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RR 2011/150 Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Volume II: Sacred Texts and Languages, Ritual Traditions, Arts, Concepts Editor-in-Chief Knut A. Jacobsen Leiden and Boston, MA 2010 xlv +887 pp. ISBN 978 90 04 17893 9 $354; euro239
Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section Two: India, Volume 22/2
Keyword Encyclopaedias, India, Religion
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121111133800
I have previously had the pleasure of examining the first volume of this massive collection of occidental research on Indian religious ideas (RR 2010/201), which focussed on religious variations in the different regions of the sub-continent; the different deities that have accumulated under the Brahmin umbrella; and, the pilgrimages and gatherings which are still an important part of Indian religious and social activity. Having reviewed that at some length, I intend to take a shorter look at the second volume. I propose to do the same with the third and fourth volumes as they come out, and will sum up me whole series with a more extensive review when the promised final volume, number five, appears.
Like the first, the volume under review consists of scholarly chapter-length essays arranged in a broad subject order rather than alphabetical subject order - really more of a handbook than an encyclopedia. It covers four inter-related topics - Sacred Texts and Languages; Ritual Traditions; Arts; and Concepts:
Language is an important topic. If we assume that Hinduism is the result of a collision between the ideas of incoming Aryan or Indo-European tribes and those of the pre-existing Dravidian inhabitants of ancient India, we can see that though there are hundreds of languages spoken there now, two main ancient languages are likely to be used for sacred writings. Sanskrit is an IndoEuropean language which, broadly speaking, has a similar relationship to many of the languages of the northern...