While the concept of non-duality is central to many religious and philosophical traditions, it has found some of its most sophisticated and diverse expressions in South Asia. Drawing on a rich body of sources across multiple languages, communities, and traditions, this handbook maps, for the first time, the wide-ranging forms and functions of non-duality in South Asian traditions.

Written by leading scholars, the volume brings together traditions often studied separately, including brahmanical, Buddhist, tantric, Sikh, Islamic, and vernacular movements. Its chapters examine non-duality not as a single doctrine, but as a flexible and contested category, articulated in ontological, cognitive, phenomenological, soteriological, devotional, ethical, and narrative contexts. The volume also introduces key concepts, technical vocabularies, and interpretive frameworks through which non-duality has been defined, debated, practiced, and reimagined.

By placing these traditions in conversation, the volume reorients the study of non-duality in premodern South Asia. It offers a comprehensive, accessible, and interdisciplinary resource for scholars, students, and readers interested in Indian philosophy, religion, literature, and the history of contemplative and devotional thought.

James Madaio is Head of the Department of South Asia at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic, and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, UK.

Jonathan Duquette is Affiliated Researcher in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Affiliated Lecturer in Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Global Philosophy of Religion Project Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Indian Philosophy.