Pechilis, Karen, and Selva J. Raj, eds. South Asian Religions:   Tradition and Today. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Print.

I began my search by typing in a few different key words into the Lafayette Library Catalogue. I began with four key words: history, relationship, Hinduism and Jainism. I am interested in the relationship between the two religions and how they have changed over the years, this is why I included the words history and relationship to my search. However, after coming up with very few results relating to Hinduism and Jainism, I ended up narrowing my search down to just the two religions. That search led me to the book: South Asian Religions: Traditions and Today by Karen Pechilis and Selva J. Raj.

This book looks at not only the major religions in India, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but also at the smaller religions such as Sikhism and Jainism. After looking through the book I learned that it starts by introducing each religion’s traditions and then moves on to talk about what each religion is like today. This book not only gives good background information on each religion but also gives a good idea of how the religion is practiced today. After a deeper look into the book I wish that it included more about how each religion has affected India, and maybe less about the religion itself, but it is a good starting point when it comes to gathering information about Hinduism and Jainism.If I were to use this book to help write my paper I would start by reading the introduction and first three chapters of the book (Tribal Religions in India: practicing tradition today, Hinduism: practicing tradition today, and Jain traditions: practicing tradition today). The introduction gives good insight into how these religions tie into the Indian culture while the first three chapters include good background information on the religions that I am interested in learning more about.

While I was searching for this book I saw a lot of books that discussed the practice of Jainism and its traditions. I would definitely look more into these books to use in my essay, as well as I would conduct another catalogue search to find more books on Hinduism.