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This World and the Next in Religious Belief and Practice

Hintze, Almut & Alan Williams (eds.). 2017. Holy wealth: Accounting for this world and the next in religious belief and oractice. Festschrift for John R. Hinnells (Iranica 24). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
 This volume, presented to John R. Hinnells on his 75th Birthday, focuses on the interface between material and spiritual wealth, a theme that runs across many religions and cultures and that incorporates a major strand of John R. Hinnells’s particular fascination with the Zoroastrians of ancient and modern times, and his more general interest in the positive and life-affirming aspects of religious traditions across many domains. The volume includes seventeen studies by leading scholars exploring ideas of and attitudes to material wealth and its use for promoting spiritual benefits in Zoroastrian, Mithraic, Christian, Buddhist and Islamic traditions.
Table of Contents (PDF):

  • Almut Hintze: “John Russell Hinnells – a Profile”
  • Roger Beck: “Individual and Community Self-Identity in the Mysteries of Mithras”
  • Jamsheed K. Choksy: “The Zoroastrian Creation Myth: Clues to Its Antiquity”
  • Lance S. Cousins †: “On the Earliest Buddhist Schools”
  • Nora K. Firby †: “Mary Carpenter (1807–1877). A Victorian Educationist in Bombay”
  • Aida Foroutan: “Surrealism and Some Strategies of Avoidance
  • of Censorship in Iranian Art”
  • Ron Geaves: “Questioning the Category of “Spiritual Capital” Drawing upon Field Studies of ‘Spiritual Entrepreneurs’ and Their Role in the Economic and Social Development of British South Asian Muslims”
  • Richard F. Gombrich: “Why is the kaṭhina robe so called?”
  • Richard L. Gordon: “Cosmic Order, Nature, and Personal Well-Being in the Roman Cult of Mithras”
  • Marcia Hermansen: “Feasts of Paradise: Banqueting and Sacrifice in the Islamic Tradition”
  • Firoze M. Kotwal: “The Divine and Exalted Status of the Consecrated Fire in Zoroastrianism”
  • Jesse S. Palsetia: “Parsi Charity: a Historical Perspective on Religion, Community, and Donor-Patron Relations among the Parsis of India”
  • Ken Parry: “‘What can the Pearl of a King do?’ The Idea of Holy Wealth in Byzantium”
  • Dinyar Patel: “The Banaji and Mehta Families: Forging the Parsi Community in Calcutta”
  • Jenny Rose: “Passages in India: Early 19th Century Yankee and Parsi Outings in and around Bombay”
  • Mitra Sharafi: “Parsi Life Writing: Memoirs and Family Histories of Modern Zoroastrians”
  • Alan Williams: “Blindness in the Masnavi of Jalāl al-din Rumi”