The ‘Indic Religions’ of my subtitle are early forms of what we now know as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. Their development, even with an arbitrary end-date of 1200 CE, is a large topic, and only some aspects are covered in this book. I am particularly concerned with the growth of one of their central and most characteristic features, the group of traditions of mental and physical cultivation that developed into what we now know as ‘yoga’, ‘Tantra’, and ‘meditation’. The indigenous terms vary, and do not correspond neatly to modern Western uses of these terms, but practices involving mental and physical cultivation, mostly directed towards the achievement of some kind of liberating insight, are found in all the major religions originating in the Indian sub-continent.

The main body of the book consists of five chapters (3 to 7) focusing on the early growth of Buddhism, Jainism and the renunciate traditions within Brahmanical religion, roughly from the fourth to second centuries BCE, and three chapters (10 to 12) discussing the period from the fifth to twelfth centuries. The first of these periods corresponds, as far as we can tell, to the initial development of yogic and meditational techniques; the second period covers the growth of Tantric practices and the relationship between yoga and Tantra. The remaining chapters provide introduction and commentary, and sketch developments before, between and after these two key periods.