This volume is a collection of essays by the late Richard Burghart. It makes an important contribution to the study of religion, politics, and society in South Asia through a combination of ethnographic finesse, meticulous historical research, and the sustained working out of an original theoretical position. The essays are grouped into three sections: the first contains Burghart's theoretical papers on the interpretation of Hindu society, which introduce his crucial idea of 'intercultural' and intracultural translation', together with three examples of his empirical work on Ramanandi renouncers. The second section concentrates on Burghart's work on political culture and the historical development of the nation-state of Nepal. The third section illustrates Burghart's sociology of 'complex agency'.