The Snake and the Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion In The Snake and The Mongoose, Nathan McGovern turns the commonly-accepted model of the origins of early Indian religions on its head. Instead of assuming a fundamental dichotomy between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical in ancient India, McGovern shows that there were many different groups who all saw themselves as Brahmanical, and out of whose contestation with one another the distinction between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical emerged. Since the beginning of modern Indology in the 19th century, the relationship between the early Indian religions of Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism has been predicated on a perceived dichotomy between two meta-historical identities: 'the Brahmans' (purveyors of the ancient Vedic texts and associated ritual system) and the newer 'non-Brahmanical' sramana movements from which the Buddhists and Jains emerged. Textbook and scholarly accounts postulate an opposition between these two groups, citing the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patanjali, who is often quoted erroneously as likening them to the proverbial enemies snake and mongoose. Scholars continue to privilege Brahmanical Hindu accounts of early Indian history, and further portray Buddhist and Jain deviations from those accounts as evidence of their opposition to a pre-existing Brahmanism. In The Snake and The Mongoose, Nathan McGovern turns this commonly-accepted model of the origins of the early Indian religions on its head. His book seeks to de-center the Hindu Brahman from our understanding of Indian religion by 'taming the snake and the mongoose'--that is, by abandoning the anachronistic distinction between 'Brahmanical' and 'non-Brahmanical.' Instead, McGovern allows the earliest articulations of identity in Indian religion to speak for themselves through a comparative reading of texts preserved by the three major groups that emerged from the social, political, cultural, and religious foment of the late first millennium BCE: the Buddhists and Jains as they represented the Autor: Nathan ( McGovern Wydawnictwo: Oxford University Press Rok wydania: 2019 Okładka: twarda Liczba stron: 328 Wymiary: 23.6 x 15.7 x 3.3 cm Język: angielski ISBN: 9780190640798