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Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India

Online ISBN:
9780197693636
Print ISBN:
9780197693605
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India

Matthew I. Robertson
Matthew I. Robertson
Lecturer, Department of History, Murray State University
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Published online:
18 January 2024
Published in print:
10 December 2023
Online ISBN:
9780197693636
Print ISBN:
9780197693605
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Puruṣa: Personhood in Ancient India is a study of ancient Indic theories of personhood. It relies on an extensive historical and textual analysis to trace the development of Indic thinking about persons (puruṣas) from the earliest beginnings in Vedic India through the first centuries ce. Puruṣa discerns a sustained, paradigmatic understanding that persons are deeply confluent with the world. Personhood is worldhood. It argues for the centrality of this “worldly” thinking about personhood to Indic traditions, and identifies a host of techniques developed by traditions to expand a person to an ever-greater scope. Ritualized expansions of sovereigns to match the scope of their realm find complement in ascetic meditations on the intersubjective nature of perceptually delimited person-worlds, which in turn find complement in yogas of sensory restraint, the dietary regimens of Ayurvedic medicine, and the devotional theologies by which persons “share” and “eat” the expansive divinity of God. Whether in the guise of a king, an ascetic, a yogi, a buddha, or a patient in the care of an Ayurvedic physician, fully realized persons know themselves to be coterminous with the horizons of their world. Puruṣa is the story of ancient India’s continual quest for this realization. It challenges us to re-examine the goals of ancient Indian religions and yields new insights into the interrelated natures of religious persons and the worlds in which they live.

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