Authority, Anxiety, and Canon elucidates a principle fundamental to Hinduism's self-understanding--the Veda--while at the same time examining the methodological issues of the role of canon in religious tradition. Spanning the early periods of Indian religious history up to the twentieth century, the book combines theoretical sophistication and detailed scholarship to produce one of the first comprehensive works on Vedic interpretation since Louis Renou's Le Destin Du Veda.