List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Ancestral Rites in the Early Vedas
Chapter 2: The Solemn Ancestral Rites
Chapter 3: The Domestic Rice-ball Sacrifice to the Ancestors
Chapter 4: The sraddha-rite
Chapter 5: Ancestral Rites in the Buddhist Literature
Chapter 6: Soteriology
Chapter 7: Mediation
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Glossary of Sanskrit Terms
Bibliography
Index
Matthew R. Sayers is Assistant Professor of Religion at Lebanon Valley College.
"This compact volume makes a notable contribution to our
understanding of doctrinal and institutional shifts in India in the
last centuries before the Common Era. Sayers is one of just a
handful of recent scholars to call attention to the importance of
the Vedic domestic ritual codes in the creation of what has come to
be known as 'classical Hinduism.' He is to be congratulated for
setting the complex ritual particulars within a clearly limned
overview of the
competing religious ideologies being 'marketed' by rival groups of
professional 'religious experts.' He manages to do this without
trivializing the ideas at stake, and without glibly reifying
categories such as 'popular' and 'elite' or 'Brahmanical' and
'non-Brahmanical.'" - Timothy Lubin, Washington and Lee
University
"Sayers' history of ancestor worship makes a substantial
contribution to the history of
South Asian religions, demonstrating in great detail how a new
paradigm emerged and how efforts to integrate this paradigm into
ideologies and practices exerted a strong and lasting influence."--
Journal of the American Oriental Society
"Sayers writes well, and the book is accessible at both
undergraduate and graduate
levels. His signal contribution is a clear recognition of stages in
the gradual development
of a complex system of ancestor worship within the overall pattern
of funerary
rites, both extended and domestic, in ancient Vedic India."--he
Journal of Religion
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