Kashi
Sakta Contribution to Varanasi
This book incorporates a good number of paperrs on multiple aspects of Sakta traditions practised in Varanasi continuing from hoary past to-date. Beside philosophical, religious and cultural leanings the contents expose the iconographic, ritualistic and artistic rendering of the Divine Mother. Kasi or Varanasi has been a stronghold of religious and spiritual fervour, and several religious sects have contributed to its present texture. Saktism has also been a forceful current in the cultural stream of this holy city. This is evidenced by several Devi temples, Sakti-pithas, yantras, fairs and festivals associated with the worship of Mother-Goddess.
Vaisnava Contribution to Varanasi
Wonderland Banaras
Banaras is the wonderland of the first sight. Banaras is the historical city of temples, trade and traditions. This is the sacred city of Siva and salvation with historical exigencies having moral, migrational and material significance. It is also the land of the great Ganga ghats whose first encounter excites a sense of admiration or wonder for their delicate beauty and fascinating charm.
A Day in Kashi
Banaras a city with many mysteries, exquisitely depicted in colour. A selection of one hundred and eight photographs depicting a day in Kashi a day out of this world. Kashi, Banaras, Varanasi one of the most ancient of living cities. One can still trace its ancient background through the face it presents today. It is a city that unfolds its deepest secrets to only a few. A few who through dedication and love come time and time again to document the most inner and hidden secrets of this ancient city.
Death in Banaras
This book is primaryly about the priests and other kinds of 'sacred specialist' who serve them:about the way in which they organise their business,and about their representations of death and understanding of the rituals over which they preside.all three levels are informed by a common ideoligical preoccupation with controlling chaos and contingency.the anthro pologist who writes about death inevitably writes about the world of the living,and Dr Parry is centrally concerned with concepts of the body and the person in contemporary hinduism,with ideas about hierarchy,renunciation and sacrifice,and with the relationship between hierarchy and notions of complementarity and holism.