Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King (Yale UP, 2024) is the first biography of the great Emperor Ashoka relying solely on his own words. Ashoka sought not only to rule his territory but also to give it a unity of purpose and aspiration, to unify the people of his vastly heterogeneous empire not by a cult of personality but by the cult of an idea—“dharma”—which served as the linchpin of a new moral order. In this deeply researched book, Patrick Olivelle draws on Ashoka’s inscriptions and on the art and architecture he pioneered to craft a detailed picture of Ashoka as a ruler, a Buddhist, a moral philosopher, and an ecumenist who governed a vast multiethnic, multilinguistic, and multireligious empire.
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Travis Zadeh, "Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Sushmita Nath, "The Secular Imaginary: Gandhi, Nehru and the Idea(s) of India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Charles Goodman, "The Tattvasaṃgraha Of Śāntarakṣita: Selected Metaphysical Chapters" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Yigal Bronner et al., "Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation" (U California Press, 2022)
Ruth Vanita, "The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
James Mallinson and Péter-Dániel Szántó, "The Amṛtasiddhi and Amṛtasiddhimūla: The Earliest Texts of the Haṭhayoga Tradition" (Institut français de Pondichéry, 2021)
Steven W. Ramey, "Hinduism in Five Minutes" (Equinox, 2022)
Lavanya Vemsani, "Hinduism in Middle India: Narasimha, The Lord of the Middle" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Aisha Khan, "The Deepest Dye: Obeah, Hosay, and Race in the Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2021)
Geetanjali Srikantan, "Identifying and Regulating Religion in India: Law, History and the Place of Worship" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
Online Sanskrit Study Resources
Political Deification in South Asia
Ayurveda and Alchemy: A Conversation with Dagmar Wujastyk
On Social Media and Hinduism
Martin Fárek, "India in the Eyes of Europeans: Conceptualization of Religion in Theology and Oriental Studies" (Karolinum Press, Charles University, 2021)
Ruth Harris, "Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda" (Harvard UP, 2022)
SOAS’ Yoga Studies Online
Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King, "Representing Religion in Film" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Michael Slouber, "Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras" (Oxford UP, 2016)
Karen O'Brien-Kop, "Phiroz Mehta: A Zoroastrian Teacher of Indian Philosophy of Religion in 1970s-80s Britain"
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