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For more than half a century, T.N. Madan has been a towering influence on the sociological and anthropological studies of family and kinship, cultural dimensions of development, religion, secularism, and Hindu society and tradition. This Omnibus brings and Hindu society.

Family and kinship: A study of the pundits of rural Kashmir, first published in 1965, remains a pioneering ethnographic study of the Kashmiri pundits, and is considered a classic in the field of world anthropology. The book presents a social history of a people and culture which is currently virtually non-existent in the Kashmir Valley.

Drawing upon new theoretical and methodological perspectives, Non-renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture provide a nuanced understanding of Hinduism as a lived tradition. It explores aspects of auspiciousness, purity, asceticism, eroticism, altruism, and death while focussing on the householder’s life in Hindu society.

The Omnibus also includes additional essay on the Brahmanic gotra, and the Hindu family and developments, along with a short piece on aspects of traditional household culture. It features an autobiographical essay-the author’s recollection of growing up in a pandit home in Srinagar, Kashmir. In the prologue, T.N Madan engages with the ‘householder tradition’ across the cultural regions of India, analysing themes of householder ship and renunciation in religious philosophy and ethnography. This collection will be indispensable to scholars and researchers of sociology, anthropology, and those with special interest in Kashmir pundits will find it illuminating.