Religious thought and practice in Vaikhānasa Viṣṇuism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2798737 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Gonda (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1977 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 550-571 |
| Publication date | 1977-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0041-977X • E-ISSN: 1474-0699 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0041977x00045912 |
| OpenAlex | W2148807504 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
The question as to how many individuals in one of the religious communities of ancient and modern India at a given historical moment understood all the meanings and implications of their traditional ritual symbolism may to a considerable extent be irrelevant, but the relation between religious practice and the philosophical or theological doctrines underlying it is of outstanding interest. Whereas we are, as far as this relation between thought and practice in Vedic religion is concerned, placed in favourable circumstances because the Brāhmaṇas explaining the thought solve many problems arising from a study of the sūtras describing the ritual acts, ritual texts compiled in the Hindu period, and even those which originated in the centuries of transition, often force us to apply modified methods of investigating these connexions. A special importance attaches to those documents, which, from one point of view that is often shared by the indigenous tradition, may be regarded as late representatives of Vedism, and from another as early products of Hinduism characterized by the prominence of other gods and the appearance of other cults. Among these texts those issuing from the religious community of the Vaikhānasas, which, as a small but important group, continues to exist in the South of India, are of special interest because they embody the tradition of a society of Indian devotees which at first constituted a Vedic school belonging to the Taittirīya branch of the Black Yajurveda, and in the transitional period and the centuries after came to transform itself into a community of devout worshippers of Viṣṇu
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Hinduism · Indigenous · Literature · Period (music) · Relation (database) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
| Highly cited | No |
|---|