Book review
In the mid-19th century, two British engineers who were in charge of constructing a railway line, got the mounds at Harappa (now in Pakistan) dug for burnt bricks, to be used as ballast. Little did they know that they were digging up a past and an unknown facet of the history of India. Suspecting the existence of the remnants of an ancient civilisation, systematic evacuations were undertaken by the Archeological Department of India. These evacuations led to detection of the proto-historic city Harappa. This information is not from any history literature. It is an excerpt from the forthcoming 3-vol. work 'A Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism', authored by Swami Harshananda, Head of Ramakrishna Math at Basavanagudi, Bangalore. This monumental work, for the first time at one place, covers various subjects such as scriptures, philosophy, mythology, religion, rituals and sacraments, pilgrim centres, biographies of great Hindu leaders in various fields, ancient arts and sciences, archaeology, basic information about Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. It also includes details of Hindu festivals and their significance and the lives & works of people connected with Hindu religion and culture. Each volume contains app. 700 pages, including 200 line drawings and 100 coloured photographs. The contents are arranged in English alphabetical order, using the International system of diacritical marks for Sanskrit. It took nearly 33 years for Swami Jee to complete this monumental work and, as he claims, it's the first of its kind in English. "A British couple had compiled a dictionary on Hinduism but it's not exhaustive. There is another book on Hinduism in Hindi, which is fairly good but it's restricted to one volume," he said.





Format: Hardcover, 2100p. ills; 24cm.


Pub. Date: Feb 2008 , 1st ed.


Publisher: Ramakrishna Math


Language: English


Bagchee ID: 45351




About the author Swami Harshananda, who is in his late 70s, has served 53 years in the Ramakrishna order. He was inspired by the life of Swami Vivekananda and came in contact with the Ramakrishna Ashram in 1948. As a student, he had several doubts on various subjects including Hinduism. Though most of his questions were answered by his guru and former president of the Ashram Tyagishananda, he soon realised that there was not a single book available which covered the diversity of Hinduism. It was while working in the Ramakrishna Institute of Moral and Spiritual Education at Mysore in 1973, that he thought about writing an encyclopedia on Hinduism. "For one year, I collected the subject titles and organised them. But the actual work started in 1975," he said. He managed to take out some time from daily activities and finished the book.