The reference provides an overview of the Hindu religious tradition and describes the essence of the Hindu vision of reality. Provides a historical and analytical discussion of Hindu mythology, art, rituals, and social structure; gives extended portraits of important Hindu thinkers and saints; offers a fuller picture of the role of women in the Hindu religious tradition; shows how the concepts of Dharama and Moksha conflict with one another and how the Hindu tradition insists upon both concepts as essential in fulfilling human destiny. A valuable reference for courses in Asian Religion, Theology, and Asian Philosophy.

I searched for a comprehensible introduction to Hinduism without success until I stumbled across this book. I've read everything I could find on Hinduism from Huston Smith to Klaus Klostermaier and was still left scratching my head, wondering what the central tenets in the Hindu religion are. I found Klostermaier informative in some aspects, but his description tends to be so detailed and technical that I lost the forest through the trees. In contrast, Kinsley is quite succinct and writes on a level that interested Western general readers can easily understand. He covers the central tension in the religion, the struggle to choose between serving one's earthly duties and seeking personal release from the cycle of rebirth, as well as the main religious texts exceptionally well. He also describes many facets of the cultural connections to the religion quite well- -I found his observations on the importance of ornamentation and idealism in the arts to be especially illuminating. Not only does it help make sense of Hindu graphic arts, but it has also helped me make more sense of the focus on ornamentation in Indian classical music. Kinsley doesn't explain the Hindu Gods as clearly as some of the other topics that he discusses, and I find that I am still a little hazy on who's who in the pantheon, and how they are related to each other. But over all, despite its brevity, this book has given me a much firmer grasp of Hinduism than any other books I have read to date on the topic.