February 2007
Monthly Archive
Sat 17 Feb 2007
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Self-Surrender (prapatti) to God in Shrivaishnavism: Tamil Cats or Sanskrit Monkeys?
Srilata Raman
ISBN: 9780415391856
ISBN-10: 0415391857
Filling the most glaring gap in Shrivaishnava scholarship, this book deals with the history of interpretation of a theological concept of self-surrender-prapatti in late twelfth and thirteenth century religious texts of the Shrivaishnava community of South India. This original study shows that medieval sectarian formation in its theological dimension is a fluid and ambivalent enterprise, where conflict and differentiation are presaged on “sharing”, whether of a common canon, saint or rituals or two languages (Tamil and Sanskrit), or of a “meta-social” arena such as the temple.
Srilata Raman, a member of the Shrivaishnava community, argues that the core ideas of prapatti in these religious texts reveal the description of a heterogeneous theological concept. Demonstrating that this concept is theologically moulded by the emergence of new literary genres, Raman puts forward the idea that this original understanding of prapatti is a major contributory cause to the emergence of sectarian divisions among the Shrivaishnavas, which lead to the formation of two sub-sects, the Tenkalai and the Vatakalia, who stand respectively, for the “cat” and “monkey” theological positions.
Making an important contribution to contemporary Indian and Hindu thinking on religion, this text provides a new intellectual history of medieval Indian religion. It will be of particular interest to scholars of Shrivaishnava and also Hindu and Indian religious studies.
Srilata Raman is Assistant Professor for Hindu Studies at the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Her main research areas include medieval South Indian religion, hagiography and historiography as well as the modern socio-religious reform movements in South India and the transformation of religion in colonialism. She has published several articles on medieval Shrivaishnavism, and is the co-editor of Words and Deeds: Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia (2005).
Sat 17 Feb 2007
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www.bbc.co.uk
February 18, 2007: The BBC’s audio program called “Heart and Soul” which is broadcast on the Internet, reported on young British Hindus today. The programme, entitled, “Hinduism In Britain Today” proposes that until recently, Hindus in Britain were the quiet minority apparently untouched by the fundamentalism, or religious sensitivities experienced by other minority faiths. Now that is changing. Many are appealing for separate recognition as British Hindu rather than Asian, and the young in particular are questioning aspects of the faith that their parents and grandparents took for granted. Ritula Shah talks to the new voices of contemporary Hinduism and finds out why Britain’s third largest faith group is showing a rapidly increasing confidence.” Click the “audio” button on the URL above to hear the program.
Thu 15 Feb 2007
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To celebrate this festival of colours, we’d like to invite you to ‘Raas ki Shyaam’, a night of garba, dandiya, and lots of colours with the well-known band ‘Strings’ at the Advaita Centre (near Wembley Park station) on Saturday 3rd of March.
We are organising this event to raise funds and awareness for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We all know what a great centre this is and how much effort all the organisers, lecturers, and friends of the centre put into it. This is why we wish to help out and are seeking your help to make this event a success. Tickets are on sale for £7 in advance.
Please email at nehadatta@pmp.uk.com or call us (07747636755 or 07862296242) for tickets or more information.
Look forward to seeing you.
Neha and Shruti
The event is in Wembley, and for those of you in Ilford, Oxford, Birmingham, etc., we urge you to support the event by organising a coach for the night (it is a Saturday, so fear not). For those of you that cannot make it, please pass on the word to friends and family.
Thu 15 Feb 2007
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Indo Asian News Service
New Delhi, Feb 14 India has launched an online database of one million pieces of precious knowledge about medicine, economy, religion, architecture, code of conduct and many more branches of wisdom, written on palm leaves, so far laying in cold solitude. Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni formally launched Wednesday the national manuscript database, compiled and put on perspective by the four-year-old National Mission of Manuscripts (NMM) here in the capital. ‘It’s national treasure of India and put in focus our forefathers intellectual calibre. We had lost touch with our rich heritage and culture and with this database we could reflect on such a vast treasure,’ Soni said.
She said these manuscripts have a great demand aboard and ‘we came to know about it during the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. There were lots of enquiries and even German museums opened for a longer time to display them to their public.’ NMM director Sudha Goplakrishnan told IANS: ‘The current database is of one million manuscripts some dating back to even 4th century. Within next seven months we would make another 800,000 manuscripts available on the cyber space.’
These were collected from 15 Indian states, she said. Soni, who launched the online database www.namami.org, also proclaimed 45 selected manuscripts - Vijnananidhi - as the manuscript treasures of India, a country with a 5,000-year-old civilisation. The National Electronic Catalogue of Manuscripts, called Kritisampada, provides information on individual and collections of documents and printed catalogues, which will be available in Hindi and English. The manuscripts can be accessed on the basis of title, author, script, language, subject and material online. The mission will contribute Rs.100,000 for the preservation of each of the 21 places where the manuscripts are kept.
Among the 45 are 17-centuries-old - one of the oldest manuscripts in the world - Gilgit manuscripts (kept in the National Archives of India in New Delhi and the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Jammu and Kashmir), Chitra Bhagavat (illustrated Hindu holy book in the Krishna Kanta Handique Library, Guwahati), Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri (the biography of Mughal emperor Jahangir in the National Museum, New Delhi), Sharadatilaka (the essence of ‘tantras’ kept in the Oriental Institute of Mysore) and Ramayana (in the Rampur Raza Library). Babur Namah, biography of the great Mughal emperor is one of these 45 selected pieces.
India has an estimated five million manuscripts, most of which lie unknown and neglected. The NMM, under the cultural ministry, would locate, preserve and promote the manuscripts.
NMM activities range from conducting nationwide surveys to unearthing each manuscript, the documentation and cataloguing of manuscripts and their conservation, training personnel in manuscript studies, publishing important research on manuscripts to organising lectures, seminars, debates for students and workshops for children.
Mon 12 Feb 2007
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OCHS members, Prof Flood, Shaunaka Rishi, Rembert Lutjeharms (Libarian) and Kiyokazu Okita outside the Houses of Parliment.
Mon 12 Feb 2007
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timesofindia.indiatimes.com
VARANASI, INDIA, February 11, 2007: Governor T.V. Rajeswari, addressing a graduation convocation of students at Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, suggested that Sanskrit learning would lead the students back to the age of bullock carts. “Sanskrit is no longer the language of God,” he said, adding that the knowledge of English and science was essential in today’s world. He went on to say he would take a lead for an amendment in state universities’ regulation for compulsory education of English. He exhorted Sanskrit students to come out of the age-old confines of the language and look forward to learning modern things for development. The assembled students of Sanskrit, in a near riot, caused the governor to cut short his address and leave under police protection.
Tue 6 Feb 2007
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http://calvin.st-andrews.ac.uk
Researchers studying the largest single gathering of people on Earth may have unlocked the secret of how large communities can live together in harmony.
The psychologists from the University of St Andrews have just returned from studying the largest crowd event on earth -the 30 million strong Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, Northern India.
In collaboration with researchers from the Universities of Dundee and Lancaster, Professor Steve Reicher and Dr Clare Cassidy observed crowd behaviour at the Mela, a month long Hindu festival held on the banks of the Ganges. The festival, which ends today (Friday 2nd February 2007), provides a unique setting in which to study mass psychology.
“As well as academically interesting, the Mela is visually amazing and an incredible event – like a vast biblical scene,” Professor Reicher explained.While traditional research into crowd behaviour would assume that a large gathering of strangers would create a stressful effect, the researchers found that the nature of collective participation and shared identity appeared to have a positive effect on the crowd’s behaviour.“Despite the fact that the Mela seems designed to increase stress in every way -it is very noisy, very unhealthy, very packed – what we found was that actually people feel serene, peaceful and unstressed. It raises very important questions about the nature of collective participation and how it can affect both individual well-being and social cohesion,” Professor Reicher said.Professor Reicher and Dr Cassidy have been studying ‘the collective experience’ for the last three years alongside Dr Nick Hopkins of the University of Dundee and Dr Mark Levine from Lancaster University. In order to overcome the many challenges involved in investigating such an extraordinary event, they also collaborated with colleagues from a consortium of Indian Universities.Their work overturns many common presuppositions about crowd behaviour and collective living.
Professor Reicher explained, “People become more generous, more supportive and more orderly rather than less. What is more although every feature of the Mela might seem designed to increase stress and damage welfare -it is raucous for 24 hours a day, the conditions are extremely rudimentary and people are densely packed together - people actually become less stressed and feel much better.
“While Western research has always suggested that being crowded with strangers is a bad thing, the Mela shows that crowding can be highly positive as long as we share a common sense of identity with others. The Mela is much more than a wonderful spectacle. It promises to unlock the secrets of how large communities can live together in harmony,” he continued.
Thu 1 Feb 2007
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Religion News Service
CHENNAI, INDIA, January 26, 2007: More than 90 percent of Indians believe in God and more than half pray every day, according to a nationwide survey published in a leading Indian newspaper on January 25. The study found that urban, educated Indians are just as religious — if not more so — than their rural, illiterate compatriots. Conducted in January for the Hindustan Times and the CNN-IBN television channel by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) the study included 7,670 randomly selected respondents in 970 villages and urban locations across India. “The findings are bound to surprise you,” the Hindustan Times said. The survey included Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians and measured religiosity through a series of questions on belief, temple attendance, prayer and participation in religious functions. According to the survey, women are more religious than men, metropolitan women are far more religious than those from rural areas, and young Indians are less enthusiastic about religion.
