Man in the Universe

Man in the Universe: Some Continuities in Indian Thought brings to print the fourth series of the Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lectures, delivered by renowned Sanskritist and Indologist W. Norman Brown at the University of Michigan in March 1965. A scholar of international stature whose work helped shape the American Institute of Indian Studies, Brown distills a lifetime of disciplined inquiry into an accessible meditation on Indian religion and philosophy. The volume also includes, at the author’s suggestion, his 1961 presidential address to the Association for Asian Studies, “The Content of Cultural Continuity in India,” framing the lectures with a lucid account of how ideas endure, recombine, and reappear across millennia.

At once learned and inviting, Brown’s argument moves from the famous Buddhist dialogue of Nagasena and King Milinda—on rebirth, non-self, and consciousness—to a broader exploration of what gives Indian civilization its continuity amid change. Tracing motifs from the Indus cities through Vedic speculation and Upanishadic insight to Jain and Buddhist ethics and the later social imagination of caste, he highlights values such as duty (vrata), truth (satya), noninjury (ahimsa), and a capacious tolerance for divergent paths. His governing image is the banyan: a living organism that renews itself through branching and return, binding text and context, “Great Tradition” and local practice. This elegant synthesis will engage readers in religious studies, philosophy, history, and South Asian studies seeking a concise, authoritative account of the long continuities of Indian thought.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.