Satyaraja Das
Steven J. Rosen, also known as Satyaraja Dasa (born in New York in 1955), is an American author. He is the founding editor of The Journal of Vaishnava Studies and an associate editor ofBack to Godhead, the magazine. He authored more than 28 books on Vaishnavism and related subjects, including Vaishnavi: Women and the Worship of Krishna (1996); Gita on the Green: The Mystical Tradition Behind Bagger Vance (2000); Holy War: Violence and the Bhagavad Gita (2002); The Hidden Glory of India (2002); From Nothingness to Personhood: A Collection of Essays on Buddhism From a Vaishnava Perspective (2003); and Black Lotus: The Spiritual Journey of an Urban Mystic (2007), which is the life story of Bhakti Tirtha Swami.
Steven J. Rosen has a strong view on vegetarianism and has written Diet for Transcendence: Vegetarianism and the World Religions (1997, previously published as Food for the Spirit) and Holy Cow: The Hare Krishna Contribution to Vegetarianism and Animal Rights (2004). In the former volume, he systematically explains the practice of vegetarianism in various religious traditions, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, with special attention to the philosophical schools of India. In the latter, citing the devotee-scholar Bhaktivinoda Thakur (1838–1914) and the Hindu savant Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927–2001), he looks at early Vedic tradition, animal sacrifices, and the innovative contributions of the Hare Krishna movement.
Several years ago he was called upon by Greenwood Press, a major academic publisher, to write the Hinduism volume for theirIntroduction to the World's Major Religions series. Greenwood later commissioned him to write Essential Hinduism, a more comprehensive treatment of the same subject, under the auspices of their parent company (Praeger), and the book is now receiving worldwide acclaim. Graham Schweig, for example, considers Essential Hinduism significant for its "analysis of Vishnu in the four original Vedas" and writes that the book reveals "perhaps for the first time in a readable, accessible volume, why Vishnu’s place is important in Hinduism as a whole, as [Rosen] connects Vaishnavism with the early Vedic tradition. Rowman & Littlefield recently released a trade paperback version of the book that is widely available.
In his 2008 book/CD package called The Yoga of Kirtan: Conversations on the Sacred Art of Chanting, Rosen interviews 21 kirtan masters from around the world and offers new essays on call-and-response singing as a form of yogic spirituality. His latest release in 2011 is Christ and Krishna: Where the Jordan Meets the Ganges.
