Downloadable lectures

This paper offers a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and development of Hindu traditions from their early formation to the medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The lectures will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy.

Mahesvara from sites across South Bihar in their movement and displacement from their original abodes in temples to museums, private collections and art markets. The scope of the book covers a large time frame from the early medieval to the 20^th century and innovatively tries to bridge the historiographical divide between the ancient and the modern and also between socio-religious practices and their institutional memory and preservation. One of the most interesting aspects of discussion is how through official surveys and institutionalisation of museum and archival practices the colonial government tried to create a monotheistic identity to sacred spaces in the Indian Subcontinent.

Through the medium of sacred sculptures the talk will touch upon significant issues in Indian archaeology such as the prolonged usage of the same ritual space by various communities of people such as Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Muslims. Another significant theme which will be discussed is how a shift in the architectural and ritual placement of sacred images can bring about a change in their identity and purpose. The talk will also focus on the creation of regional identities and the politics of heritage making through the use of visual cultures and museum spaces.

Dr. Salila Kulshreshtha secured her PhD in History from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research focuses on tracing how the spatial relocation of sacred sculptures brings about a change in their identity and ritual purpose. She has worked on issues of urban heritage and heritage education with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) [2004] and with the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, Mumbai [2011-2012]. She has taught Art history, History and Humanities in Mumbai at Rizvi College of Architecture and Indian Education Society’s College of Architecture [2012-2013] and in the USA at the Old Dominion University and Virginia Wesleyan College [2005-2007]. She is currently based in Dubai. Her research interests include religious iconography, colonial archaeology, museum collections and Indian Ocean trade networks. She has also contributed to designing an online course of OCHS on Indian Art. 

The purpose of this lecture is to elucidate the characteristics of Indian philosophy on reality and consciousness, from the semantic perspectives of the famous Japanese philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-93). Through his semantic attempt to construct an “Oriental Philosophy,” Izutsu interpreted such Indian philosophical texts as the Upaniṣads and Śaṅkara’s commentaries on the Upaniṣadic texts. In this lecture, while clarifying the hermeneutical structure of his “Oriental Philosophy,” I would like to argue how he semantically interpreted the structure of reality and consciousness in Indian philosophy, focusing on Śaṅkara’s advaita (non-dual) Vedānta philosophy. For Izutsu, among various Indian thoughts, Śaṅkara’s philosophy is the most representative thought in Izutsu’s Oriental philosophical reflection. In Izutsu’s view, the main stream of Oriental philosophy, including Indian philosophy, has been traditionally “anti-cosmic,” i.e., ontologically destructive.

Prof. Yoshitsugu Sawai is Professor of the History of Religions and former Dean of the Faculty of Human Studies at Tenri University (Japan), as well as Advisor of the Japan Association of Religion and Ethics. He is the author of The Faith of Ascetics and Lay Smartas: A Study of the Sankaran Tradition of Srngeri (Sammlung De Nobili).

This paper offers a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and development of Hindu traditions from their early formation to the medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The lectures will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy.

Based on selected passages from the Netratantra this paper will investigate how the tantric practitioners perceive reality through the esoteric anatomy of the yogic body. With a focus on Śākta anthropology and the yogic technique of the khecarīmudrā I will show how the body is utilized as an instrument in a tantric context. Through the application of Heideggarian terminology I will investigate how philosophical concepts such as Dasein, Vorhanden, Zuhanden and Angst are helpful in enhancing our understanding of such complex ideas as met with in the Netratantra and Tantric Studies more generally. As an example, I will demonstrate how the application of the concept of Dasein in a Zuhanden relationship with one’s own body can work as a model for understanding the pragmatic aspects of the esoteric anatomy.
Simultaneously, philosophical concepts may be further developed and gain new features through their application on such foreign material. The Study of Religion is indeed in need of such a metatheoretical vocabulary of carefully developed philosophical concepts in relation to a more in-depth and intellectually stimulating study of Indian religions and philosophies - at the same time pointing toward a new vocabulary that may work in more general and comparative contexts as well.

Jesper Moeslund is pursuing an MA in the Study of Religion at Aarhus University with a minor in Philosophy. Jesper’s interests are primarily related to the study of esoteric anatomy in a tantric context and how the body is understood and used in a religious discourse. He is a visiting student at the OCHS and a participant in the Haṭhapradīpikā translation project led by Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen and Silje Lyngar Einarsen.

The period of the autumnal Navarātra has formed a culmination point for worshipping goddesses through and for Nepalese kings. With the rise of the Shah dynasty from the 18th century onwards and the attending state building process this festival, commonly known by its Nepali name Dasaĩ, grew into the state ritual par excellence.

This contribution will focus on the situation in Kathmandu Valley where in 1768/69 the Shahs ousted the earlier Malla kings from power. The Shahs took over the earlier dynasty’s palace(s) and with it the royal goddesses residing there. Though broadly speaking, the two royal houses in question had common religious affiliations—their Brahmins following the same Vedic school and their court religions centre-staging the worship of female divinities according to Tantric liturgy—they promoted distinct ritual practices and relied on different ritual specialists. In remodelling the courtly Navarātra rituals to cope with the new political situation two seemingly opposing and yet interwoven tendencies seem to have been at work. Though new goddesses, specialists and rituals were introduced, the pre-existing ones were partly or entirely left in place, the two sets being tied together by recalibrating each of them. Such processes become evident when engaging with texts dealing with the pragmatic dimensions of religion, including ritual handbooks, court diaries and historical documents on the logistics and organisation of the rituals. Goddess worship there appears as a primarily practical concern, in which it is meaningful who is sponsored by whom to worship which form of the goddess where, when and how. Apart from the question of how the Shahs’ Navarātra ritual built upon that of the Malla kings the paper will also look at practical and administrative steps taken to impose the celebration of Dasaĩ on all subjects and indeed advance it as an integration measure in the rising national state.

Dr Astrid Zotter studied Indology and Religious Studies at Leipzig. She has been doing research on Hindu traditions in the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal), combining textual studies with fieldwork. Her research and publications deal with topics such as the use of flowers in worship, life-cyclic rituals, and festivals. Currently she is a post-doctoral researcher and the deputy leader of the research unit “Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Premodern Nepal” at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Hinduism cannot be understood without the Goddess (Devī/Śakti) and the goddess-oriented Śākta traditions. The Goddess pervades Hinduism at all levels, from aniconic village deities to high-caste pan-Hindu goddesses to esoteric, tantric goddesses. Nevertheless, these highly influential forms of South Asian religion have only recently begun to draw a more broad scholarly attention. Taken together, they form ‘Śāktism’, which is by many considered one of the major branches of Hinduism next to Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism. Śāktism is, however, less clearly defined than the other major branches and sometimes surprisingly difficult to discern from Śaivism in its tantric forms. These sometimes very complex and challenging forms of Śākta religion provide a test case for our understanding of Hinduism and raise important theoretical and methodological questions with regard to the study of religious traditions in South Asia.

The Śākta symposia series at the OCHS include state-of-the-art contributions by a number of scholars to the Śākta Traditions research project (saktatraditions.org) and its endeavor in tracing developments in the history of goddess worship in South Asia among the orthoprax brahmans, among the tantric traditions and at village level. Thus, the symposia act as historical explorations of distinctive Indian and Nepalese ways of imagining God as Goddess (and goddesses) contributing to a survey of important origins and developments within Śākta history, practice and doctrine in its diversity as well as offering an insight into the fascinating Śākta religious imaginaire and ritual practice that is distinctive and sets ‘Śāktism’ apart from other forms of South Asian religion. The symposia will also include contributions on the reception history of Śākta and tantric elements in global religious history and diaspora Hinduism.

Programme

10.00-13.15 Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (http://www.ochs.org.uk/)
13-15 Magdalen Street, Oxford, OX1 3AE (Tel: 01865 304300)

10.00-10.15 Welcome by Prof Gavin Flood (Oxford)

10.15-11.00 Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen (Oxford): Mapping Śākta Traditions

11.00-11.15 Tea and biscuits

11.15-12.15 Prof Knut Jacobsen (Bergen): Tamil Śākta traditions in Europe

12.15-13.15 Astrid Zotter (Heidelberg): Durgā and the Kings of Nepal

13.15-15.00 Lunch

15.00-18.00 Campion Hall (http://www.campion.ox.ac.uk/)
Brewer St, Oxford, OX1 1QS

15.00-15.15 Campion Hall small tour with Professor Gavin Flood

15.15-16.15 Silvia Schwarz Linder (Leipzig): The Doctrinal Teachings of the Tripurārahasya


16.15-16.30 Tea and biscuits

16.30-17.30 Julian Strube (Heidelberg): Modern Śākta Identities in a Global Context

17.30-18.00 Jesper Moeslund (Aarhus): Philosophy as a Meta-language in Tantric Studies
 

There is a long tradition of depicting the story of Kṛṣṇa in sculpture dating at least from the Gupta Period (4th-6th centuries CE). The compositions are quite consistent over time and place, and, with only a few exceptions, are simple and straightforward.

In the early 16th century, coinciding with a great revival of Kṛṣṇa worship, the earliest surviving painted Bhāgavata Purāṇa illustrations appear (c. 1520-30), and, though not unrelated to the earlier examples, the compositions are strikingly lively and inventive. The lecture examines this development, offers speculation on a possible source, and considers the long influence of this new compositional tradition on subsequent Indian painting.

Daniel Ehnbom is Associate Professor at the McIntire Department of Art of the University of Virginia. He is the author of Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection (1985), articles on painting and Indian architecture, and contributions to various exhibition catalogues. He was with the Macmillan/Grove Dictionary of Art (1996) in London as a contributor and consultant from 1984 and as South Asia Area Editor for Painting and Sculpture from 1988. His recent publications include Realms of Earth and Sky: Indian Painting from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville: The Fralin Art Museum at the University of Virginia, 2014).

‘Reform’ proved to be one of the defining features of Modern Hinduism. It suggested to Hindus what Hinduism might mean to them and what inputs it could possibly make into the formulation of the corporate Hindu identity. The first point to examine here is whether or not this term had a prehistory or, if as is commonly suggested today, this was a term manipulatively constructed in the colonial era, as allegedly were ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’. This paper tries to establish the argument that often, an idea or a practice is not known by a given name. Surely, the intention to reform in the sense of rationalising and humanising ideas or practices goes back a long time in south Asian history and yet, my researches reveal that there was no corresponding term in the major Indian vernaculars or for that matter, in Sanskrit, which captured the essential spirit or the meaning of the modern word ‘reform’. The contemporaries of Kabir, Nanak, and Chaitanya did not call them ‘reformers’ or identified their work as ‘reform’; such terms were peculiar to the modern era. Given this fact, this paper seeks to examine the ideological and historical compulsions that lay behind the articulation and use of such terms. This paper also argues that reform was a strongly contested term and ought to be studied in its various nuances that were determined by acute differences over understanding, intentions or strategy. 

Following Prof. Tapan Roychaudhuri’s critique of 1988, cultural historians have expressed reservations against the use of the term ‘revival’. Prof. Raychudhuri had suggested that that which was ‘far from dead’ (Hinduism) could not have been ‘revived’. My rejoinder to this has been that short of a miracle, it is only the dying that can be revived, not the dead. The literature of the Hindus in the 19th century is replete with references to a ‘dying’ Hinduism and to a culture in crisis and my point here is that in historical reconstruction, the perceptions of contemporary actors plays no less a part, even when removed from social and historical reality. Thus, though it has now been amply demonstrated that in 19th century India, the penchant for interpreting the contemporary cultural awakening as a ‘Renaissance’, or ‘Reformation’, analogous to European experiences (some of them even spoke of ‘Hindu Protestantism’) was quite misplaced, such analogies still need to be historically explained. This paper argues that the terms ‘reform’ and ‘revival’, far from being naive and unproblematic, bring out the problems of cultural self-definition within an indigenous discourse trying to contest the Orientalist one. Contrary also to what has sometimes been suggested, revivalism was not archaic, anachronistic, or a romantic return to the past. Careful selection went into the question of just what ought to be revived or could be revived at all. Given the ideological framework of the contemporary Hindu intelligentsia, the issue of revival was implicit in acts of reform and reform, implicit in attempts to bring about a revival. The revivalist, I feel, has indeed to be separated from the reactionary.

Prof. Amiya P. Sen is by training a historian with special interest in the intellectual and cultural history of colonial India. Prof Sen took his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi and thereafter went on to do research under Prof. Sumit Sarkar, again at the University of Delhi. After a brief career in the civil services, he served the Universities of Delhi and Visva Bharati (as Tagore Professor at Rabindra Bhavan) and is currently professor of modern Indian history at the Department of History & Culture at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Prof. Sen was Agatha Harrison Fellow at the University of Oxford, Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi, and held the Zimmer Chair, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg. To date, Prof. Sen has produced 12 books, mostly published by Oxford University Press, Delhi, Penguin Viking and Permanent Black. A complete list of his books and articles is available in the Wikipedia entry for ‘Amiya Prosad Sen’ 

The Pañcāyatanapūjā is a worship of five deities, Śiva, Viṣṇu, Sūrya, Gaṇeśa and Devī. It emerged as a ritual style within the Smārta movement and appeared both in temple architecture and as a domestic worship performed with small stones and/or figurines representing the gods. The worship which had almost died out in most parts of India has recently been revived among Smārta Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. An analysis of the ritual can proceed from different perspectives. There are the social-historical developments which may explain the revival in Tamil Nadu. But there is also the theoretical perspective of aniconicity as a deliberate choice of representation vis-à-vis the iconic, anthropomorphic forms of the gods. Together with a group of researchers with expertise in different religious traditions I have been examining this spectrum of visual and material choices. The seminar will present an overview of the results of this research.

Mikael Aktor is Associate Professor of History of Religions at the Institute of Philosophy, Education and the Study of Religions, University of Southern Denmark. He holds a PhD from University of Copenhagen, a part of which was carried out at School of Oriental and African Studies, London. His field of expertise is within the study of Dharmaśāstra, in particular with a focus on caste and untouchability. He has lately been engaged in research on North Indian Śaiva temple ritual and temple sculpture as part of a general interest in ritual studies and religious aesthetics.

The ritual drink called soma/haoma, which can be traced to the late Bronze Age (c. 1600 BCE), is central to the religious practices of brahmans who perform Vedic ritual and also to Zoroastrianism. The three main theories currently endorsed by scholars are that soma/haoma was either fly-agaric mushrooms, ephedra or Syrian rue. The evidence seems to indicate that soma/haoma was a psychedelic/entheogenic drug of some kind (though not all scholars agree with this). I propose in my recent book (The Tawny One: Soma, Haoma and Ayahuasca, Muswell Hill Press, 2017) that soma/haoma was never a single plant but was instead a combination of plants that worked similarly to ayahuasca. I also propose that this kind of plant combination was most probably the basis of the ritual drink known as kykeon, which was used in Greek mystery rites.

Since 2004, Dr. Matthew Clark has been a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), where he taught courses on Hinduism between 1999 and 2003. He has spent many years in India, which he first visited in 1977, and has travelled extensively throughout the subcontinent. He first engaged with yoga practices in the mid-1970s and since 1990 has been a regular practitioner of Ashtanga Yoga. Dr. Clark is a freelance researcher and lectures widely on religion and philosophy for yoga students and academics. Dr. Clark's publications include articles, a study of a sect of South Asian renunciates (sādhus) entitled The Daśanāmī-Saṃnyāsīs: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order (Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill, 2006), and a short book on yoga, The Origins and Practices of Yoga: A Weeny Introduction (Lulu, 2007). More recently he has been researching the ancient Asian ritual drink known as soma/haoma. He proposes that this drink was most probably an analogue of ayahuasca. His book on the topic, The Tawny One: Soma, Haoma and Ayahuasca (Muswell Hill Press) was published in June 2017. 

These lectures offer a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and early development of ‘Hindu’ traditions from their early formation to the early medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad-gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions.