Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Religious History
Historical studies of Indian religious history, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other, and of its spread across Asia, read alongside the sources and living communities.
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Texts
Auld Lang Syne, Second Series — My Indian Friends — F. Max MüllerF. Max Müller’s 1899 recollections of the Indian men and women he knew in Europe or by letter, among them Dvârkanâth and Debendranâth Tagore, Râdhâkânta Deva, Nehemiah Goreh, Keshub Chunder Sen, Behramji Malabâri, Râmabâi and Ânandibâi Joshee, with chapters on the Hindu reform movements, Indian theosophy and the Veda, and his own metrical translations of Vedic hymns.Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol. I — Charles EliotVolume I of Sir Charles Eliot’s three-volume historical survey Hinduism and Buddhism (1921): his preface and long introduction to the whole work, early Indian religion from the Vedic gods and sacrifices to the Jains, and Pali Buddhism — the Buddha’s life and teaching, monks and laymen, Asoka, the Pali canon, meditation and mythology.Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol. II — Charles EliotVolume II of Sir Charles Eliot’s three-volume historical survey Hinduism and Buddhism (1921): the Mahayana — its bodhisattvas, Buddhas, metaphysics, scriptures and chronology, India as the Chinese pilgrims saw it, and Buddhism’s decline there — and Hinduism from Śiva and Vishṇu through the Śaiva and Vishnuite movements, Kabir and the Sikhs, Śâktism and Hindu philosophy.Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol. III — Charles EliotVolume III of Sir Charles Eliot’s three-volume historical survey Hinduism and Buddhism (1921): Buddhism and Indian influence outside India — Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Camboja, Champa, Java, Central Asia, China, Korea, Annam, Tibet and Japan — then Christianity, Persian religion and Islam in India and Indian influence in the West, with the index to all three volumes.The Religions of India — Edward Washburn HopkinsEdward Washburn Hopkins’s 1896 handbook, Volume I of the Handbooks on the History of Religions edited by Morris Jastrow, Jr., tracing the religions of India from the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda through Brahmanism and the Upanishads, Jainism and Buddhism, to epic and Puranic Hinduism, the modern sects and the tribal religions, with chapters on the land and people and on India and the West, a bibliography and an index.