This book is an invitation to the reader not to get carried away by the striking ideas of `renunciation' and `purity' which dominate the academic literature on India, but to consider them alongside the equally important notions of `domesticity' and `auspiciousness'. The volume constitutes a reading of Hindu tradition as a rich and sensible philosophy of life - what T. N. Madan calls `a cultivation of moral sensibility' - one based on domesticity (householder status
as opposed to, and prior to, renouncer status), plenitude (goals of the good life), detachment or transcendence (as a way of dealing with adversity), and bringing desires under cultural control. The Epilogue briefly draws attention to the problems of modernity as cultural conceptions of the good life
have shifted, causing Hindus to search anew for their sense of self and means of social reorientation.