taraknath Das Foundation.

Ainslie T. Embree is professor of history emeritus of Columbia University. Since his retirement, he has taught at Brown University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is the editor of Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800, Volume 1, Second Edition.

Frances W. Pritchett is professor emerita of modern Indic languages in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Among her books are Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics and The Romance Tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah. She is pursuing major online projects that include A Desertful of Roses and A Garden of Kashmir, commentaries on the Urdu ghazal poetry of Ghalib and Mir.

Dennis Dalton is professor emeritus of political science at Barnard College. He is the author of Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action and Indian Idea of Freedom: Political Thought of Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore and the editor of Mahatma Gandhi: Selected Political Writings.