Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 35 • NUMBER 2
(Cleveland, Tennessee), and the church of God in Christ.
Possibly one of the more interesting pieces (D. Bernard) is on
the future within the Oneness tradition. In the forward, Pro-
fessor H. Cox, who has watched Pentecostalism for over two
decades, highlights the importance of such studies in light of
its being the fastest-growing Christian movement in the
global South. This work is an excellent edition to the growing
corpus on Pentecostalism, being accessible to laypeople
even while being relevant and informative to academics. It
will be helpful for any student of Pentecostalism as it per-
tains to the American scene.
A. J. Swoboda
George Fox Evangelical Seminary
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN KOREAN
AMERICA. Edited by David K. Yoo and Ruth H. Chung.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 240.
Cloth, $70.00, paper, $25.00.
How do Korean Americans of varying traditions
and generations experience and live out their religion in
and outside institutional settings that are racialized and
diasporized, demanding the best of their improvisational
instincts? This is the main question that Religion and Spiri-
tuality in Korean America addresses. No overarching thesis
emerges, but each of the ten chapters, grouped into three
sections, analyzes this question piecemeal. The first section,
“Tradition,” offers three studies: of Korean American
Catholicism, its history, ethos, and challenges; Korean Bud-
dhists as they struggle to maintain their identity in a com-
munity awash in Christianity; and a comparison between
Korean American Buddhist and Protestant religiosity. The
second section, “Passages,” contains four topical analyses:
How does religiosity affect marital commitment and satisfac-
tion among Korean Americans? What is the spirituality of
never-married Korean American women? How can worship
be liminal (using V. Turner’s model) even if it often is not in
Korean American churches? How does religion affect Korean
American adoptees? The third section, “From Generation
to Generation,” discusses how second-generation Korean
Americans establish autonomous Protestant communities
while remaining connected to their elders; why Korean
American evangelicals stick together on college campuses
even if they could join multiethnic religious communities;
and the vicissitudes of a storied Korean American church
that is more than a hundred years old. All authors are
experts in their fields. Readily accessible to the general
reader, this book provides an excellent study of post-1965
Korean American religions.
Timothy S. Lee
Brite Divinity School (Texas Christian University)
South Asia
A STUDENT’S GUIDE TO THE HISTORY AND PHI-
LOSOPHY OF YOGA. By Peter Connolly. London:
Equinox, 2007. Pp. 265. $24.95.
• JUNE 2009
The author of this ambitious volume is a longtime prac-
titioner of various forms of yoga and meditation and a
student of psychology who has tried here to explain many
different systems of yogic thought and practice. His chapters
are on yoga in the Vedas, the sramanic
´ traditions, the San-
skrit epics, the orthodox philosophical systems, and sectar-
ian Hinduism. His penultimate chapter treats modern yoga,
and the final one provides reflections on the psychology of
yoga. The volume is directed more toward practitioners than
scholars and should find a ready audience. That said, Con-
nolly’s scholarship is marred by insufficient research. Most
of his secondary sources are dated, and in a book of this
nature, it is necessary to provide readers with a bibliography
of recent research. Most of his translations are also dated,
drawn from Vedic and other texts that are a century old. His
transliteration of Sanskrit is filled with errors in diacritics,
and his theorizing is erratic at best. It is by turns insightful
and ludicrous, e.g., a penetrating attempt to link the ideas of
J. Diamond on the transition from the economy of the hunter-
gather to that of settled agriculture with the transition of the
Vedic shaman to the Upanisadic logician is followed a few
pages later with a throwaway  statement (that should have
been thrown away) that the Taittirı-ya Upanisad ’s discourse
on food and the eater of food was composed by sages with
food fantasies. This would have been interesting had Con-
nolly supplied even the faintest evidence. This book is worth
the price, however, and despite these caveats, most readers
will learn from it because Connolly’s reach is broad and his
vision acute. It should be studied closely by anyone inter-
ested in writing a better book with a similar title. It is
necessary.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA: FROM BEGINNINGS TO
THE PRESENT. By Robert Eric Frykenberg. Oxford
History of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008. Pp. xxxi + 564. $150.00.
In this volume, Frykenberg ably introduces the diverse
and lengthy history of Christian communities in India to the
Western reader. He forcefully argues that Christianity in
India represents an indigenous discovery and appropriation
of Christianity rather than an imposition from European
colonialism. To be sure, he contends that Western missions
were important for building the infrastructure necessary for
the spread of Christianity, but he shows that Indian Chris-
tians led (and still lead) the actual movements of conversion.
Moreover, Frykenberg reveals that British rule in India was
generally hostile to Christian missions. The breadth of this
work is astounding: he examines Thomas, Catholic, and
evangelical Christians, from 52 CE to the present. The uni-
fication of India under the British-Indian Raj and its effect on
Christianity receives significant attention. Conversions
among outcastes (Dalits), hill peoples (such as the Nagas),
and individual Hindu elites are also covered. At times,
Frykenberg illustrates various themes with moving
139
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 35
examples. For the beginner, he includes valuable back-
ground information about India and its people, society, and
religions. Recommended for students of India, non-Western
Christianity, and Christian missions, as well as for univer-
sity and seminary libraries.
Glenn M. Harden
Baker College
RELIGION AND VIOLENCE IN SOUTH ASIA:
THEORY AND PRACTICE. Edited by John R. Hinnells
and Richard King. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.
Pp. ix + 265. $39.95.
This volume contains eleven articles divided into three
sections. The first addresses the manner in which violence
and warfare are expressed in Hindu narrative sources (L.
Patton) and in Jainism (P. Dundas), Buddhism (R. Gethin),
Islam (R. Gleave), and Sikhism (B. S. Bhogal). The strategies
adopted to justify violence are many, but in the end, religious
ideologies of kindness, order, and nonviolence are trumped
by realpolitik and the literature of law, politics, and admin-
istration. Nevertheless, many issues enter into the discus-
sions, including sacrificial violence, the ethical use of
weapons, the regulation of violence, the interface of asceti-
cism and violence, and the role of humiliation. This section,
in particular, deals cogently with historical issues. The
second section addresses religious violence in three regions:
Sri Lanka (P. Schalk), Pakistan (I. Talbot), and Gujarat (C.
Jaffrelot). Talbot’s very good article must be updated in view
of the events in Mumbai in November 2008. Jaffrelot’s brief
account here is a better starting place for a discussion on the
Gujarat riots of 2002 than M. Nussbaum’s The Clash Within
(2007). The final section has three articles that address dif-
ferent conceptual approaches to religious violence in South
Asia. The first is on communal identity in British epistemolo-
gies, which is to say the way British colonial scholarship and
Anglophone scholarship in general have framed their dis-
cussions on religious violence (P. Gottschalk). The second
article looks at Derrida’s notion of the fiduciary, “A perfor-
mative experience of the act of faith,” as it relates to violence
in South Asia (A. Mandair). The final essay sums up the book
by reflecting on notions of “religion” and “secularization,”
and what they represent in the debate (R. King). This volume
is highly recommended for graduate courses and for schol-
ars interested in violence and religion.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
INDIAN RELIGIONS: RENAISSANCE AND
RENEWAL. Edited by Anna S. King. London: Equinox,
2006. Pp. xix + 412. $90.00.
This collection of eighteen papers (sixteen on Hinduism
and two on Buddhism) begins with two articles (K. Kloster-
maier and H. Bakker) that thoughtfully reexamine the
themes of Hindutva, Hindu self-assertiveness, and violence.
K. Jacobsen and (the now late) N. Smart inquire whether
Hinduism can be better thought of as an outgrowth of Bud-
140
• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2009
dhism than vice versa. D. Killingley discusses correspon-
dences of pentads in Samkhya ¯ and the Upanisads
 
in an article that should receive a wide circulation. J. S. Hirst,
K. Taylor, and M. Clark (especially exhaustively)
write about topics that they have developed more
fully ´
elsewhere—Samkara , Arthur Avalon, and
¯ 
Daśanāmı̄- samnyasins, respectively. G. Samuel continues

his inquiry into the origins of Tantra through cultural
exchange, transaction, and borrowing (now superseded by
his book The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, 2008). An article by
D. Gellner is always welcome. Here he examines the revival
of Theravāda Buddhism in Nepal between the 1920s and
1940s. His emphasis on polity, social context, and ideology
is illuminating. T. Gabriel examines the Brahmanization of
Dravidian religion in northern Kerala. This excellent article
looks not just at the social contexts but also at the mythology
and theological hermeneutics that allowed this to occur. K.
Werner contributes an interesting article on how various
Indian texts (Buddhist and Hindu) can contribute to the oth-
erwise Eurocentric discussions of the philosophy of religion.
A number of papers on performance and art (D. Smith, A.
King, A. Diesel, R. Shaw, and C. Aslet) round out the book.
Especially illuminating is King’s article on the media and
the Kumbhamelā. This volume, authored almost entirely
by British, Australian, and South African scholars, offers
refreshing views, especially compared with the American
academic enterprise, with its narrowing methodological
perspectives.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
ŚIVA IN TROUBLE: FESTIVALS AND RITUALS AT
THE PAŚUPATINĀTHA TEMPLE OF DEOPATAN. By
Axel Michaels. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Pp. xx + 285. $74.00.
This book describes a number of festivals and rituals in
the Kathmandu valley that are centered in and around the
Paśupatinātha temple, a site that Michaels has researched
for more than 25 years. Why, exactly, is Śiva in trouble?
Can he not fend for himself? Perhaps he can, but the
trouble, as Michaels notes at the outset, is between transna-
tional Sanskritic smārta Hinduism and local Newar Hindu-
ism: “Different, deities, agents, social groups, ritual
specialists, and institutions are constantly seeking domi-
nance, challenging and even fighting with each other.”
Hierarchies of wild goddesses surround the temple, with
their stamp of Tantric Hinduism, blood offerings, and matri-
lineal custodianship. Opposing this is the more sedate,
peaceful, structured, masculine, institutionalized,
Paśupatinātha temple, where South Indian Bhatta Brah-

mans have served as the chief priests for more than two
centuries. Indeed, at the behest of the kings, they have been
the only priests permitted to touch the image. This is about
to change; Michaels has astutely anticipated much of this
change, even if he completed the book before the final
demise of the kingship. Regardless, the powers that be, or
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 35
were, including the kings and the Bhattas, did their best to
  ,
confer transnational prestige on the temple as a jyotirlinga
to some extent through the rescripting of historical texts, as
one of the most revered centers of Śaiva worship in the
Hindu world. The government of post-royal Nepal, however,
is attempting to turn it into a distinctly Nepali historical
site. This thoroughly researched and lavishly detailed book
covers all aspects of a very complex situation, from lineages
to ritual performance to government intervention. It is
written in a clear, unambiguous style that will make it
accessible and rewarding to upper-level undergraduates as
well as upper-level scholars.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
BETWEEN THE EMPIRES: SOCIETY IN INDIA 300
BCE TO 400 CE. Edited by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 524. $109.99.
This stellar volume, consisting of seventeen papers,
explores various aspects of Indian history and society
between the fall of the Maurya Empire and the rise of the
Gupta Empire in North India. It was a particularly fertile
period in the history of Indian cultural development. Among
the topics addressed are the following: the growth of urban
centers and trade routes (D. Chakrabarti), archaeological
discoveries (M. Kenoyer), artistic achievement (F. Asher),
numismatics and history (S. Bhandare), trade and maritime
voyages (H. P. Ray), and an important article bearing on the
religious history of the age (H. Falk). Other articles by
Olivelle, S. Jamison, M. Deshpande, A. Hiltebeitel, J. Fitzger-
ald, J. Bronkhorst, G. Schopen, R. Salomon, P. Dundas, A.
Prasher-Sen, and M. Witzel make this volume irreplaceable
for upper-level scholarship on the political and social
history, philosophy and religion (esp. seen through the Skt.
Epics and Buddhism), roles of women, and language forma-
tion and development. Witzel writes, “the 500 years between
the Mauryas and the Guptas were perhaps the most turbu-
lent, but probably the most productive and fertile of Indian
history.” All of the articles in this volume will be accessible
to upper-level graduate students, in addition to accom-
plished scholars. It is studiously devoid of suffocating meth-
odological agendas. Olivelle is to be congratulated for
bringing this volume together.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
THE MANY COLORS OF HINDUISM: A THEMATIC-
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. By Carl Olson. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Pp. 395.
$27.95. HINDU PRIMARY SOURCES: A SECTARIAN
READER. By Carl Olson. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 2007. Pp. 576. $28.95.
These two volumes are designed to be used together in
introductory Hinduism courses. The first volume is quite
comprehensive. Many Colors is divided into three sections:
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2009
1) The Nature of Hinduism; 2) Nature of Devotional and
Sectarian Hinduism; and 3) Issues in Modern and Contem-
porary Hinduism. Most books on the topic (at least partially)
disintegrate because of an absence of attention to or under-
standing of sectarian Hinduism; they either neglect it
entirely in favor of philosophical treatments or overbalance
their treatment of devotionalism in favor of Śaiva, Vaisnava,

or Śākta lineages. This textbook, on the other hand, avoids
these problems; it is, on the whole, well balanced regarding
periodization, sectarian treatments, and Sanskritic and ver-
nacular or regional religiosity. In its quest for comprehen-
siveness, it lacks the textual incisiveness and the immediacy
of firsthand fieldwork of A. Michaels’s Hinduism: Past
and Present (2003), but the complementary volume,
Hindu Primary Sources, contains translations from Vedic,
Upanisadic, Dharma, and classical philosophical texts as
well as  representative translations from Vaisnava, Rāma,

Śaiva, and Śākta texts. This is not to say that I would have
selected the same texts for translation, but given the daunt-
ing task at hand, I cannot quibble with Olson’s selections. I
used these volumes in an introductory course in Fall 2008,
using many, but not all, of the readings and texts. The
volumes are much better than simply serviceable but might
be more highly recommended for instructors with compara-
tively little knowledge of Hinduism. They can certainly stand
on their own.
Frederick M. Smith
University of Iowa
HINDU NATIONALISM: A READER. Edited by Chris-
tophe Jaffrelot. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2007. Pp. 391. Cloth, $65.00, paper, $24.95.
This new reader from one of the foremost scholars of
Hindu nationalism contains primary materials that span the
100-year history of the movement. Expected foundational
authors are there—D. Saraswati, V. D. Savarkar, and M. S.
Golwalkar—but so are its more recent voices and political
leaders: L. K. Advani, former Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee,
and A. Shourie. Following his crisp introduction to the
history and outlines of Hindu nationalism, Jaffrelot provides
extracts from the most important primary sources, carefully
selected for their summations of critical moments or posi-
tions as the movement evolved. This second section of the
book reaches back to Dayananda, the movement’s most
important precursor, and extends to the post-Emergency rise
of the Jana Sangh party. The third section contains more
numerous, briefer extracts documenting the increasing
political success of the movement through the 1990s and the
positions its leaders took on a range of specific issues:
Kashmir, conversion, reservations, the Babri Masjid, and
secularism, to name a few. Jaffrelot’s reader makes it clear
that Hindu nationalism is not a monolithic ideology but a
contested political and cultural discourse. His introductions
to each set of excerpts repeatedly underscore the organiza-
tional and intellectual rivalries that make the Sangh Parivar
a real family—cohesive and coherent at some levels, divided
 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 35
and quarrelsome at others. The reader also nods at the
ongoing evolution and expanding influence of the Sangh by
including documents from a well-publicized 2005-2006
battle over the content of California public school textbooks.
No similar collection of primary materials exists, but now no
other is necessary.
Brian K. Pennington
Maryville College
East Asia
ETHNIC IDENTITY IN TANG CHINA. By Marc S.
Abramson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008. Pp. 258. $55.00.
Students of Asian religions know that Buddhism was
introduced into early medieval China (thence into Korea and
Japan) by “foreign” merchants from “Inner Asia,” then by
learned monks of varying ethnicities. An example, Abram-
son shows, was the famed Tantric master Vajrabodhi, who
arrived in Tang China after passing through some twenty
countries and claimed exemption from a decree directed at
“foreign barbarians.” Abramson analyzes “deep ambiguities
among Tang elites about the identity and cohesiveness of the
ethnic Self and China itself,” finding that “virtually all Han
(i.e., ‘Chinese’) tended to essentialize the ethnic Other as
monolithic,” whereas “non-Han individuals . . . internalized
more complex taxonomies of identity and ethnic difference.”
Abramson also finds that cultural change and ethnic change
was “far from congruent” and that “ethnic identity was most
often explicitly asserted in the face of an actual or potential
crisis” such as “state action” or “local pogroms . . . or oppres-
sion by local elites.” Chapter 3, “Buddhism as a Foreign
Religion,” also includes pertinent topics in Daoism (e.g., “the
myth that Laozi had transformed or converted the non-Han”
after leaving China for India) as well as Han Yü, the antifor-
eign Confucian theorist who engendered later “Neo-
Confucians’ ” antipathy toward Buddhists and Daoists
(warmly embraced by Han’s Confucian contemporary Li Ao).
In light of twenty-first-century global parallels (which
Abramson does not discuss), all readers will learn much
from this thoughtful and compelling work, which is histori-
cally, sociologically, and anthropologically sound, without
the ideological claptrap that plagues others’ writing about
these profound issues.
Russell Kirkland
University of Georgia
LEGENDS OF THE BUILDING OF OLD PEKING. By
Hok-lam Chan. Hong Kong/Seattle: Chinese University of
Hong Kong Press/University of Washington Press, 2008.
Pp. 416; 40 illustrations. $60.00.
The dominant narrative of China’s history lists “dynas-
ties” that “ruled China,” including two established by
“non-Chinese”: the Mongols (1279-1368) and the Manchus
(1644-1911). Serious students know that “North China” was
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• NUMBER 2 • JUNE 2009
actually contested by countless states and ethnicities in
prehistoric times. China’s modern capital “Beijing”
actually became a political center under the Khitan (a
Turkic people whose name resulted in Marco Polo’s denomi-
nation of “China” as Cathay). Chan Hok-lam is a leading
authority on the late-medieval/early-modern “conquest
dynasties”—especially the Chin dynasty (1127-1279) estab-
lished by the Jurchen (ancestors of the Manchus)—and of the
complex political and cultural interactions among those
states and competing “Chinese” regimes. This richly inter-
disciplinary work insightfully employs historical, geo-
graphic, textual, and folkloric data to illumine the hitherto
unknown facts of how “Peking” came into being. Chan’s
Introduction analyzes “Cosmological Concepts of Imperial
Cities” as well as still-living practices for “siting” new dwell-
ings by “divination” methods like feng-shui. Part 1 concerns
the legend of Nazha, “the principal Buddhist character” from
Indian (Brahmanic and Tantric) religious sources reinter-
preted in Tang China as Peking’s founder. Part 2 researches
later narratives spun in China from Mongolian stories and
legends. Each section contains enlightening data about
Peking’s many Buddhist monasteries and Daoist temples
dating back to Tang times. Although too detailed for novices,
Chan’s painstaking explorations will richly reward diligent
readers in religion and related disciplines.
Russell Kirkland
University of Georgia
REDISCOVERING CONFUCIANISM: A MAJOR PHI-
LOSOPHY OF LIFE IN EAST ASIA. By Torbjörn Lodén.
Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental (distributed by Univer-
sity of Hawaii Press), 2006. Pp. 199. $65.00.
Lodén is professor of Chinese at the University of Stock-
holm and director of the Nordic Confucius Institute. This
work is vaguely directed at twentieth-century English speak-
ers surprisingly confronted by issues of globalization and
“cross-cultural contacts.” Those seeking new hermeneutical
paradigms for explaining “Confucianism” may feel trans-
ported back to the mid-twentieth century when reading that
“some awareness of the enormous repositories of experience
and wisdom that different cultural traditions represent may
help us discover unity in diversity as an essential character-
istic of the human condition.” Scholars of religion will regret
to see “mainstream Confucianism” defined as the secular
side of a putative dichotomy between a “philosophical Con-
fucianism” (rujia) and a “religious Confucianism” (rujiao)—a
false dichotomy here as in regard to Taoism (as virtually all
scholars of Chinese religion have agreed for a quarter
century). But while Lodén does not advance sinological dis-
course, he presents a thorough review of “basic Confucian
notions” that developed in Chinese minds from classical
times to “a third generation of New Confucians” like Tu
Weiming. Refreshingly, Lodén repeals the twentieth-century
overemphasis on “Neo-Confucianism”: eleventh- and
twelfth-century thinkers are confined to one chapter, follow-
ing chapters on “Confucianism before Confucius” (e.g., the