"The author's primary insight is of extreme meaningfulness: every culture must confront the deterioration and death accompanying aging. How this confrontation has occurred in Indian culture has significance for understanding all cultures including contemporary advanced industrial cultures." — Sheldon S. Tobin"The topic of aging in the Indian traditional has not before been given a systematic scholarly examination. India has important wisdom to offer, and this book sets that wisdom forth in a way that makes its history and content clearly available to modern scholars. Tilak does this in a thoroughly competent way using primary source documents in a careful and comprehensive way. He does not shy away from taking all aspects of aging into consideration: physical, social, cultural, spiritual." — Harold Coward"Outstanding and fascinating." — Edmund Sherman