Found in many different religious cultures, the practice of making votive offerings into fire dates back to the earliest periods of human history. Throughout the tantric world, this kind of ritual offering practice is known as the homa. With roots in Vedic and Zoroastrian rituals, the tantric homa was formed in early medieval India. Since that time tantric Buddhist practitioners transmitted it to East and Central Asia, and more recently to Europe and the Americas. Today, Hindu forms of the homa are being practiced outside of India as well.

Despite this historical and cultural range, the homa retains an identifiable unity of symbolism and ritual form. Homa Variations is the first volume to provide a series of detailed studies of a variety of homa forms. This collection of essays provides an understanding of the history of the homa from its inception up to its use in the present. The book also covers homa practice throughout a wide range of religious cultures, from India and Nepal to Tibet, China, and Japan. The theoretical focus of the collection is the study of ritual change over long periods of time, and across the boundaries of religious cultures. The identifiable unity of the homa allows for an almost unique opportunity to examine ritual change with such a broad perspective.

Richard K. Payne is Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley.

Michael Witzel is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction, Richard K. Payne

Symbolic and Comparative Studies
1. The Ritual Interplay of Fire and Water in Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, Holly Grether
2. Buddhist Permutations and Symbolism of Fire, Tadeusz Skorupski
3. The Structure of Japanese Buddhist Homa, Musashi Tachikawa

Textual Studies
4. The Vedic Homa and the Standardization of Hindu Puja, Timothy Lubin
5. Oblation, Non-conception, and Body-Systems of Psychosomatic Fire-oblation in Esoteric Buddhism in Medieval South Asia, Tsunehiko Sugiki
6. The Three Types of Fire Sacrifice According to Kanha'sSricakrasamvara-homavidhi, David B. Gray
7. Fire Rituals by the Queen of Siddhas: The Aparimitayur-homa-vidhi-nama in the Tengyur, Georgios T. Halkias
8. Homa Rituals in the Indian Kalacakratantra Tradition, Vesna A. Wallace
9. Ritual Subjects: Homa in Chinese Translations and Manuals from the Sixth through Eighth Centuries, Charles D. Orzech

Descriptive Studies
10. Newar Buddhist Homa Ritual Traditions, Todd Lewis and Naresh Bajracarya
11. The Navaratra Homa: Liver, Enchantment, and Engendering the Divine "Sakti-s", Nawaraj Chaulagain
12. Fire on the Mountain: The Shugendo Saito Goma, Richard K. Payne
13. Agnihotra Rituals in Nepal, Michael Witzel


Index