Abstract

This chapter introduces the subject of personhood and its significance to Indic traditions and academic discourses. The category of 'person' is distinguished from the categories of 'self' and 'body' by virtue of its relational, permeable, and "extensional" or "expansive" character. The scholarly tendency to frame persons as "microcosms"-bodies that contain within the replication of the cosmos-at-large-is problematized. Indic persons are most often conceived as outward-facing, phenomenalistic, world-wide entities. Chapters of the work are summarized. Significance of Indic theories of personhood to modern debates on environmental personhood and legal personhood is discussed.