Through a detailed analysis of the available cultural and chronological data, this book overturns traditional ideas about the cultural history of India and proposes a different picture instead. The idea of a unilinear development out of Brahmanism, in particular, is challenged.

Johannes Bronkhorst, Ph.D. (1979) University of Poona, doctorate (1980) University of Leiden, is Professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). He has published extensively on Indian thought in its various manifestations.