A Survey of Hinduism

Rating:
Summary: A great reference book/ textbook on Hinduism
Review: The second edition of the book is a much more substantial edition and it has corrected the errors of the first. The book is definitely the best general resource the reader will find on Hinduism. Unlike other texts that present an Orientalist view of Hinduism, Klostermaier lets the tradition speaks for itself. For a book of this size, dealing with a tradition as rich and complex as Hinduism, it is natural that the reader will not always agree with the author. But Professor Klostermaier tries to be as fair in his presentation as is possible.

The book should be a successful textbook to teach Hinduism at the college level.

Rating:
Summary: A great reference book/ textbook on Hinduism
Review: There however are serious questions about the soundness of the author's methods, and thus about the veracity of many of his claims, especially those that relate to Madhva (13th cent. CE).
Both editions of the book contain a large number of factual errors; while some of these errors have been fixed in the second edition, there is no mention therein of the earlier errors, and no list of errata is provided. As many copies of the first edition continue to be used, it is likely as not that readers of said first edition will continue to be misled.
The most striking error in the book is the following (p. 422, second edition):
[Madhva] then went on a missionary tour, engaging Jains, Buddhists, and Advaitins in discussions and defeating them not only by the power of his words but also with the help of a king who, on Madhva's insistence, had thousands of Jains impaled and exiled other infidels.
As a matter of fact, the biography of Madhva, ``considered authentic'' according to Klostermaier himself on the very same page, fails to mention any such king who impaled Jains at Madhva's insistence and exiled other infidels. There is no warrant for presuming any similar actions or attitudes on Madhva's part, king or no king. No other scholar, including B.N.K. Sharma, who wrote the definitive The History of the Dvaita School of Vedanta and Its Literature (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi; 2d edition 1981, 3d edition 2000), mentions anything to support these claims either1, and Klostermaier makes his accusation without indicating a source. The fabrication is also seen elsewhere--on page 59 and page 254 Madhva is described as ``the hammer of the Jains,'' again without any source being indicated in support.
Besides these questionable scholarly practices, Klostermaier also gets his facts wrong on several occasions. Immediately after the portion earlier cited (p. 422), we read:
The image of Krsna that Madhva installed at his Udipi matha is still an important focus of pilgrimage and the rotation of the headship of the matha, taking place every twelve years, is also a major social occasion about which newspapers report. Madhva was the most prolific of all the great Vedantins; he left more than thirty major works as well as a number of minor ones. In addition to the traditional commentaries on the Gita, the Upanisads, and the Brahma Sutra, he wrote commentaries on the Bhagavata Purana, the Rgveda, and portions of the Mahabharata, along with several philosophical monographs and short summaries of his own commentaries, the most famous of which is the Anuvyakhyana, a masterful exposition of the Brahma Sutra in eighty-eight verses.
The following are some of the errors in the above:
Rotation of worship in the Krsna temple in Udupi takes place every two years.
Madhva wrote partial commentaries on the Bhagavata Purana4 and the Rg Veda5, but a digest covering the entire Mahabharata6. He wrote no ``summaries of his own commentaries."
His work called the Anuvyakhyana consists of close to two thousand verses7, not eighty-eight.
The description of Madhva's tradition as the Brahmasampradaya is a neo-classical (post 18th cent.) and doctrinally incorrect one (inasmuch as Madhva does not trace his heritage to Brahma).
A few other glaring factual errors can be noted briefly:
In one instance (p. 248), the name Madhava which is an epithet applied to Visnu, is confounded with `Madhva'!
Madhva's dates are given wrongly (p. 485) as 1197-1276, whilst Sharma has conclusively shown them on the basis of literary and epigraphical evidence to be 1238-1317.
There are other errors that are only found in the first edition of Klostermaier's book, but correction of which is not noted in the second. The most significant of these is on page 76 (first edition), where we read:
The present edition of the Mahabharata itself speaks of three beginnings: manvadi, beginning with Manu, corresponding to the first twelve parvans (``chapters'') of the present work; astikadi, beginning with Astika, comprising parvans 13 to 53; uparicaradi, from parvan 54 onward. The statements are incongruous with the fact that the whole of the 'Bharata only contains 18 parva-s, as also noted by Klostermaier himself (p. 77, first edition). The story of the Mahabharata is also summarized wrongly in the first edition--Klostermaier would have us believe (p. 79, first edition) that the Pandavas spent the thirteenth year of their exile (which had to be spent incognito, ``in the very court of Duryodhana, without being recognized, and [appeared] at the beginning of the fourteenth year before the king to reclaim their kingdom. But Duryodhana is no longer willing to give up his empire. Thus, both parties prepare for an all-out war.'' In fact, all recensions of the text are agreed that the Pandavas spent their incognito year in the court of king Virata, and a complete parva of the Epic, called virata-parva, is devoted to this part of their story.

In at least one instance he also fabricates a source--see endnote 19 to chapter 27 (p. 576) where he says, ``See also B.N.K. Sharma, A Comparative Study of Ten Commentaries on the Brahmasutras (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 1984).'' A work titled `A Comparative Study of Ten Commentaries on the Brahmasutras' (which Klostermaier offers as evidence to show that the ten recognized commentators on the Brahmasutra are those he names) has not been written by the alleged author, who disclaims2 Klostermaier's notion that there are ``ten recognized Vedantacaryas.'' The website of the alleged publisher lists no such monograph even by any other author. The actual book The Brahmasutras and Their Principal Commentaries (3 vols., Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986) deals with three "principal" commentators on the Brahmasutras, not ten.
Klostermaier's book has been widely accepted as an authoritative treatment of its subject. However, it would seem to appear that a greater degree of care is called for in quoting the book's claims in scholarly works. Impressionable students should likewise be advised to use the book with caution. Eventually, it would perhaps be best if the book were replaced entirely by a more accurate monograph that treats the subject, and it is this author's hope that the scholarly community will exert itself in such a direction.

Rating:
Summary: Great for insomniacs
Review: This book is a very thorough description of many aspects of Hinduism. The book is written for a Western audience, so the author assumes no prior familiarity with Hinduism on the part of the reader. The book is organized into four sections: development and essence of Hinduism, the three Hindu paths to liberation, the structural supports of Hinduism, and the meeting of East and West in modern India. Each section contains a number of chapters addressing specific topics that fall within the general topic of the section. The end material, which comprises over 200 pages, contains a chronology, endnotes, a glossary, a bibliography, and the index.

The style of writing is extremely dense and detailed, yet the vocabulary and presentation are still quite accessible to non-Indian audiences. The extensive footnoting, use of primary and secondary source material, and lengthy quotations make this a remarkable work of scholarship. The text itself is more like an encyclopedia in nature; the chapters are independent articles in themselves, so there is little cohesion from one chapter to the next. Some of the chapters are quite interesting and illuminating- -others cover material that is of more marginal interest. I almost put the book down after struggling through chapter 1, which provides a rather detailed history of Western scholarship on Hinduism, and might have made a better appendix than an introduction. But fortunately, I kept slogging through the material, and learned quite a bit about the core Hindu beliefs from subsequent chapters. The book would make a good textbook for classes on comparative religion or South Asian cultures. It may also provide some answers for independent readers with a burning curiosity about Hinduism.

Rating:
Summary: Great for insomniacs
Review: This book is a very thorough description of many aspects of Hinduism. The book is written for a Western audience, so the author assumes no prior familiarity with Hinduism on the part of the reader. The book is organized into four sections: development and essence of Hinduism, the three Hindu paths to liberation, the structural supports of Hinduism, and the meeting of East and West in modern India. Each section contains a number of chapters addressing specific topics that fall within the general topic of the section. The end material, which comprises over 200 pages, contains a chronology, endnotes, a glossary, a bibliography, and the index.

The style of writing is extremely dense and detailed, yet the vocabulary and presentation are still quite accessible to non-Indian audiences. The extensive footnoting, use of primary and secondary source material, and lengthy quotations make this a remarkable work of scholarship. The text itself is more like an encyclopedia in nature; the chapters are independent articles in themselves, so there is little cohesion from one chapter to the next. Some of the chapters are quite interesting and illuminating- -others cover material that is of more marginal interest. I almost put the book down after struggling through chapter 1, which provides a rather detailed history of Western scholarship on Hinduism, and might have made a better appendix than an introduction. But fortunately, I kept slogging through the material, and learned quite a bit about the core Hindu beliefs from subsequent chapters. The book would make a good textbook for classes on comparative religion or South Asian cultures. It may also provide some answers for independent readers with a burning curiosity about Hinduism.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent scholarship!
Review: This is perhaps the BEST book on Hinduism available in the market. The author displays more than decades of his painstaking scholarship and singular conviction while writing this book. This book is totally free from the orientalist biases that plague other fields of Indology and Hinduism. I write as a practicing Hindu from India and I can vouch that there has never been and probably will never be such an uncomparable scholarly book on Hinduism.

Dr Klostermaier writes without any animosity towards Indian culture and offers even non-western readers some of the best methods of western scholarship. This leads to a wonderfull cross fertilization of scholarship between the East and the West.

There are some minor mistakes. At one place he confuses the Image of PeriyAlwar for Sundaramurthi at the Heras Institute. He writes that a section of Indian society are not Hindus, yet use Brahman priests. This is confusing.

But overall, the book is excellent.