Borayin Larios: Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra. xvi, 271 pp. Warsaw and Berlin: De Gruyter Open, 2017. £90.99. ISBN 978 3 11 051731 6.

Abstract

This is especially a problem in the chapters presenting extracts of Vedic exegesis (chapter 6) and Dharmaśāstra commentaries (chapters 7, 8, 12, and 13). Here is where readers (both neophytes and experts) really need the guidance that Olivelle provides in the notes, for example to explain what the Hawk sacrifice and the Eighth-Day rite are, and why they come up so much (see p. 344, notes 4 and 7). The argumentation of Visvarupa (i.e., Viśvarūpa) in chapter 7 is particularly complex, and the notes are indispensable at every step. In spite of these infelicities of format, the book is a precious resource for making accessible to non-specialists India's sophisticated tradition of law and legal thought, spanning antiquity up to about 1200 CE. Many sourcebooks make the mistake of stuffing in too many disparate excerpts that are too short and too briefly introduced to give readers a coherent or comprehensive sense of their import. Instead, Olivelle gives us substantial passages, in clear, accurate, original translation, with ample contextualization, thus conveying the trajectory of the tradition and making it fully accessible for comparative studies.