Book Review: Hindu Book of Dead by Trinath Mishtra

Here is one book I whole heartedly recommend to all Hindus. Hindu Book of Dead.

Death is a very hard concept for us to talk about but the Hindus have extensive funeral rites and large body of text surrounding it and most of which views death so dispassionately. Author Trinath Mishra looks at various Hindu scriptures around death, funeral rites and also discusses more secular texts around the subject giving us a very comprehensive view of how Hindus see death.

Hindu view of death and beyond is very different from other dominant religions of the world.  Hindus have a cyclical concept of time where death is just as natural as birth and merely a small milestone everyone ends up achieving. But the death is also crossing over for the soul. The soul must continue its journey and those who are on the side of living must cope with that death while helping the soul to pass on easily.

Dr Trinath Mishra belongs to a family of Brahmins of the Advaita Tradition. He learnt Sanskrit and studied scriptures from Shri Ramakant Shastri, Dr. Ramdev Tripathi and Shri Soham Maharaj. Dr Mishra had his formal education at Netarhat School, Jharkhand; Patna College, Bihar and Rohilkhand University, Uttar Pradesh. He was awarded the Radhika Devi Gold Medal for his academic accomplishments. He served in the Indian Police Service from 1965 to 2002 and was decorated for gallantry as well as distinguished services. Two of his books, Kumbh-Gatha and Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi have been widely acclaimed.

Authors most certainly seems to have been rooted in Hindu traditions and has ability to read an understand Sanskrit in the traditional way. This book is an important piece of work and we should encourage scholars like him by buying their books. Otherwise we will face the danger of left leaning pseudo scholars from American universities roadrolling our future generations with their low quality research as gold standard.