Classical Indian poetics prized the skillful use of alaṅkāras, or “ornaments”—literary figures of speech. Across more than a millennium, Sanskrit writers developed and elaborated an account of literary embellishment that is perhaps the world’s most complex and long-standing theory of figuration. Yet it remains the least studied of India’s major classical systems of thought.

An Alaṅkāra Reader (Columbia University Press, 2026) is a groundbreaking panoramic overview of this tradition, presenting extensive and accessible translations of key works that span its history, from the sixth to eighteenth century CE. These texts vividly show how Indian theorists analyzed simile, metaphor, allegory, and dozens of other figures that are distinctive to their world. Yigal Bronner’s commentary makes Sanskrit concepts of ornamentation approachable while placing them in historical context. He provides a new account of the history of Sanskrit poetics, showing how it underwent successive waves of theoretical revolutions and emerged as a prestigious field that attracted a variety of scholars in the early modern era.

Featuring many previously untranslated texts, An Alaṅkāra Reader is an essential resource for the study of classical Indian thought, the intellectual history of South Asia, and comparative literature. It reveals the depth and nuance of Sanskrit’s “science of ornaments” for anyone interested in poetic theory, figuration, and aesthetics across world traditions.

Yigal Bronner is a Sanskritist whose areas of interest include literature, literary theory, and South Asian intellectual history more generally. He worked on this volume while teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and now teaches in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta. His books include Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration (2010) and A Lasting Vision: Dandin's Mirror in the World of Asian Letters (2023).

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Amid global dialogue on the nature of human enhancement, this book traces humanity's pursuit of self-transcendence and enhancement from ancient times to the present, as reflected in diverse traditions across the globe. Transhumanism and Divine Humanity in Global Traditions (Routledge, 2026) examines how the term "transhuman" can move beyond its scientific and technological origins by linking it to ideas, symbols, and practices of transcending human limits found in Asian and global religions and philosophies, including spiritual practices. Ultimately, the book argues that many religions in Asia and beyond emphasise the desire to transcend human limits, addressing life enhancement both spiritually and physically, and advancing a philosophy of self-transcendence that embraces the physical nature of human existence. By bridging perspectives from scholars of Indic spirituality, Buddhist tantric, and transhumanist philosophical discourse, the book facilitates the ability for mutual understanding, and will be of use to researchers studying philosophy of religion, Asian philosophy, the philosophy of science, and philosophical anthropology. Those working in the fields of posthumanism and transhumanism studies will also find the volume of use.

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These Upanisads (c. 800-300 BCE) are almost always read from the point of view of the later Vedantins, but they do not share in the neatly tailored characteristics of the mature Vedantic philosophies, representing, instead, divergent, variegated and even conflicting narratives. In The Upanisads as They Are (Bloomsbury, 2026) the author focuses on the earliest of these Upanisads: Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Kausitaki. These Upanisads are read “as they are,” emphasizing aspects of these texts that are often completely overlooked, among them: their Vedic approach to contradiction, their frequent acceptance of means other than gnostic knowledge of or veneration of atman/brahman as a means for liberation, their positing of entities/realities other than atman or brahman as totalistic, and their frequent depiction of the human body or embodied human as a microcosm of or in identity with the universe. In course, the interpretations of the Upani?adic view, the Vedantic view, for each of these Upani?ads, of Sa?karacarya (c. 800 CE) and Ramanujacarya (c. 1100 CE), as primary examples in the range of Upani?adic interpreters, will be examined and often refuted.

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