The concept of Purua, or Personhood, is central to the ancient Indic worldview. From the original cosmos-sized Person of the Rgveda's famous Purua-sukta, to the supreme, transcendent being of post-Vedic traditions, to the mere mortal human being, the nature of the Person and its relation to the world has long inspired the Indian religious imagination. In spite of this, little sustained scholarly attention has been paid to the precise meanings of Purua or its historical transformations within and across traditions. In Purua: Personhood in Ancient India Mathew I. Robertson fills this gap by tracing the history of Indic thinking about puruas through an extensive analysis of the major texts and traditions--religious, political, and medical--of ancient India. Through clear explanations of classic Sanskrit texts and the idioms of Indic traditions, Robertson shows how the concept of Purua stretches far beyond individualism. Rather, persons are deeply confluent with the world: personhood is worldhood. He argues for the significance of this "worldly" thinking about personhood to Indic traditions and identifies a host of techniques that were developed to grow a person to an ever-greater scope.

Ritualized expansions of sovereigns to match the scope of their realm find complement in ascetic meditations on the intersubjective nature of perceptually delimited person-worlds, which in turn find complement in yogas of sensory restraint, the dietary regimens of Ayurvedic medicine, and the devotional theologies by which persons "share" and "eat" the expansive divinity of God. Whether in the guise of a king, an ascetic, a yogi, a buddha, or a patient in the care of an Ayurvedic physician, fully realized persons know themselves to be coterminous with the horizons of their world. Purua: Personhood in Ancient India challenges us to reexamine the goals of ancient Indian religions and yields new insights into the interrelated natures of religious persons and the worlds in which they live. The book will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and graduate students of South Asian religions, philosophies, and traditions.