Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-276) and index.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: changing the subject 1 -- 1 The power of definitions: a genealogy of the idea of 'the mystical' 7 -- The problem with definitions - Origins of the term 'mysticism' - -- Medieval notions of the mystical - Modern definitions of -- mysticism - The 'mystical' versus the 'rational'- 'Mysticism' -- and the construction of modern philosophy - Silencing the -- Orient: the absence of 'the mystical' in histories of -- philosophy -- 2 Disciplining religion 35 -- Christian theology and the category of 'religion' - Secularism -- and the 'iatrogenic' effect of studying religion - The -- Enlightenment roots of religious studies - Modelling -- religious studies: theology or 'cultural studies' -- 3 Sacred texts, hermeneutics and world religions 62 -- Textualism and the modern concept of 'world religions' - -- Gadamer and hermeneutics: exploding the myth of -- objectivity - Hermeneutics and cultural isolationism - Self- -- reflexivity and ideology -- 4 Orientalism and Indian religions 82 -- Orientalism and the quest for a postcolonial discourse - -- Orientalism and Indology - The inevitability of -- 'Orientalism'? -- 5 The modern myth of 'Hinduism' 96 -- The myth of homogeneity and the modern myth of 'Hinduism' - -- Christianity, textualism and the construction of 'Hinduism' - -- The status of the term 'Hinduism' - The relevance of -- feminism to the Orientalist debate -- 6 'Mystic Hinduism': Vedanta and the politics of representation 118 -- The 'discovery' of Veddnta as the central theology of Hinduism -- - Romanticism and the debate about pantheism - Orientalist -- interest in Vedanta - Neo- Vedanta and the perennial -- philosophy -- 7 Orientalism and the discovery of 'Buddhism' 143 -- The European discovery of 'Buddhism' - Intercultural mimesis -- and the localproduction of meaning -- 8 The politics of privatization: Indian religion and the study of -- mysticism 161 -- The comparative study of mysticism - The constructivist -- response to perennialism - The social location of social -- constructivism - Indian constructivisms: the epistemology of -- enlightenment -- 9 Beyond Orientalism? Religion and comparativism in a -- postcolonial era 187 -- Postcolonialism and the 'Subaltern Studies' project - Mimesis, -- hybridity and the ambivalence of colonial discourse - The -- mutual imbrication of religion, culture andpower.