Homa Variations

Richard K. Payne is Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley.Michael Witzel is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University.

• Preface ; Acknowledgments ; Contributors ; Introduction, Richard K. Payne ; Symbolic and Comparative Studies ; 1. The Ritual Interplay of Fire and Water in Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, Holly Grether ; 2. Buddhist Permutations and Symbolism of Fire, Tadeusz Skorupski ; 3. The Structure of Japanese Buddhist Homa, Musashi Tachikawa ; Textual Studies ; 4. The Vedic Homa and the Standardization of Hindu Puja, Timothy Lubin ; 5. Oblation, Non-conception, and Body-Systems of Psychosomatic Fire-oblation in Esoteric Buddhism in Medieval South Asia, Tsunehiko Sugiki ; 6. The Three Types of Fire Sacrifice According to Kanha'sSricakrasamvara-homavidhi, David B. Gray ; 7. Fire Rituals by the Queen of Siddhas: The Aparimitayur-homa-vidhi-nama in the Tengyur, Georgios T. Halkias ; 8. Homa Rituals in the Indian Kalacakratantra Tradition, Vesna A. Wallace ; 9. Ritual Subjects: Homa in Chinese Translations and Manuals from the Sixth through Eighth Centuries, Charles D. Orzech ; Descriptive Studies ; 10. Newar Buddhist Homa Ritual Traditions, Todd Lewis and Naresh Bajracarya ; 11. The Navaratra Homa: Liver, Enchantment, and Engendering the Divine "Sakti-s", Nawaraj Chaulagain ; 12. Fire on the Mountain: The Shugendo Saito Goma, Richard K. Payne ; 13. Agnihotra Rituals in Nepal, Michael Witzel ; Index

Happily, Homa Variations and the Oxford Ritual Studies series as a whole...opens up possibilities for specialists and generalists to ask new kinds of questions about a subject that has been at the center of the study of religion since its beginning.