topics: |  hinduism | history | india

from ch-1:

As a young man and as a student of Indian religions at a European university, I made a quite deliberate decision not to publish anything on Hinduism unless I had seen Indian reality for myself and experienced Hinduism in loco. Looking for an opportunity to immerse myself in the Hindu milieu after I had earned my doctorate, I accepted an invitation from the late Swami Bon Mahārāj to join his Institute of Indian Philosophy in Vr^indāvana, Uttar Pradesh.

Vr^ndāvana then was a small town of perhaps thirty-five thousand permanent residents with a large influx of pilgrims, surrounded by numerous villages, largely untouched by modern developments, in many ways still living in the Middle Ages, [and] I must have been the only resident non-Indian. The extended sojourn in Vr^ndāvana, the daily experience of a vibrant and intense Hinduism, the many contacts with pious and learned Hindus intensified my motivation to read and study the sources.

When I left Vr^ndāvana after two years, I moved to Bombay, now called Mumbāī, a modern metropolis, the most Westernized of India’s big cities, with a population then of about eight million people, now fifteen million. Hinduism was flourishing also in Bombay and I learned to appreciate the new ways in which it appears and the appeal it has for sophisticated modern people.15 I spent six years there and left with a PhD in Ancient Indian History and Culture from Bombay University. During that time I had the opportunity to see many famous places and participated in many festivals and pilgrimages. A year spent in Madras while on sabbatical leave from the University of Manitoba opened my eyes to the quite distinct Dravidian tradition within Hinduism — a tradition whose distinctiveness is emphasized also through contemporary political developments.

When I conceived the structure of the Survey of Hinduism, I deliberately
did not follow the schemata of the then-used textbooks but developed, based
on my own life experience, a topical approach that, I felt, not only was
closer to actual Hinduism but also avoided the superimposition of Western
categories and schemata on Eastern culture and thought.

It may be appropriate to begin this Survey with a [traditional]
kShamā-prārthana, directed not so much at those who look for information
about Hinduism in this book, but at those about whom the book is written. 
The very idea of writing, as an outsider, about the life and religion of a people
as large and as ancient as the Hindus, requires, I believe, an apology. p.14


Klostermaier is a distinguished professor in the Religious Studies Dept. at
the University of Manitoba in Canada.