Includes bibliographical references (page 173-206) and index.

Religion in Southeast Asian studies / Ben Arps -- Religion in the sociology and anthropology of India / Rowena Robinson -- India and the making of Hinduism: the contribution of the Puras / Peter Bisschop -- The study of Chinese religions in the social sciences: beyond the monotheistic assumption / Anna Sun -- Coming to terms with religion in East Asia / T H Barrett -- From field to text in the study of Chinese religion / Barend J. ter Haar -- Religion in Korean studies: the case of historiography / Marion Eggert -- The role of religion in European and North American Japanese studies / Hans Martin Kramer -- Religion, secularism and the Japanese shaping of East Asian studies / Kiri Paramore -- Christian-Muslim borderlands: from Eastern European studies to Central Eurasian studies / Christian Noack and Michael Kemper.

"Religion, and the history of its study in the modern academy, has affected not only the methodologies, but also the disciplinary and regional arrangements of different Asian Studies fields over the past century. Asian Studies has in turn affected, and is increasingly shaping, the study of religion. Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies looks into this symbiotic relationship - both in current practice, and in the modern histories of both Orientalism and Area Studies. The chapters of the book are integrated by shared themes that run through the past and present practice of Area studies, covering the role of state actors in originating Asian studies, the role of local scholarship in defining and developing it, and the interaction between humanities and social science approaches. Debates over the dominance of Western and/or modern categories and frameworks, the interaction of past and present and the role of religious actors and religious sensibilities in shaping Asian studies, are also covered. Each chapter deals with one regional sub-discipline in Asian studies and is authored by a leading scholar. Shared thematic approaches running through each essay serve to link scholarly approaches in the fields of Chinese studies, Japanese studies, Korean studies, South Asian studies and South East Asian studies"-- Provided by publisher.