Cherniak, Alex. Mahabharata Book Six: Bhagavad Gita. New York City: New York City Press, 2008.

After logging into the Lafayette College Library website, I clicked to the link to the library catalog. After a simple search of the word “Jainism” as a way to survey the library’s collection. A book called “Women in Jainism: a case study of Gujarat inscriptions by Mrinal Joshi grabbed my attention.  The Jain beliefs, especially those held by the Digambara sect, which state that women cannot achieve enlightenment in this life because their bodies are inferior to men, puzzled me. I wondered where women fit into such a patriarchal religion. Thus I began my quest to find this book. After minutes of wondering the maze that is Upper Skillman’s library shelves, I came to no avail. Eventually, I made it to the “BL” section. After finding the 1000s, even though I was close, I still was unable to find the book. While scanning the shelves hopelessly, another book caught my eye; it was the Bhagavad Gita. Having read a brief summary in class, I decided to peruse the full length copy.

The book was more austere than I had anticipated. It was unexpectedly plain for a book of such high religious importance and cultural value. It had a teal cover with a small emblem of an elephant on the front and a Sanskrit word on the back. The book is spilt into 11 parts describing the various stages of the battle from the eve before it started through the four days of fighting. The left hand page contained the transliteration of the actual Sanskrit text and on the right had side was the English translation. I was drawn to the book because it contained the original texts. While summaries are helpful with understand the general concepts, reading the first-hand sources provide a deeper understanding. If I were to use this as a source for a paper, I would find quotes of Krisna explaining the importance of Dharma and the three yogas to Arjuna.

The book was located alongside the other epics in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Some of the other books around it were dedicated to analyzing the other doctrines in the Hinduism cannon. One in particular that I found interesting was a book analyzing the various Upanishads. My favorite part of studying religion is trying to comprehend the various philosophies.

Weinberger-Thomas, Catherine. Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1999. Print.

I first searched the Lafayette library catalogue for “Hinduism Funerals” because the life and death rituals we read about were very interesting to me. With this search there was only one book, so I decided to focus my search on the widow burning we learned about in class. I then searched “Sati, Hinduism” and found Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India by Catherine Weinberger-Thomas. Some of the subject terms seemed useful such as “widow suicide, Legal Status, Laws, and Hinduism Social Aspects”.

The cover depicts an old image of the Sati tradition, which was very visually appealing. As I flipped through the pages, I found even more images involved with Hinduism and this ritual. Spread throughout the book are old and new photographs as well as religious illustrations. Having a visual is important to me when reading about unfamiliar traditions.

The book is divided into seven sections, with each sub-section clearly labeled. There was also a table of contents for each image. Another aspect I found helpful was a glossary of Hinduism terms. Based on the table of contents, every section seemed to be helpful if I were to write my paper on Sati.

Kurien, Prema. A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of American Hinduism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

I searched the Lafayette library catalogue for “Hinduism in the United States” because I’m interested in how all religions have found a place in the United States and shaped how we conceptualize what religion is in America. The first few returns did not catch my eye, but several chapters from Kurien’s A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of American Hinduism were highlighted in the search. One of the chapters was “The Transformation of Hinduism in the United States,” indicating an interest in historical change and immigrant life – themes that always interest me. So I then searched for the full title of Kurien’s book and went to the stacks.

Everything about the book was exciting: the cover had a great image, and I was excited about the chapter titles and the introduction to the book. The book is divided in three sections: “Popular Hinduism,” “Official Hinduism,” and “The Relationship between Popular and Official Hinduism.” These were especially intriguing because I am always interested in thinking about the complicated relationship between how everyday people practice religion and how institutions form and conceive religious practice. When I flipped through the book, I could see Kurien asked many other questions that overlapped with my interest in religion and our course, such as whether or how Hinduism is a religion and about religion and politics. I’ve written a lot about how Jews have imagined pluralism or multiculturalism, so I am interested in comparing how other groups have addressed and influenced similar conversations. If I were going to write a paper for this class using Kurien’s book, I would probably read the introduction, chapter 9 on “Challenging American Pluralism” and maybe chapter 10 on student organizations, which could be an interesting case study of Hindu life in the United States.

Near Kurien’s book, I saw a lot of other materials that looked interesting. There were several that focused on specific Hindu gods and goddesses, as well as many on various elements of practice. I was especially interested in Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, an edited volume that includes a chapter by Lindsey Harlan that describes the social context for the performance of the kinds of songs we read about, and in another textbook from the Princeton series on religions in practice called Tantra in Practice, which includes an article co-written by Robin Rinehart, who has taught about Hinduism at Lafayette and is currently the Dean of Faculty.