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In the entire corpus of R makr sn a research, carried out mostly by his disciples, devotes, and admirers, only a handful have attempted to analyze his divine reputation. Yet none has examined the R makr sn a phenomenon fully.This is the first comprehensive psychoanalysis of R makr sn a's sexuality in general and his androgyny in particular, as well as a critical examination of his sermons sam dhis. Instead of the popular paramahamsa there now emerges the less attractive but more authentic profile of an utterly selfish, capricious but highly intelligent spiritual master who elicited awed submission from everybody by his unpredictable and frenzied behaviour.The author asserts that R makr sn a's spiritual odyssey is better explained as his desperate but successful effort to deal with his emotional and sexual crisis, rather than as the universally acknowledged outcome of a divine teleology. Attempting to distinguish the historical R makr sn a from the godhead of hagiography, this study offers a challenging debate on mystic phenomenon.

Since the publication of Sri Ramakrishna's first biography, readers have been familiar with the awesome figure of a spiritual personality who established a direct liason with the divine and preached the most enlightened religious eclecticism in simple vernacular. All subsequent studies on the paramahamsa have been predicated on the monastic Vedantic interpretation of his career and character.This study is a pioneering attempt to uncover the human face behind the mask of the Paramahamsa. Using rare Bengali sources, it is an entirely new look at the saint. In his search for the historical and human figure, the author reexamines the saint's life and thought, and delves into his childhood experiences presenting him as a simple, gregarious, semiliterate rustic with a complex sexual dilemma and spiritual hunger who sought a solution to his troubled psyche in an eclectic piety of faith and fun.

Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay has been the most popular writer of novels and short stories in his native Bengaland in India at large. Despite this, he remains unrecognized in the English speaking world. Narasingha P. Sil fills this void by presenting a historical critical assessment of his upbringing and the experiences that influenced his masterful and magnificent work. The Life of Sharatchandra Chattopadhyay rescues the authentic man, a caste-conscious and patriarchal Brahmin of colonial Bengal, from the cuckoo land of gratuitous praise and panegyric showered on the Aparajeya Kathasilpi, the "invincible" wordsmith. The author exposes Sharatchandra's innate conservative worldview and his romantic platonic concept of human sexuality that inform all his love stories. In many respects Sharatchandra resembles his formidable European forbear, Jean Jacques Rousseau of Enlightenment France. The concluding chapter of Sil's biographical study introduces this pioneering comparison between the two men--a veritable tour de force.

Although not seeking to debunk the Hindu hagiography that has grown up around her and her ascetic husband Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Sil (history, Western Oregon U.) seeks to rescue the human figure of Saradamani Chattopadhyay, a simple but industrious woman who had been a victim of her God-man h

This study seeks answers to several questions hitherto ignored by most biographers of Rāmakṛṣṇa: what really accounted for his relentless admonitions against sex life? What made him think that he was god or avatār, that is, a divine incarnation? And finally, why and how did he convince people that he was divine

The book also takes a hard look at his universally acknowledged reputation as a hypercosmological renouncer who championed the causes of the poor and the downtrodden and thus exemplified the doctrines of socialism at their finest. Sil is the first scholar to critically examine Vivekananda's attitude toward women in general and to probe into his experience with Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita) in particular, and he is the first author to provide a detailed analysis of Vivekananda's popularity as a preacher and lecturer.

This investigation thus seeks to examine the theory of the Tudor revolution in government advanced by the late Sir Geoffrey Elton and in so doing helps to highlight the human and personal dimensions of institutional history. An outcome of this changed perspective is that the privy chamber acquires a higher profile (following David Starkey's path-breaking revisionist research) than the privy council (as postulated by Elton) in the remarkable "revolutionary" decades of the sixteenth century.".

This biography of Tudor courtier-councilor William Herbert reveals a different portrait of the man than earlier antiquarian accounts. The author argues that Sir William was a successful politician and politique who was as mindful of his personal interests as of those of his country.

The book also takes a hard look at his universally acknowledged reputation as a hypercosmological renouncer who championed the causes of the poor and the downtrodden and thus exemplified the doctrines of socialism at their finest. Sil is the first scholar to critically examine Vivekananda's attitude toward women in general and to probe into his experience with Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita) in particular, and he is the first author to provide a detailed analysis of Vivekananda's popularity as a preacher and lecturer.