Table of Contents

List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Ancestral Rites in the Early Vedas
Chapter 2: The Solemn Ancestral Rites
Chapter 3: The Domestic Rice-ball Sacrifice to the Ancestors
Chapter 4: The sraddha-rite
Chapter 5: Ancestral Rites in the Buddhist Literature
Chapter 6: Soteriology
Chapter 7: Mediation
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Glossary of Sanskrit Terms
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Matthew R. Sayers is Assistant Professor of Religion at Lebanon Valley College.

Reviews

"This compact volume makes a notable contribution to our understanding of doctrinal and institutional shifts in India in the last centuries before the Common Era. Sayers is one of just a handful of recent scholars to call attention to the importance of the Vedic domestic ritual codes in the creation of what has come to be known as 'classical Hinduism.' He is to be congratulated for setting the complex ritual particulars within a clearly limned overview of the
competing religious ideologies being 'marketed' by rival groups of professional 'religious experts.' He manages to do this without trivializing the ideas at stake, and without glibly reifying
categories such as 'popular' and 'elite' or 'Brahmanical' and 'non-Brahmanical.'" - Timothy Lubin, Washington and Lee University
"Sayers' history of ancestor worship makes a substantial contribution to the history of
South Asian religions, demonstrating in great detail how a new paradigm emerged and how efforts to integrate this paradigm into ideologies and practices exerted a strong and lasting influence."-- Journal of the American Oriental Society
"Sayers writes well, and the book is accessible at both undergraduate and graduate
levels. His signal contribution is a clear recognition of stages in the gradual development
of a complex system of ancestor worship within the overall pattern of funerary
rites, both extended and domestic, in ancient Vedic India."--he Journal of Religion