Authors: Joseph S. Alter
ISBN-13: 9780691118741, ISBN-10: 0691118744
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Date Published: August 2004
Edition: 1st Edition
Joseph S. Alter is Professor of Anthropology and Research Professor at the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of "The Wrestler's Body, Knowing Dil Das", and "Gandhi's Body".
"This is the first time Indian Modern Yoga has received such sustained, in-depth treatment by a reputable and well-informed scholar. Much of the book is quite accessible to the general reader, and many of Alter's more theoretical and analytical interpretations of modern understandings of yoga, health, medicine, the body, and truth claims are novel and stimulating. Highly recommended."--Elizabeth De Michelis, Director, Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research, Cambridge University
"Yoga in Modern India is a mine of thought-provoking propositions in regard to the historiography of classical and modern writing on yoga. Well written, it provides detailed and frequently provocative analyses of particular yogic ideas and practices that contribute to a more sophisticated discussion about the status of modern yoga in its various guises over the last one-and-a-half centuries."--Waltraud Ernst, University of Southampton, author of Plural Medicine, Tradition, and Modernity, 1800-2000
1 | Historicizing yoga : the life and times of liberated souls | 3 |
2 | Yoga and the supramental being : materialism, metaphysics, and social reality | 32 |
3 | Swami Kuvalayananda : science, yoga, and global modernity | 73 |
4 | Birth of the anti-clinic : naturopathic yoga in a post-Gandhian, postcolonial state | 109 |
5 | Dr. Karandikar, Dr. Pal, and the RSS : purification, subtle gymnastics, and man making | 142 |
6 | Auto-urine therapy - the elixir of life : yoga, Ayurveda, and self-perfection | 181 |
7 | Mimetic skepticism and yoga : moving beyond the problem of culture and relativism | 211 |