Steven E. Lindquist is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA.

Introduction: Patrick Olivelle and Indology; Major Publications of Patrick Olivelle; PART I. WORD, TEXT, CONTEXT; The Elusive Sntaka; Who Gets to Live Forever in Ancient India? Rethinking yus ("life") in the Rgveda; One Yjñavalkya... Two? On the (Questionable) Historicity of a Literary Figure; A Theologian in a South Indian Kingdom: The Historical Context of the Jvanmuktiviveka of Vidyranya; The Rhetoric of Secrecy in the Upaniads; PART II. CUSTOM AND LAW; Punishing Puns: Etymology as Linguistic Ideology in Hindu and British Traditions; Matrilineal Adoption, Inheritance Law, and Rites for the Dead among Hindus in Medieval Kerala; Punishing in Public: Imposing Moral Self-Dominance in Normative Sanskrit Sources; PART III. BUDDHISTS AND JAINS AS SELVES AND OTHERS; How the Buddha Dealt with Non-Buddhists; Sacrifice and Asceticism in Early Mahyna Buddhism; Text and Image: Identifying Ellora's Jain Deities; PART IV. (RE)CONSIDERING GEOGRAPHICAL AND CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES; Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufi Communities of Iran, Central Asia, and India: The Khalvat/'Ishq/Shattr Continuum; Digesting the Sacrifices: Ritual Internalization in Jewish, Hindu, and Manichaean Traditions; The Hindutva Underground: Hindu Nationalism and the Indian National Congress in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial India; Marking the Boundaries of a New Literary Identity: The Assertion of 'Dalit Consciousness' in Dalit Literary Criticism; Young vetaketu in America: Learning to be Hindu in the Diaspora; List of Contributors