The primary aim of this book is to analyse critically the history of and the assumptions underlying the use of the category ‘Indigenous Religions’ as a distinct tradition alongside ‘world religions’. I have been motivated to write such a book for many years as a direct result of my involvement in planning academic programmes in religious studies in numerous teaching and research contexts. I have found in general (although there are notable exceptions) that in most university departments of religion and in the textbooks they employ, religions continue to be taught and written about according to long-established divisions defined along lines dictated by the ‘major traditions’, usually consisting of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism along with other combinations, sometimes including Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism or Sikhism. Typically, little attention is given to the study of traditions falling outside these main divisions. This omission has been noted recently by Jacob Olupona, who complains in the preface to his important edited book, Beyond Primitivism, that ‘while the “world” religious traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity are amply studied and represented in the academy, the study of “indigenous” religions is speciously cut off from religious studies’ (2004: xiv). Olupona’s observation underscores the point that if indigenous religious perspectives continue to be ignored, or at least marginalized in academic circles, a highly significant portion of the world’s religious adherents will be excluded from scholarly research and teaching in religious studies. This problem is not resolved simply by introducing courses into university curricula on Indigenous Religions. After some consideration, it soon becomes evident that to speak of Indigenous Religions as a single category is highly problematic, particularly since there are as many indigenous religious traditions as there are indigenous peoples, and because indigenous views often have been adapted into the world ...