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Middle Bengali Imaginary seminar
Inaugural workshop for the Body and Embodiment in the Middle Bengali Imaginary project
“Body and Embodiment in the Middle Bengali Imaginary” is an exciting new research project in the field of Bengali religion and literature co-directed by Dr Robert Czyżykowski (Jagiellonian University) and Dr Lucian Wong (OCHS). This 2-year project, which was recently awarded a € 50,000 grant by Jagiellonian University’s Strategic Program Excellence Initiative, aims to bring a varied team of specialists together to examine how ideas of the body and embodiment take shape in premodern Bengal’s rich and multi-religious corpus of vernacular literature.
The project held its inaugural workshop, funded by the OCHS, on 16-18 January 2023 at the Institute of Religious Studies at Jagiellonian University. Participants presented preliminary papers examining the theme of the body and embodiment in such diverse religious currents as Sufism, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, Śāktism, regional epic literature, hāṭha-yoga, and tantra.
Over the next 2 years, this working group will continue to develop these papers through monthly virtual meetings, an EASR conference panel, and a second workshop in Krakow in spring 2024. The project will culminate in an Open Access volume of critical essays and translations, which will make some of this fascinating premodern Bengali body-discourse available in the English language for the first time.
Workshop participants (in the order of presentation):
- Joel Bordeaux (Leiden University)
- Keith Cantu (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
- Rebecca Manring (Indiana University Bloomington)
- Mriganka Mukhopadhyay (University of Amsterdam)
- Naba Gopal Roy (Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University)
- Ayesha Irani (University of Massachusetts)
- Lucian Wong (Oxford Center for Hindu Studies)
- Robert Czyżykowski (Jagiellonian University)
- Ishan Chakrabarti (University of Chicago)
For more info about the project, click here.

Netra Tantra Seminar HT23
Netra Tantra seminar

Week 7, Tuesday 28th February, 10.00-15.30
Venue: Campion Hall (10.00-12.45) and Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (14.00-15.30)
Convenor: Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen
Timetable and Abstracts
10.00-10.15
Welcome
Professor Gavin Flood, FBA
Campion Hall
10.15-11.00
The Netratantra: Its Vision and Themes
Professor Gavin Flood, FBA
Campion Hall
The Netratantra, the ‘Tantra of the Eye’, is an important tantric text in Kashmir and Nepal, dating from around the early ninth century, and widely disseminated during the eleventh and probably tenth centuries. The text takes its name from Śiva as Netranātha or ‘Lord of the Eye’. However, the text is a ‘universal’ (sarvasāmānya-) tantra, which overrides the distinctions between various tantric traditions. The central deity of the Netratantra is Amṛteśvara, whose consort is Lakṣmī/Śrī called Amṛtalakṣmī in ritual manuals based on the text. After an initial chapter in which Amṛteśvara, referred to as Bhairava, responds to the questions of the Goddess by extolling the virtues and powers of Śiva’s eye, the text presents a number of visualisations of a number of deities, catholic in its range, not only from the systems of the Mantramārga but from Vaiṣṇava traditions as well. Furthermore, a strong Śākta influence is evident in the text with its many references to female deities and practices characteristic of the Kulamārga, e.g. chapter 7 on the subtle visualising meditation and chapter 20 on yoginīs.
Professor Gavin Flood FBA (Oxford), Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen (Oxford) and Dr Rajan Khatiwoda (Heidelberg) are currently working on a fully annotated translation of the Netratantra with an introduction in two volumes in the Routledge Studies in Tantric Traditions series. The project to study the text will especially focus on the theme of models of the person or self that the text entails. Based on close philological reading, we hope to account for different understandings of the person implicit in the text.
Gavin Flood is a Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion in the Theology and Religion Faculty and academic director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Gavin read Religious Studies and Social Anthropology at Lancaster University and taught at the universities of Wales (Lampeter) and Stirling before coming to Oxford. He was elected to membership of the British Academy in 2014. His research interests are in medieval Hindu texts (especially from the traditions of Śiva), comparative religion, and phenomenology. He is general series editor of the Oxford History of Hinduism and currently developing closer textual work on the Netratantra.
11.00-11.15
Tea and Coffee
11.15-12.00
Digital Humanities and Hindu Studies: Building a Śākta Manuscript Database
Dr Ulrik Lyngs, Michael Elison
Campion Hall
New tools from the digital humanities hold considerable promise to augment traditional scholarly analysis in Hindu Studies. Compared to traditional workflows in which scholars manually collate, compare and critically edit manuscripts into edited volumes, computational methods allow many time-consuming tasks to be automated, and new understandings and insights based on the analysis of large volumes of text can be obtained that would previously have been impossible.
In this talk, I present our work-in-progress on an OCHS Manuscript Database using the Netra Tantra as an example. This database will make thousands of manuscripts available, drawn from the OCHS Kathmandu digitisation project, the National Archives of Nepal, the ASA archives, and more. Compared to existing major manuscript databases such as the Cambridge Digital Library, our database will offer a more advanced interface which, for example, allow users to see transliterated and translated texts side-by-side with images of the original manuscripts. Over time, the database will include computational tools that allow easy textual analysis and concordance, and automatic generating of formatted PDFs or Word files with customised content of specific manuscripts.
Ulrik Lyngs is a Carlsberg Foundation Oxford Visiting at the University of Oxford’s Human Centred Computing group, and a Junior Research Fellow of Linacre College. He has a highly interdisciplinary background, with a PhD in Computer Science (University of Oxford), an MA in the study of religion and cognitive psychology (Aarhus University), and an MSc in evolutionary anthropology (University of Oxford). His PhD research on attention and self-regulation in human-computer interactions received the Doctoral Prize from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He has previously been a producer at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival.
12.00-12.30
Readings in the Netratantra: Chapter 7 on Subtle Visualising Meditation (sūkṣmadhyāna)
Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen
Campion Hall
The lecture will present a reading and discussion of significant passages from the Netratantra’s chapter 7 on subtle visualising meditation. The chapter is significant in that it presents two different anthropologies and systems of visualization, which the Trika commentator Kṣemarāja refers to as the tantric system (tantraprakriyā) and the Kula system (kulaprakriyā). As opposed to the more body-rejecting practices of classical yoga, the Kula system or what may be termed a ‘Śākta anthropology’ of tantric yoga aims at the affirmation and divinization of the body. This Śākta model of the human is first mentioned in the Netratantra’s chapter 7 on subtle visualising meditation (sūkṣmadhyāna). The Netratantra is also the first to mention the Kulamārga and to teach a system of six bodily centers called cakras, which the meditating yogi is supposed to pierce with his inherent power or śakti. This Śākta anthropology is introduced in the first few verses of chapter seven and then elaborated. The text presents an early Śākta appropriation of older yogic models of ‘knots’ (granthis), ‘supports’ (ādhāras) etc. foregrounding the central channel (suṣumnā) and the notion of how the yogi causes the ascent of his inner power as an early form of kuṇḍalinīyoga. Furthermore, the yogi’s inner power (śakti) was also conceived of in terms of sound or inner vibration (nādasūcī, ‘the needle of sound’).
Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen is Research Lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a member of the Theology and Religion Faculty where he teaches Sanskrit, Pali and Indian religions. He is the research director and manager for the Śākta Traditions research programme. His book publications include an introduction to Hinduism (2015), translations of the Bhagavadgītā (2009) and the Haṭhapradīpikā (2022) as well as a Danish Sanskrit Grammar and Reader in two volumes (2014). He is the editor of Goddess Traditions in Tantric Hinduism (2016) and has written a number of articles on Śāktism, yoga and meditation in Danish, German and English. He is currently working on several book projects, including an English translation and annotated edition of the Netratantra (based on the oldest available Nepalese manuscript, NAK MS 1-285, NGMPP Reel No. B 25/5 from 1200 CE) in two volumes for the Routledge Tantric Studies series together with Dr Rajan Khatiwoda and Professor Gavin Flood.
12.30-13.00
Tradition of Manuscript Production: Nepalese Recension of the Netratantra in the National Archives of Nepal
Dr Rajan Khatiwoda
Campion Hall
Not only has the Kathmandu Valley preserved an ancient compendium of Suśruta (Suśrutasaṃhitā) copied in 878 CE, but also the earliest surviving Śaiva text, Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā copied sometime in the 9th century. Similarly, the National Archives of Nepal houses a well-preserved recension of the Netratantra ‘Tantra of the Eye’, an important text in Kashmir dating from around the early ninth century. Of the four Nepalese Netra-manuscripts, the oldest ‘Mṛtyujidamṛtīśavidhāna’ was copied in 1200 CE. The second oldest ‘Amṛteśvarapūjana’ was commissioned by Abhaya Malla in 1216 CE, most likely to protect his father, King Ari Malla, who was said to be dying. The lecture will attempt to shed light on the manuscript sources (as well as their scribal and palaeographical features) for the study of the Netatrantra.
Rajan Khatiwoda currently holds the position of Chief Scientific Documentation Coordinator in the Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP) at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW). He is also the Honorary Leader of the Kathmandu Office of the Śākta Traditions Project run under the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS) and a Research Fellow at OCHS affiliated with the Śākta Traditions research programme. Khatiwoda studied Classical Indology at Heidelberg University, from where he received his PhD in 2017. His dissertation deals with the formation and enforcement of the Mulukī Ain, Nepal’s first legal code promulgated in 1854. From 2013 to 2016, he was part of the Cluster´s Project A14 “Transcultural Legal Flows in 18th- and 19th-Century South Asia.” Since 2014, Khatiwoda is research associate at the South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, and the Research Unit “Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal,” Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Previously, he worked as a research assistant and cataloguer for the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project (NGMCP) and the Nepal Research Centre (NRC) in Kathmandu for nine years (2004–2013).
in Hindu Studies. Compared to traditional workflows in which scholars manually collate, compare and critically edit manuscripts into edited volumes, computational methods allow many time-consuming tasks to be automated, and new understandings and insights based on the analysis of large volumes of text can be obtained that would previously have been impossible.
In this talk, I present our work-in-progress on an OCHS Manuscript Database using the Netra Tantra as an example. This database will make thousands of manuscripts available, drawn from the OCHS Kathmandu digitisation project, the National Archives of Nepal, the ASA archives, and more. Compared to existing major manuscript databases such as the Cambridge Digital Library, our database will offer a more advanced interface which, for example, allow users to see transliterated and translated texts side-by-side with images of the original manuscripts. Over time, the database will include computational tools that allow easy textual analysis and concordance, and automatic generating of formatted PDFs or Word files with customised content of specific manuscripts.
Ulrik Lyngs is a Carlsberg Foundation Oxford Visiting at the University of Oxford’s Human Centred Computing group, and a Junior Research Fellow of Linacre College. He has a highly interdisciplinary background, with a PhD in Computer Science (University of Oxford), an MA in the study of religion and cognitive psychology (Aarhus University), and an MSc in evolutionary anthropology (University of Oxford). His PhD research on attention and self-regulation in human-computer interactions received the Doctoral Prize from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He has previously been a producer at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival.
13.00-14.30
Lunch (on your own)
Book presentation and reception:
14.45-15.15
Goddess Traditions in India: Theological Poems and Philosophical Tales in the Tripurārahasya (Routledge Hindu Studies Series)
Dr Silvia Schwarz Linder
OCHS Library
This new book on the Tripurārahasya, a South Indian Sanskrit work which occupies a unique place in the Śākta literature, is a study of the Śrīvidyā and Śākta traditions in the context of South Indian intellectual history in the late middle ages. Associated with the religious tradition known as Śrīvidyā and devoted to the cult of the Goddess Tripurā, the text was probably composed between the 13th and the 16th century CE. The analysis of its narrative parts addresses questions about the relationships between Tantric and Purāṇic goddesses. The discussion of its philosophical and theological teachings tackles problems related to the relationships between Sākta and Śaiva traditions. The stylistic devices adopted by the author(s) of the work deal uniquely with doctrinal and ritual elements of the Śrīvidyā through the medium of a literary and poetic language. This stylistic peculiarity distinguishes the Tripurārahasya from many other Tantric texts, characterized by a more technical language.
Silvia Schwarz Linder has a PhD in South Asian Studies (University of Vienna). She has lectured in the past at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität in Innsbruck and at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice. She was Research Associate at the Institut für Indologie und Zentralasienwissenschaften of the University of Leipzig, and is currently Research Fellow at the OCHS. Her interests focus on the Tantric religious traditions of the Śrīvidyā and of the Pāñcarātra, specifically on the philosophical and theological doctrines expressed in the relevant South Indian Sanskrit textual traditions. She has also translated into Italian texts from the Sanskrit narrative and devotional literature, for editions aimed at a general readership.
15.15
Reception

Meet our Artist in Residence Rosanna Dean
Rosanna Dean is Artist in Residence at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2019. Following her degree show she was selected for the FBA Futures 2020, a survey show of contemporary figurative art and awarded a Live Art Development residency to develop the performative element of her work. She studied Old Master Oil Painting techniques under the mentorship of Maestro Michael John Angel in Florence, was artist in residence at the Florence Trust 2015-16 and was awarded EU funding to develop a body of work exploring the convergence of spiritual material practices. She exhibited at The Courtauld in 2018 where she was also invited to speak on ritual and spirituality in contemporary art practice.
Dean’s work explores arts’ intimate relationship with religion, and its role in disseminating foundational narratives that condition our beliefs about the world and structure our realities. Her work weaves together patterning and figuration and takes reference from divergent ways in which cultures represent the divine, as a way of understanding what constitutes the self, its interwoven relationship with the world and what it is that we believe in.
As ritual and transformation through embodied experience became increasingly prevalent in her art practice, she travelled to India to deepen her study of yoga and ritual, particularly Theyyam in northern Kerala, and Chinakkathoor and Kodungalloor Bhagavathy temple.
The trip initiated her research into goddess worship and led her to the Devimahatmya and Chandipath. To have a more embodied relationship with the text she began learning Sanskrit, which she found immediately affected her approach to art making.
Her experiences of Sakta Traditions and the relationships to women that emerge from it will form the basis for her work this year, where she will study visual culture, ritual practices, sacred texts and Sanskrit. Words and visual material will interplay and fluidly feed each other, with her body as the site of their convergence, and through the year she will attempt to understand her relationship to foundational cultural narratives that brought her to these specific places and situations in which she found herself. The intention is to create a body of work which will be exhibited alongside a publication at the end of the year.

Gita Readings with Shaunaka Rishi Das
Gita Study Group
Read more about our Hindu Chaplaincy here!

Friends talk in Leicester November 4th. “Festivals: Cleverly designed to make us think and feel”.
Festivals: Cleverly designed to make us think and feel
Friends of the Oxford Centre For Hindu Studies presents
A talk by Shaunaka Rishi Das
Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
Hindu festivals are famous for their delightful colours, scents,
cuisines, and sounds. A riot of activity, crowds, and smiles.
After the annual Diwali celebrations, and in the auspicious
month of Damodar, we will consider another aspect of
festivals, their purpose in inspiring us to think differently,
(or maybe even to think), and how they enthuse us to feel
about things spiritual and material.
Saturday 4th November 2022 at 5.30pm
Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre
Rothley Street Leicester LE4 6LF
lf@ochs.org.uk



Gallery from our Kathmandu Summer Course 2022
Gallery from our Kathmandu Summer course

Postgraduate Symposium on Religion in South Asia held for two days—30th September and 1st October
Postgraduate Symposium in South Asian Religions
Registration for the Postgraduate Symposium in South Asian Religions, to be held tomorrow for two days—30th September and 1st October—is open. This symposium will showcase a range of postgraduate research on religions in South Asia from the manifold disciplinary vantage points of anthropology, theology, philosophy and history.
Day 1 will be delivered entirely online, bringing together speakers from universities across India, the USA, Australia, and the UK. Day 2 will take place in-person at the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity, where reception will open from 9:20AM. Due to the rail closures and planned strikes, an option is now also available for those who wish to join Day 2 virtually.The final conference schedule can be accessed here.Any questions about the symposium can be directed to imran.visram@theology.ox.ac.uk.

See our newest Continuing Education online courses here
Our Newest Continuing Education Online Courses!
As some of you know by now, we spend a lot of time working to bring you amazing new courses. Here’s what we’ve released just this summer…
Vaishnavism
Vaishnavism is one of the major denominations of Hinduism and has had an enormous impact on the development of Hinduism in general.
We begin with a history of Vaishnavism from its earliest roots in the Vedas to its developments in South and North India, before moving on to consider Vaishnava practice and some of the forms that Vaishnavism takes today.
Throughout the course we allow the traditions to speak for themselves through Vaishnava texts.

Colonial Hinduism

Hinduism has a remarkable ability to adapt and renew in the face of changing times. One of the most challenging of times in Hinduism’s long history was the period of British colonial rule.
In this new course, Colonial Hinduism, we see how much India and Hinduism changed over this period; the role of the colonial state in these changes; and Hindu responses.
This course is brought to us by Prof. Amiya Sen, a distinguished historian and OCHS Fellow.
Devi Mahatmya
What if God was a Goddess? What if the universe was pervaded by a supreme feminine force which was part and parcel of creation and all beings within it? Devī Māhātmya presents such a divine vision, exalting the Great Goddess as the supreme mother of existence.
Composed some fifteen centuries ago, it signals the Brahmanical authorisation and crystallisation of indigenous Great Goddess traditions. This course features a new English translation of the Devī Māhātmya by Dr Raj Balkaran.

And of course there are all our old favourites. Click here to learn more about them.

Read about the projects our bursaries supported this year
What did OCHS bursaries support?
OCHS bursaries and scholarships are generous donations from individuals and foundations that we award to our students. This year we awarded 17 scholarships and bursaries amounting to almost £15,000.
Sri Swami Haridas Giri Scholarship
Nainika’s Bursary for Kashmiri Shaivism & Kashmiri Hindu Studies
Parvathi Foundation Scholarship
Hanuman Bursary
Narasimhacharya Bursary
Jiva Goswami Scholarship
Prof. Makhan Lal Roy Chowdhury Book Prize
Hansraj and Kanchanben Popat Bursary
Ramalah Alagappan Bursary
Amit Mishra Bursary
Dr Sivaswami & Renuka Nagraj Bursary
Gopal and Elizabeth Krishna Bursary
Tristan Elby Bursary
Wernicke Olesen’s Bursary for Pali and Sanskrit Studies
Giving a scholarship is an excellent opportunity to support young talented minds in their academic endeavours and to raise academic interest in Hinduism on a global scale.
Below is an overview of some of the projects (more will follow later) we supported this year:
Sri Swami Haridas Giri Scholarship
Mohini Gupta
DPhil candidate, Mansfield College, University of Oxford
I aim to conduct research in the field of South Asian language politics and translation, specifically the language politics between English and Indian languages, and the relationship of the urban youth with the languages they speak. I have been investigating this topic as a student of literature and culture studies, independent researcher, literary translator, writer, and higher education professional over the last decade.
My research at Oxford will push my project further to apply the lenses of postcolonialism, sociolinguistics, as well as anthropology to understand the reasons behind the attitudes of the urban youth towards its mother tongue, within the frameworks of ‘postcolonial shame’ and language-based humiliation. The faculty at Oxford will enable me to broaden the scope of my research through their expertise in these disciplines.
Sri Swami Haridas Giri Scholarship
Poorva Palekar
MPhil student, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
I am keen to study more about the ‘Kalpa’ vedāṅga and explore the samskāra gṛhya rituals in my MPhil thesis. I plan to especially focus on the evolution of the vivāha ritual from the Vedic ‘śṛtis’, to ‘smṛtis’ and the modern methods and ‘paddhatis’ referred to today. I plan to study the marriage rituals in Maharashtra where the vivāha samskāra is still an important cultural and religious life event. The study of the influences of folk traditions and the emergence of local religious sects on the vivāha samskāra will also be an important aspect of my thesis. My research will help better understand the development of the ritual over time and the exchange between orthodox and folk traditions during important events like marriage.
Prof. Makhan Lal Roy Chowdhury Book prize and Wernicke Olesen’s Bursary for Pali and Sanskrit Studies
Visvapriya Desai
BA student, Worcester College, University of Oxford
In my first year I had the invaluable opportunity of studying Sanskrit at the OCHS. This made me appreciate how important a grasp of language and translation theory is for sensitive engagement with religious thinking and its interpretation in context – especially considering the roots of academic study of Hinduism in scriptural translation. I applied this across a broad range of subject matter, from the Cāndogya Upaniṣad to the Buddhist Heart Sutra. What does it mean to claim “tat tvam asi”? What is really the nature of śūnyatā in Mahāyāna Buddhism? These were all questions one could only unravel by engaging with the text in its original language. At a conceptual level this supported me even in other papers such as Biblical Studies – aware now of how much can turn theologically on the translation, and thus interpretation, of one word or phrase.
I am grateful to have the OCHS’s support in continuing to deepen my learning of Sanskrit and Hinduism. One of my papers next year, Hinduism: Sources and Formations, highlights the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā in the development of classical Hinduism. Another, Modern Hinduism, covers many themes, such as Vedānta and Tantra, articulated in Sanskrit text. I will also be writing a thesis for the Further Studies in Hinduism paper in my third year and anticipate engaging with Sanskrit scripture. My Sanskrit studies will sharpen my ability to handle this content in a nuanced way that addresses Hinduism and the study of it in its historical and interreligious context.
The OCHS has been a caring community that nurtures a real, holistic dedication to learning, and I am deeply grateful for the support they so generously provide.
Hansraj and Kanchanben Popat Bursary
Ranjamittrika Bhowmik
DPhil candidate, Hertford College, University of Oxford
My doctoral thesis studies and compiles a preliminary historiography of the Tukkhā songs of North Bengal composed by the Rājbaṃśī community in the Rājbaṃśī lect, a living tradition largely unexplored by the academic community in India and beyond. My paper analyses language and practice, combining literary criticism with ethnographic research. These songs were influenced by devotional traditions such as the Buddhist Sahajayāna, Śaivism, Śāktism and Vaiṣṇavism. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in India (2017-2020) and documented and archived a number of songs (close to one hundred), interviews and audio-visual performances. My work focuses on the oral tradition (songs) and performative art and on the direct connections between the Rājbaṃśī living traditions and the rituals and cosmology depicted in Tantric medieval literature in Bengal. The rich corpus of songs contains various allegorical and esoteric themes and metaphors on the soul, body, training the mind as well as social commentaries. The thesis positions the songs as cognate with a number of Hindu and Buddhist Tantric schools that developed and flourished in the region of northeastern India and North Bengal, in particular, in the course of the last millennium.
Hanuman Bursary
Imran Visram
DPhil candidate, St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford
My research is on a body of religious songs, known as the ginans, which were composed at the height of Bhakti Vaishnavism in North and West India. Many ginans draw on mythological narratives from the Hindu tradition for the purpose of religious instruction, recounting, for example, the teachings of Krishna to Arjuna, the story of Raja Harishchandra, and the chronicles of each of the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Using the ginans as a leeway into the broader religious soundscapes of South Asia, my project is interested in assessing how we think and write about the pasts of oral literary traditions from the region more generally. The conclusions of my research will, therefore, also shed light on related lyrical traditions such as the bhajan, kirtan, Sufiana kalam, and qawwali.
Hanuman Bursary and the Gopal and Elizabeth Krishna Bursary
Barbora Sojkova
DPhil candidate, Balliol College, University of Oxford
I am currently writing up my DPhil thesis Animals in Vedic Literature. My research focuses on the ways in which Vedic people, semi-pastoralist tribes who lived in the north-east of the Indian subcontinent in the first millennium BCE, described the natural world around them, and particularly animals. Through a survey of the Vedic corpus, I am hoping to establish what knowledge Vedic people had about animals, and how much we, contemporary researchers, can tease out from the extant literature. Whilst the corpus is large and complicated, it is narrow in its understanding, viewing the world solely through the lens of the ritual which makes my project complicated and exciting in the same time
Dr Sivaswami & Renuka Nagraj Bursary
Utsa Bose
Mphil student, St. Cross College, University of Oxford
Goddesses, as imagination and lived reality, form the disquiet heart of popular imagination in the Indian subcontinent. Living through a devastating worldwide pandemic which had a particularly terrible impact on India, I chose to write my current MPhil thesis on the social space of plague in late colonial Calcutta. With an aim to further explore this topic, I plan to compare and analyse the birth, growth and development of “plague goddesses” in Southern India, particularly in the city of Bangalore. The deification of a disease as a goddess is by no means a new phenomenon. The subcontinent has seen the enduring cult of Śītalā, the goddess of smallpox, whose temples are spread out over different parts of the country even today. The onset of the bubonic plague epidemic in 1896 led to varying degrees of paranoia and panic in the subcontinent, and the disease soon spread to the different cities. While the plague was most virulent in Bombay, the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were among the worst hit. These states saw the establishment of “plague temples” meant to propitiate “Plague Amma” (The Plague Mother/Goddess). Bangalore had the highest number of such temples. Clustered and scattered around the city, these temples often functioned independently of one another and installed images of the plague goddess in their premises. What is of startling interest is the fact that worship in these temples continues today. However, the many lives, histories and traditions of these temples are still left comparatively understudied and constitute an important research desideratum.
Who are these plague goddesses? Is each goddess different from the other? What is their relationship with other disease goddesses, and indeed with each other? Do they claim descent from other gods or imply a new genealogy? What is the social life of these goddesses? How, if at all, has worship patterns changed over the years? These are some of the questions I hope to explore.
Narasimhacharya Bursary
Valters Negribs
DPhil candidate, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
I am in the final stages of my DPhil Oriental Studies course, writing up the last chapters of my thesis “Ascetic Teachings for Householder Kings in the Mahābhārata”, which is supervised by Professor Christopher Minkowski. The thesis will contribute to the scholarly understanding of early ascetic teachings in Ancient India, the relationship between ascetic teachings in the Mahābhārata and early Buddhist and Jaina literatures, and, in particular, it will examine how such ascetic teachings came to be presented as relevant for householder kings.
Ramalah Alagappan Bursary
Smridhi Chadh
MPhil student, St. Cross College, University of Oxford
I have a special interest in Śaivism and the Śakta cults and I wish to do a combinational study of these two very closely related traditions, especially focusing on Kashmiri and northern branches while tracing a sacred map of the hitherto lesser-known sites.
As I work on this project, I understand that I also wish to include more visuals than has since been attempted. I am a student of Sanskrit, and while I do plan to use the literature, I also plan to make critical use of the material evidence to ascertain claims and facts. Locating a sacred geography would transcend large, bordered spaces and also focus on the material content of these spaces, especially focusing on the perception of the goddess and projecting modern anthropological frameworks in a historical time to better understand the milieu in which this culture operated.
If you are interested in establishing a scholarship please contact:
Tanja Louise Jakobsen
tanja@ochs.org.uk or +44 (0)7306 197780