Welcome to the premeir issue of Journal of Vaishnava Studies (JVS), the only academic publication focusing exclusively on the history, culture and philosophy of the Vaisnava tradition. Our approach is simple; each issue delves deeply into a particular theme, with contributions by acknowledged experts in the feild. Among academics, we will have papers by historians, philosphers, theologians anthropologists, sociologists, linguistics and so on; among practitioners we will include essays by well-versed svamis, yogis, pujari, babajis, pandits and decotional literati throughout the world.