This is the first study to systematically confront the question how Brahmanism, which was geographically limited and under threat during the final centuries BCE, transformed itself and spread all over South and Southeast Asia. Brahmanism spread over this vast area without the support of an empire, without the help of conquering armies, and without the intermediary of religious missionaries. This phenomenon has no parallel in world history, yet shaped a major portion of the surface of the earth for a number of centuries. This book focuses on the formative period of this phenomenon, roughly between Alexander and the Guptas.

Johannes Bronkhorst (PhD Pune 1979, doctorate Leiden 1980) is professor emeritus at the University of Lausanne. He has published numerous research papers and books, including Greater Magadha (Brill, 2007) and Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism (Brill, 2011).

This book may be looked upon as the third of a trilogy that deals with the early development of classical Indian culture. The first, Greater Magadha, studied the culture of the eastern parts of the Ganges valley, a culture that was originally independent but came to be largely absorbed into Brahmanical culture, and which contributed many defining features to the latter. The second book in the trilogy, Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism, depicted how Buddhism in India, in spite of remaining nominally independent, underwent such strong brahmanization that it can be said to have joined forces with Brahmanism, in vain as it turned out. The present book concentrates on the extraordinary success story of Brahmanism, which developed from a movement in danger of extinction during the last centuries before the Common Era into one that, in less than a millennium, succeeded in imposing its imprint on the Indian subcontinent and much of Southeast Asia, and did this without the help of a conquering army or an all-powerful empire. Religious conversion cannot have played a role, for one could not convert to Brahmanism. This book seeks to understand how the Brahmins did it.