For long, Indian Buddhist and Brahmanical religious institutions have generally been studied from art-historical perspectives. This has resulted into a general neglect of the contours of the vast functional matrices these institutions have created or were parts thereof. Essays in this book attempt to explore the functional roles of India Buddhist and Brahmanical religious institutions by perceiving them as important constituents of the overall societal matrix: as institutions in dynamic interactions with other societal institutions, acting and reacting with them, influencing them and getting influenced by them in turn. These institutions interacted with their socio-economic context in a variety of ways. This book hope to be an endeavour in unravelling some dimensions of these interactions, and seek to explain the decline of India Buddhism and survival and expansion of Brahmanism in terms of their engagements with societal institutions and processes.