Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 41 McHugh’s groundbreaking study begins with the simple observation that the Indian textual tradition is replete with references to odors and the sense of smell. Although this observation will not surprise those familiar with Indian literature, prior to McHugh’s study Indianists failed to engage its implications. In broad terms, as McHugh notes, the study of the olfactory in India builds on the recent movement in religious studies to explicate the material world; however, more narrowly, this rich study shows us the importance of attending to indigenous categories that too often escape the outsider’s eye. It is this latter point, albeit implicit rather than explicit, that unifies the disparate literary elements that McHugh examines. Following an in-depth exploration (Chapter 2) of the nature of smell and odor in several Indian systems (Jain, Buddhist, Sām · khyan, etc.), McHugh first builds a general depiction of India’s “smellscape” (Chapter 3) and then engages in detailed analyses of the Mahābhārata figure of the odorous Satyavatı̄, the art of perfumery, spices and aromatics, and sandalwood, with a detailed excursus into the nature and properties of this prized substance (Chapters 4–7). A wealth of practical information is sprinkled throughout, from the perfume-making process to the procurement of aromatics in ancient India. McHugh devotes the final section to “smell and religion” culminating in an illuminating discussion of why the gods desire incense and flowers (Chapter 10). This final discussion exemplifies the value of McHugh’s study, as he adds layers of meaning drawn from an entrenched world of Indian olfactory experience to these commonplace objects (flowers and incense, ubiquitous in India). Of small matters, late Vedic thought, with its frequent references to the senses, is not mentioned; Chapter 1 is oddly titled “Introduction.” This volume is highly recommended for its wealth of information, penetrating analyses, and, above all, the paradigm it establishes for future scholarship. Herman Tull Lafayette College • NUMBER 3 • SEPTEMBER 2015 residents and pilgrims. These stories reveal a devotional and ritual space where categories are murky; where beliefs, practices, and terminology that would otherwise differentiate “Hindu” and “Muslim” are intertwined; and where public and private narratives are shared to generate Kullayappa bhakti (devotion). Although inclusive, the festival also has an “internal diversity” as members of various castes put their respective spins on shared narratives. Combined, this creates a multilayered and highly nuanced tradition that is continually evolving. The theoretical framework of this study is particularly useful to those interested in the ever-shifting, organic qualities of religious worship; terms such as “syncretic” and “hybridity,” both of which presuppose distinct categories, are eschewed in favor of “local” and “localized” Islam. These terms designate distinct but intertwined processes that are constantly responding to one another: the former designating Islam as practiced in Gugudu, and the latter referring to reformers who wish to remove “non-Islamic” elements from the Muharram festival. This book is a great resource for scholars of South Asian religions, Islam, and religious studies, and could easily be incorporated into a variety of humanities courses. A. Gardner Harris, Jr. Dallas, TX GERMAN VISIONS OF INDIA, 1871–1918: COMMANDEERING THE HOLY GANGES DURING THE KAISERREICH. By Perry Myers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xiii + 258; illustrations. $100.00. Myers’s work adds to a large body of studies that explore the Western construction of India, with no shortage among them examining “Germany’s India.” Whereas these studies have tended to focus either on early German Indology or on odd elements of a supposed shared IndoGermanic racial heritage, Meyer’s work seeks a broader portrayal (albeit one limited chronologically) that explores how “the sounding board of India” founded elements of Wilhelmine community identity. In fashioning this discussion, the elements of religion and of spiritual discord loom large, whether in the acrimonious denominational divide between German Catholic and Protestant played out in India in the missionary world (Part 1); in German attempts to foster a rapprochement of the spiritual and the empirical through a Buddhist lens (Part 2); or in the Germanic elevation of an “Aryan” religion that embodied contemporary ideas about race, natural selection, and national identity (Part 3). Myers’s discussion ranges from well-known themes—e.g., India as a source for Germanic Ur-Religion and the “higher spirituality” of Hindus—to less frequently explored areas, among them: the German Catholic missionary zeal in India as a counter to Catholicism’s weakened position in Germany; Germanic moral ambivalence to the British Raj, as Germans identified with Indians spiritually but with the British as colonial THE FESTIVAL OF PĪRS: POPULAR ISLAM AND SHARED DEVOTION IN SOUTH INDIA. By Afsar Mohammad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 199; 14 plates. Cloth, $99.00; paper, $27.95. This book reminds the reader that in order to understand Islam one must consider local, pluralistic devotional traditions that do not necessarily conform to global, “normative” Islamic practices or narratives. Through interviews, conversations, and analyses of sacred and ritual spaces, language, and public and private ritual practices, this study explores the multifaceted devotional traditions in the Muharram festival in the village of Gugudu, Andhra Pradesh. Central to this festival, which attracts more than 300,000 Muslim and Hindu pilgrims, is the pı̄r or saint Kullayappa, the eldest grandson and heir to the Prophet Muhammad, who brought Islam to Gugudu. Particularly interesting are the interviews and conversations with the 125 Religious Studies Review • VOLUME 41 • NUMBER 3 • SEPTEMBER 2015 continues to hold pride of place as the best introduction to the field. Any teacher is justifiably suspicious of new editions, which often amount to small and superficial changes in content at a much higher price. However, this new edition offers a pleasant surprise. It contains substantial and timely updates making it the practical choice for classroom use. While its overall framework of “unity and diversity” remains the same, the book’s individual sections have been carefully expanded and revised in light of the significant advances in the scholarship. For example, Chapter 20, “Religious Life in Contemporary Japan,” now includes an interesting discussion on how religion has been affected by Japan’s increasingly social and cultural commercialization. The author has added material from the recent work by B. Ambros on the pet funeral and cemetery business to make his point (292–93)—something that will both attract students’ attention and hopefully inspire them to find out more about the commodification of Buddhism and its changing role in the Japanese funeral industry. Reflecting recent debates, the author also wants readers to become aware of the theoretical issues over the appropriateness of using the category of religion and the dangers of essentialist models of Japaneseness that are often a source of misleading generalizations. As suggested by his new title, “Religion in Japan” (replacing the old title of “Japanese Religion”), the author seeks to avoid imputing any “monolithic tradition” at work behind Japan’s religious diversity. Also important to note is that this book is a handy reference work in its own right; it includes a 37-page annotated bibliography of current Western scholarship. As an erstwhile undergraduate who got his first exciting introduction to Zen, Shinto, and Japanese new religions through the first edition, I am now a teacher excited about using this newly revised classic in my own classes. Mark MacWilliams St. Lawrence University masters; and a delightful foray into the lesser known but more general works of the famed classical Indologist Hermann Oldenberg (126–29). Throughout, Meyers’s analyses are finely wrought, with careful textual analysis predominating. Myers’s theoretical framework, set out in the introduction, occasionally overreaches, though it hardly detracts from this well-conceived and thoroughly illuminating portrayal of Germany’s late twentieth-century engagement with India. This book is highly recommended for advanced students and working scholars with a deep interest in German Indology and Germanic cross-cultural studies. Herman Tull Lafayette College East Asia JAPANESE RELIGIONS AND GLOBALIZATION. By Ugo Dessì. London: Routledge, 2013. Pp. viii + 191. Hardcover, $140.00. Dessì, a Privatdozent in Religious Studies at Leipzig University, has been a seminal contributor to the study of Shin Buddhism in recent years. With this book—a revised version of his habilitation thesis of 2012—however, he demonstrates a remarkable breadth of expertise in the wider field of Japanese religions. Alongside an elaborate fourteen-part typology marking modes of involvement of Japanese religions in the context of today’s “accelerated globalization,” Dessì discusses insightfully a great variety of case studies, ranging from traditional Buddhism and Shintō to new religious movements. Following theoretical considerations on the notions of “religion” and “globalization,” he gives convincing evidence of the impact that global dynamics exert upon institutional religious expression domestically and overseas. Dessì skillfully employs an interdisciplinary approach (among others informed by systems theory), always thoroughly positioning his line of argument amid a close reading of relevant original sources. He argues that globalization increasingly patterns the discursive trajectories upon which Japanese religions navigate. In other words, he views religious change, to a growing extent, as the effect of deliberate or unintentional responses to the forces of an evermore globalized environment. Dessì’s study is a tour de force, a must read for the student of contemporary East Asian and Japanese religions. Lukas Pokorny Stockholm University RELIGION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY IN MODERN JAPAN. By Christopher Harding, Iwata Fumiaki, and Yoshinaga Shin’ichi. London: Routledge, 2015. Pp. xx + 300. Hardcover, $155.00. This is largely a collection of Japanese scholarship on the “boundary work” between religion and the psy disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy in Japan. Twelve mostly translated papers, half of which are revised versions of work previously published between 1990 and 2013, consider central aspects of the intersection of this relationality. In his introductory and concluding remarks, Harding specifies “three areas of tension.” These—the personal and the (con)textual, creation and discovery, and instrumentalism and engrossment—are to serve as a reading aid, lending thematic cohesion to the contributions of this volume. Following a historical survey (Harding), a portrayal of past religious psychiatric therapies (H. Akira RELIGION IN JAPAN: UNITY AND DIVERSITY. By H. Byron Earhart. Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage, 2014. 5th edition. Pp. 364. $138.95. First published in 1969, this textbook has served generations of students, and now, in its fifth edition, 126