India has produced some of the world’s greatest religious leaders, sages, saints, philosophers and spiritual thinkers. They were monks, nuns and renunciates, nationalists and reformers. No one religion had a monopoly on them. They range from Mahavira and Buddha, who lived over 2,500 years ago, to medieval saints like Chishti, Avvaiyar and Guru Nanak, to more recent philosophers and religious icons such as Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Saint Teresa and many others. The spiritual and philosophical heritage they left behind is India’s gift to all Indians and the world.
In the ‘Life Lessons’ series we publish the essential teachings of some of India’s best-known spiritual teachers, along with commentaries and biographical notes. Each book will be a handy companion to help the reader along the difficult pathways of life.
Shonaleeka Kaul is a cultural historian of early South Asia, specializing in working with Sanskrit texts. She is associate professor in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and currently visiting professor at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. She was also the Malathy Singh Distinguished Lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University, USA, and the Jan Gonda Fellow in Indology at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She is the author of The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini, among other books.
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