Religion and Society

Contents: Introduction. 1. Before religion. 2. The making of religion. 3. Harappan religion and the Aryan question. 4. Vedic religion: myth and reality. 5. The Vedic Gods and the Vedic priests. 6. God and the later Mimamsakas. 7. Buddhism: revolutionary sociology passes into its opposite. 8. Future of religion. Bibliography. Index.

This book consists of eight Stephanos Nirmalendu Ghose Lectures for 1981 delivered by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. The series had been instituted by Rai Bahadur G.C. Ghosh at the University of Calcutta as a memorial to his late son. Rai Bahadur, a devout Christian intended the lectures to be a defence or perhaps more appropriately a propagation of religion. (jacket)