Category: Academic

Bursaries and Scholarships 2024

Bursaries and Scholarships 2024

£15,450 to award to students this year!

We are now accepting applications for our bursaries and scholarships and all our Oxford University students and Visiting students are invited to apply. The deadline is 22 April 2024, before 12 pm.

You should apply by sending a short letter of application to Hari at secretary@ochs.org.uk explaining what you are studying, the reasons for your application, how much you are applying for and include a budget to show us how you plan to use the bursary or scholarship. 

List of bursaries and scholarships: 
Swami Haridas Giri Scholarship: £6,000
The Spalding Memorial Educational Trust: £2,700
The Parvathi Foundation: £1,500
Jiva Goswami Scholarship: £1,050
Tristan Elby: £1,000
Amit Mishra Scholarship: £700
Aku’s Bursary: £500
Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta Memorial Bursary: £500
Narasimhacharya Bursary: £500
Hansraj and Kanchanben Popat Bursary: £500
The Tagore Centre UK Bursary: £150
Ramalah Alagappan Bursary: £100
Gopal and Elizabeth Krishna Bursary: £100
Wernicke Olesen’s Bursary for Pali and Sanskrit Studies: £100
Professor Makhanlal Roy Chaudhury Book Prize: £50

A warm thank you to all our generous donors who are supporting the next generations of Hindu Studies scholars. 

The Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta Memorial Bursary

The Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta Memorial Bursary

New Bursary Endowment:
The Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta Memorial Bursary

Thanks to a generous endowment from the Nahar Foundation & the Dasgupta Family we are now able to offer a new bursary at the OCHS to support students, faculty, and other individuals involved in the study of ancient Indian languages and history.

The bursary is established in memory of Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta who was born on September 6, 1908, in the Dinajpur district of present-day Bangladesh, into a respected Vaidya family. His father, Hem Chandra Dasgupta was the first Indian full-time professor and Head of the Geology Department at Presidency College. A renowned and visionary educator, Hem Chandra made pioneering contributions to mass education in Bengal. Professor Charu Chandra Dasgupta followed in the footsteps of his father and, from a very early age, distinguished himself in the study of history. He was awarded the prestigious Premchand Roychand Scholarship and eventually the Mowat gold medal. He earned two doctoral degrees: the first from Calcutta University in 1944 and the second from Cambridge University in 1946. He held various professorships including the Head of Department of Ancient Indian and World History at Sanskrit College in Calcutta and later served as the Principal of Darjeeling Government College in West Bengal.

Professor Dasgupta’s scholarship led to significant advances in the field of ancient Indian fine arts and scripts. He authored four books and more than a hundred scholarly articles in various academic journals. Among these is his seminal work, “The Development of Kharosthi Script,” which is still widely regarded as an indispensable source for the study of the Kharosthi Script. As a prolific scholar, Professor Dasgupta’s research interests were broad and spanned various other disciplines including fine arts, sculpture, architecture, numismatics, history, anthropology and conservation of archives. He was an active member of various scholarly and academic societies including the Asiatic Society and Bangiya Sahitya Parisad. At the time of his death on 23rd June 1962, Professor Dasgupta was less than 54 years of age. But despite his relatively short lifetime, his accomplishments as a scholar remain exemplary.

 

Middle Bengali Imaginary seminar

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 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
Annual STIMW symposium

Annual STIMW symposium

The 39th Annual Sanskrit Traditions Symposium

Call for papers

The Sanskrit Traditions Symposium is a forum for the discussion of the Sanskrit traditions of South Asia, and the texts and cultures that have risen out of them. It brings together established and rising academics for the focused examination of research pertaining to various aspects of South Asia’s rich Sanskrit religious and intellectual culture. It thereby seeks to sustain and build upon the long history of scholarship in this important area of study.

Please send your paper proposal to rembert@ochs.org.uk and cc secretary@ochs.org.uk.

  • The deadline for proposals is Wednesday 22 February (week 6 of HT).
  • The deadline for the accepted papers is Friday 28 April 2023 (week 1 of TT). 

The 39th Annual Sanskrit Traditions Symposium will take place on Friday 2 June in Week 6 of Trinity Term.
Time TBA

Lecture List Hilary Term 2023

Lecture List Hilary Term 2023

Lecture List
Hilary Term 2023

Sunday 15th January – Saturday 11th March

Hinduism 2: Modern Hinduism

Week 1-8, Friday 4.00-5.00
Faculty of Theology & Religion
Dr Rembert Lutjeharms

This paper traces the development of Hinduism from the medieval period through to modernity. The course will examine Hindu scholasticism, devotional and tantric traditions, and modern Hindu thought. The lectures will explore themes of liberation, the soul and the divine, Tantra and meditation, devotional literature and the formation of modern Hindu identity.

Sanskrit and Pali Prelims 2

Week 1-8, Wednesday 4.30-6.00, Friday 10.30-12.00
OCHS Library
Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. Students of Pali will join the Sanskrit course in Michaelmas Term and for the first four weeks of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Sanskrit and Pali will be taught as two separate courses, i.e., Sanskrit Prelims and Pali for Sanskritists.

Sanskrit Prelims: A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment in the Sanskrit course. The class is designed to introduce students of Theology and Religion to the essentials of Sanskrit grammar, syntax, and vocabulary and its importance for the exegesis of Sanskrit texts. Students will learn to appreciate the interpretative nature of translation as a central discipline for the study of religions. By the end of the course students will have gained a basic competency in translating classical Sanskrit and reading relevant passages from texts such as the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Bhagavadgītā, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā and the Buddhist Heart Sūtra. The course book will be Walter Maurer’s The Sanskrit Language. Sanskrit Prelims continues throughout Michaelmas and Hilary Terms and for the first four weeks of Trinity. 

Pali prelims (Pali for sanskritists)

Week 5-8, Tuesday 4.00-5.30, Thursday 4.00-5.30
OCHS Library
Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

Pali students will attend the same ‘Sanskrit and Pali’ classes as Sanskrit students in Michaelmas Term and weeks 1-4 of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Pali and Sanskrit students will study in separate classes. 

The Pali course is designed to provide an easy philological introduction to Pali Buddhist texts via Sanskrit and introduce students of Theology and Religion to the essentials of Pali grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. A range of relevant Pali Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. We will read classical Theravāda Buddhist discourses from the Pāli Canon such as the Fire Sermon (Ādittapariyāya-sutta) and Dependent Origination (Paṭiccasamuppāda) as well as passages from the Dhammapada and the Jātaka tales. Students will learn to appreciate the interpretative nature of translation as a central discipline for the study of religions. The course book will be Dines Andersen, A Pāli Reader and Pali Glossary, 2 vols(1901) supplemented by Rune E. A. Johansson, Pali Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader and Grammar (1981).  

Readings in Phenomenology

Weeks 1-8, Monday 12.00-1.00
OCHS Library
Professor Gavin Flood

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century, and it has also had a deep impact on other theoretical fields more widely conceived. This term we will read essays from Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Off the Beaten Track), in particular ‘The Origin of the Work of Art.’ We’ve read Being and Time and then Basic Problems, this takes us into the later work of the philosopher.

Lectures of the J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow

9 Rooms: Philip Rawson and the exhibiting of tantra

Week 5, Thursday 16th February, 2.00-3.00
OCHS Library
Professor Chris Dorsett

 Both my lectures are about a leading British authority on Indian art, Philip Rawson (1924-1995). The title of my first lecture refers to the nine enclosed spaces in which the celebrated Tantra exhibition he curated in 1971 was laid out at London’s Hayward Gallery. The arrangement confounded an important modernist conviction that any exhibit worth seeing required a clinically minimal mode of display. The Hayward was a minimal ‘white cube’ but, paradoxically, Rawson gathered hundreds of historical Indian items within confined coloured rooms, and heightened the viewer’s sensory engagement with ambient sound and slide projections. The results were widely held to have had greater contemporary resonance than the concurrent exhibition of new Californian art on the Hayward’s upper floor.

The contradiction was not lost on me. As a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art I had gone to see what artists on the west coast of America were doing, but discovered instead, much closer to home, experimental forms of art practice being spectacularly put to work in the service of cultural material usually found in museums. Frustratingly, the Arts Council of Great Britain archive, which holds documents on the commissioning and popular reception of this exhibition, contains no installation photographs; so there is no record of what Tantra actually looked like. As a result, I will set out how the research I am undertaking at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies re-engages with the sensorily-charged enclosures that Rawson derived from the nine emotional states (rasas) described by the tantric sage Abhinavagupta. The impact of Rawson’s tantrism on the London art scene of the early 1970s will be re-appraised, but my real goal is the creation of new practice-based contexts for researching his pioneering exhibition-making. Just over 50 years after Tantra closed I would like to see the show’s curator receive more attention.

9 Bookmarks: Rawson's writing and the influence of Abhinavagupta

Week 7, Thursday 2nd March, 2.00-3.00
OCHS Library
Professor Chris Dorsett

Lecture two is an analysis of Philip Rawson’s textual references to the aesthetic speculations of Abhinavagupta, which not only influenced the layout of the Tantra exhibition, but also provided a theoretical underpinning for the many art books Rawson wrote throughout his career. He was a very creative museum professional who also thought of himself as an art educator and, from this perspective, he saw art schools as laboratories for the advancement of sensory experience and the amplification of what we now call ‘affect’. 

In the Tantra exhibition he had (purposely, I think) addressed the experimental aspirations of Western art students, and those of us who thronged the Hayward Gallery were busy reading his latest publications. In particular, Drawing (1969) and Ceramics (1971) were landmarks in their field, and Indian aesthetics are perceptively at work in both books – both entwine passionate explorations of the ‘language’ of these art forms with the sensible, embodied, and numinous values we associate with Abhinavagupta’s philosophical reflections. Consequently, in this second lecture I discuss some of the most theoretical passages in Rawson’s writing at the time he was curating the Hayward show. 

Over the years, my own copies of Drawing and Ceramics have accumulated impromptu bookmarks made from offcuts of my drawings, and these must figure in the discussion because they are a by-product of my long rumination on Rawson’s educational thinking. A year after the Tantra exhibition closed he joined the staff at the Royal College of Art and became my teacher and mentor. Thus, my account is built upon a great deal of direct knowledge which is, on the one hand, sensitive to the educative significance Rawson attributed to aesthetic encounters, but on the other hand, inflected by an acknowledgement that his books are now placed at some distance from a world that is post-structuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial.

Professor Chris Dorsett is an artist and academic whose career has been built on curatorial partnerships with collection-holding institutions. In the UK he is best known for his pioneering exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum where, having stepped back from his art school commitments in 2018, he is now an Associate Researcher. Dorsett’s many overseas projects include museum ‘interventions’ across the Nordic region and fieldwork residencies in the Amazon and at the walled village of Kat Hing Wai in the New Territories of Hong Kong. These projects were developed during university appointments at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford; Central St. Martin’s School of Art, London; Royal University Institute of Fine Art, Stockholm; Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne; and Edinburgh School of Art. He is on the editorial board of Museum Worlds and has written extensively on the interface between experimental art practices and the museum/heritage sector for publishers such as Routledge and Intellect Books. Most recently, in conjunction with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, he has been researching the museological legacy of the historian of Indian Art, Philip Rawson.

Other Lectures

Metaphysical Thinking in India

Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, Thursdays, 2.00-3.00
OCHS Library
Professor Gavin Flood

These lectures will reflect on metaphysical speculation in the history of Indian religions paying particular attention to the ways in which doing, or practice, connects with thinking, or philosophy, and how metaphysical concerns address problems of the relation of self to world, the nature and meaning of sacrifice, the category of the self in relation to person and transcendence, and the nature of language. Although the chronological span of these lectures will be wide, we will nevertheless focus on the early medieval (i.e., the post-Gupta) period for by this time the different schools were established and there is a history of discourse that we can examine. The implicit thesis of the lectures is that action, and in particular ritual action, is the backbone of tradition and that philosophical reflection emerges from the nature of humans as creatures who act. We will not simply present and assess arguments, but rather try to open out or enter into the world in which metaphysical thinking occurs through examining ritual and meditative literature as well as philosophical commentaries and independent works. Examples chosen will mostly be from the religions of Śiva and the Goddess but not exclusively so.

Lecture 1: The Metaphysics of the Act

Week 2, 26th January, 2.00-3.00

Sacrifice is at the foundation of the history of Indian thinking about the nature of the world, God, and human beings. There is a large literature that focusses on ritual action from early Vedic texts to ritual manuals (paddhatis) in the medieval period. This emphasis on action in the Brahmanical imagination led to the development of the school of Vedic exegesis, the Mīmāṃsā, which presents a philosophy of action that the lecture will explore. For the Mīmāṃsā, the most significant feature of human reality is that we act: action is the most distinctive human feature, more important than cognition, because action has consequences in the world. Above all, as human beings we need to be concerned with action as enjoined by scriptural revelation, thus ritual action. The ritual act for the Mīmāṃsā, namely the sacrifice, is performed not to achieve a specific purpose, such as going to heaven at death, but because it is enjoined by scripture. The Mīmāṃsā is thus reflection not so much on ritual per se but on the nature of Vedic anguagee. We should act in conformity to dharma, truth or duty, and the founding text of the philosophical school, Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra, opens with the statement: ‘Now the inquiry into Dharma’.

Lecture 2: The Existence of God

Week 4, 9th February, 2.00-3.00

Although the Mīmāṃsā reflected on action and language as the essential components of any account of what it is to be human, there were also systems that presented more abstract arguments for the existence of a putative theistic reality, particularly the Nyāya or Logical School and the Śaiva schools. We will describe these arguments and place them in relation to wider cultural concerns about the act and raise the question as to what these arguments sought to achieve and for whom they were written.

Lecture 3: Implicit metaphysics in the Netra-tantra

Week 6, 23rd February, 2.00-3.00

A focus on action and drawing from it a metaphysics or proto-philosophy, is found in the Netra-tantra, originally composed in the seventh or eighth centuries. This text is replete with suggestions for performance in different deity systems, yet retains a conceptual and textual coherence. We will examine the idea of a trans-cosmic reality in the text, how this manifests in and as world, and how different systems of action (ritual and meditation) lead to that reality.

Lecture 4: Explicit metaphysics of Non-Dual Śaivism

Week 8, 9th March, 2.00-3.00

The dualist school of the religion Śiva, the Śaiva Siddhānta, is rooted in ritual action which it regards as salvific. Through certain acts following initiation by the master who embodies Śiva for the duration of the rite, the practitioner can be saved from suffering in the cycle of action. Metaphysics here is on the leash of the ritual act. By contrast the non-dual Śaivas regarded the distinctions of human reality to be based on a misguided cognition that needs to be replaced by the recognition (prayabhijñā) that cognition or gnosis (jñāna) not action, is salvific. This philosophy is supported by the appropriation of the philosophy of language. We will present a description of this system and raise questions about coherence and meaning.

Senior Seminar in Indian Religions

This series of regular seminars brings together scholars and students working on Indic philosophies and religions. It focuses on topics of current research: in each session, two people will present a context they are investigating for 20min, and then open it for discussion on key questions. All researchers, graduates and finalists in all areas are welcome to join.

Solving Metaphysical Mysteries: The archaeology of arguments in Vedantic texts

Week 3, Wednesday 1st February, 3.00-4.00
OCHS Library
Lead by Dr Jessica Frazier

The intellectual history of Indian philosophical schools presents fascinating puzzles of periodisation and mutual influence. But relatively little has been done to excavate the philosophical arguments in Vedantic texts and examine them on their own philosophical merits. In this short seminar discussion, we will dig out arguments for Brahman in a Vedantic text, and untangle their implications

Tantric Meditation and Phenomenology

Week 7, Wednesday 1st March, 3.00-4.00
OCHS Library
Lead by Professor Gavin Flood

This seminar will discuss meditation on ‘the sky of consciousness’ (cidgagana) in Krama texts, identified with the Goddess, and will consider Phenomenology as an approach to understanding this material. If there needs to be an adequation between approach or method and intellectual object, what are the advantages and/or disadvantages of Phenomenology?

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).
 
13.00-14.30   Lunch (on your own)

14.30-15.00   Book presentation and reception:
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.

15.00   Reception

Postgraduate Symposium on Religion in South Asia held for two days—30th September and 1st October

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
Lecture List Michaelmas Term 2022

Lecture List Michaelmas Term 2022

Lecture List
Michaelmas Term 2022

Sunday 9 October 2022 — Saturday 3 December 2022

Hinduism 1

Weeks 1-8, Friday 4.00-5.00 PM 
Dr Rembert Lutjeharms 

These lectures offer 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. 

Sanskrit and Pali Prelims

Week 1-8, Wednesday 4.30-5.30, Friday 10.00-12.00
OCHS Library 

Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen  

The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. Students of Pali will join the Sanskrit course in Michaelmas Term and for the first four weeks of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Sanskrit and Pali will be taught as two separate courses, i.e. Sanskrit Prelims and Pali for Sanskritists.

Sanskrit Prelims: A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment in the Sanskrit course. The class is designed to introduce students of Theology and Religion to the essentials of Sanskrit grammar, syntax, and vocabulary and its importance for the exegesis of Sanskrit texts. Students will learn to appreciate the interpretative nature of translation as a central discipline for the study of religions. By the end of the course students will have gained a basic competency in translating classical Sanskrit and reading relevant passages from texts such as the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Bhagavadgītā, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā and the Buddhist Heart Sūtra. The course book will be Walter Maurer’s The Sanskrit Language. Sanskrit Prelims continues throughout Michaelmas and Hilary Terms and for the first four weeks of Trinity.

Pali Prelims: The Pali course is designed to provide an easy philological introduction to Pali Buddhist texts via Sanskrit and introduce students of Theology and Religion to the essentials of Pali grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. A range of relevant Pali Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. We will read classical Theravāda Buddhist discourses from the Pāli Canon such as the Fire Sermon (Ādittapariyāya-sutta) and Dependent Origination (Paṭiccasamuppāda) as well as passages from the Dhammapadaand the Jātaka tales. Students will learn to appreciate the interpretative nature of translation as a central discipline for the study of religions. The course book will be Dines Andersen, A Pāli Reader and Pali Glossary, 2 vols. (1901) supplemented by Rune E. A. Johansson, Pali Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader and Grammar (1981).   

Pali students will attend the same ‘Sanskrit and Pali’ classes as Sanskrit students in Michaelmas Term and weeks 1-4 of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Pali and Sanskrit students will study in separate classes.  

Readings in Vedānta

Week 1-8, Thursday 10.00-11.00
OCHS Library 
Dr Rembert Lutjeharms (rembert@ochs.org.uk)

Vedānta—theology grounded in the systematic exegesis of the Upaniṣads—has for centuries been the primary discourse for Vaiṣṇava thought. These reading sessions are intended for students who have at least an introductory knowledge of Sanskrit and are interested in Vedānta texts. This term we will be reading Madhva’s Anuvyākhyāna, his principal commentary on the Brahma-sūtras. 

Readings in Phenomenology

(Mondays weeks 1-8, 11.00)
OCHS Library
Professor Gavin Flood FBA

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century, and it has also had a deep impact on other theoretical fields more widely conceived. This term we will read Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute (Fordham University Press, 2004). 

Lectures: A Phenomenology of Holiness:

Thursdays weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, 2.00-3.00,  
OCHS Library 
Professor Gavin Flood FBA

These lectures will inquire into what we mean by ‘holiness’ by focussing on discussion in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. This is not a theological inquiry but an anthropological and philosophical inquiry that seeks to argue for the necessity of understanding human life in terms of holiness and for understanding holiness in terms of human life.

Lecture 1: Holiness and Scholastic Philosophy

To begin our inquiry and to begin to develop a phenomenology of holiness, we need some sense of context and the history of what is at stake, who has been concerned about the question and why. In this opening lecture I wish to focus on history through a question that will emerge as central to a phenomenology of holiness, namely what is the intellectual object of a phenomenology of holiness and the related question as to the being of holiness, whether it can be understood analogically or univocally? These issues go back a long way into medieval Scholasticism. The question has been traditionally couched in terms of natural and supernatural knowledge, concerning whether God is an object of the intellect, and whether the intellect can know God either naturally through Philosophy or supernaturally through Theology. This is not an entirely arcane debate as the category of the holy mutates out of this discussion into a philosophical discourse and thence into a methodological discussion in the science of religion about its object. We will pay particular attention to Duns Scotus. 

Lecture 2: Is Holiness Outside of Language?

Two issues are important, for whom is holiness and appearance and of what? In this lecture we will focus on the for whom. The existential experience of holiness necessitates an approach that simultaneously describes it and explains it at one level. In locating holiness in feeling, Rudolf Otto implicitly placed the experience of holiness outside of language. Yet if language is constitutive of human reality and not only descriptive of it, then what does it mean to claim that an experience of holiness could be pre-linguistic and prior to language? To address this question, we need to go back to some basic claims of phenomenology and try to build a new understanding sensitive to the constitutive view that has had such profound impact on the Humanities while at the same time recognising pre-linguistic, somatic experience as the ground upon which the linguistically constitutive view can be formulated. We need to consider Husserl’s intentionality, Heidegger’s Dasein, as well as Romano’s pre-linguistic experience.  

Lecture 3: The Politics of Holiness

A different theoretical trajectory understands holiness in political terms and reduces holiness to a purely transactional notion constructed within a power dynamic that has played out through the history of civilization, to its cost. On this view, we must understand holiness primarily as a legal category. In this lecture we will examine a philosophical anthropology of the political human that begins, as Esposito argues glossing Schmitt, with a negation, with a lack: the lack being that which is sought after, perhaps possessed by the other, in a process starting from enmity. This negation that is the beginning of politics is articulated in legal systems at the root of the Western tradition in Roman law where, as Esposito observes, a free human being was defined negatively as someone who is not a slave, being under one’s own legal authority. Agamben goes further to bring holiness purely within the political realm and claims that holiness as sacrality, ‘the sacred man’ (homo sacer) is defined negatively as the category of the man who can be killed but not sacrificed: namely the state of exception. But is this to ignore holiness as verticality and openness?

Lecture 4: The Metaphysics of Holiness

We have so far mostly addressed the questions for whom holiness is an appearance and partly addressed the question of what holiness is an appearance. Raising the first question has taken us into an argument that holiness is integral to human being-in-the-world, revealed in terms of a comportment towards verticality and in terms of comportment towards others. This also entails a phenomenology of culture and the ways in which verticality is accessed through symbolic forms or cultural nodal points that provide locations of elevation. We now need to address the question of what holiness is an appearance through an account of ways of being holy and developing an ontology of holiness that is metaphysically realist but can only be accessed indirectly. If the languages of holiness are languages of holiness, what metaphysical commitments does this entail?

Lectures of the Shivdasani Visiting Fellow

Visualization in Some Bengali Hindu Contemplative Traditions: Vaishnava bhakti, Shakta Tantra, Baul songs and Raja Yoga

Week 4, Thursday 3rd November, 2.00-3.00 
OCHS Library
Join via zoom from here.
Dr June McDaniel

Visualization is an important practice in many Bengali religious traditions.  For Gaudiya Vaishnavas, we can explore two styles of visualization:  creating one’s own spiritual body in the form of a young girl or manjari and creating one’s inner body in the form of a young devotee of the saint Caitanya Mahaprabhu, as the gaur deha.  The devotee must transmute the substance of instinct or kama into a more condensed form of divine love or prema.  For Shaktas, we have tantric visualization of the cakras and bodily channels of energy, which allows cleansing of the elements (bhutasuddhi), and the ritual placement of deities into parts of the body (nyasa), leading towards union with the deities.  For Bauls, the inner body is visualized as a place:  a garden, a house, a birdcage, a whole landscape with rivers, ponds and mountains.  For Sahajiyas or Vaishnava Bauls, the inner body is seen as both the emanation of a deity (Radha for women, Krishna for men) and a network of centers of power.  In raja yoga, the siddhis or supernatural powers are developed through samyama, in which visualization acts within the practices of dharana, dhyana and samadhi (shifting one’s focus from external to internal, subtle objects).  In all of these cases, visualization brings a special form of altered perception (siddha-darshana) and acts as a technique for inner exploration. 

The Modern Loss of Ecstasy in Religion and Theology

Week 6, Thursday 17th November, 2.00-3.00
OCHS Library
Dr June McDaniel

The study of mystical and ecstatic experience is out of fashion these days in the field of Religious Studies in the USA.  Analysis of religious consciousness has been obscured by the interest in politics, history and sociology.  The themes for meetings of the American Academy of Religion over the last few years have focused on Racism, Social Justice, Climate Change and Covid-19.  There is little interest in what we might call the ‘inner dimension’ of religious experience.  The modern study of ecstatic religious consciousness over the last thirty to forty years has largely been a study of objections to its subject matter.   

We see this in Theology as well as Religious Studies.  The general Religious Studies response to mystical experience has been that it should be left to the theologians.  But the theologians don’t want it either- they are attempting to show that they are historians, linguists, and ethicists, as well as voices for social change.  The study of mystical and ascetical theology has been largely de-emphasized in modern seminaries.  Like the religionists, theologians have shifted their interests to the social and political world, often substituting classes in practical skills like small-business organization, finance, leadership and preaching skills.  Ecstasy is the “hot potato” that no field wants.  As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast has recently noted, “Every religion seems to begin in mysticism and end in politics.”  He compares mystical states to the hot lava of a volcano, and organized religion to the dry crust and ash that forms as it cools, settles and loses energy.  In a similar way, he notes that the volcanic passions of mystical states turn into the organized religious institutions that show the symptoms of “rigor mortis.”

This paper will describe what is gained, and lost, by this limiting of religious inquiry.  It will also discuss how ecstasy has been relocated into a variety of secular areas- violence, sexuality, music, sports.  Ecstasy has lost its link with religion, and here we will explore how and why this has happened. 

Dr June McDaniel is Professor Emerita in the field of History of Religions, in the Dept. of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston, in the USA. She is the author of three books on India, a co-edited volume on mysticism, a co-edited volume on Hindu religious experience, a book on current views of ecstasy in the field of Religious Studies, and many articles. Her MTS was in Theological Studies from Emory University, and her PhD was in History of Religions from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She spent two years in India, on grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies and as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar.  She also did research in Indonesia on a Collaborative International Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion, as well as on shorter research trips. 

Lectures of the J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow

The luminous ātman within: Beliefs about afterlife and voluntary death of sages in the Sanskrit epics

Week 3, Thursday, 27th October, 11.00-12.00.  
OCHS Library
Valters Negribs

This lecture will explore a body of non-systematic beliefs about the death and afterlife of virtuous persons in the Sanskrit epics. Many epic passages depict a Brahmin or warrior sage who exists after death in a luminous form in heaven, as a star, having entered the sun, or flying around in a luminous vimāna (flying palace-chariot). In the Sanskrit epics this usually happens to highly virtuous characters who have purified themselves through such practices as tapas or the observance of dharmic conduct. The lecture will sketch a possible historical development, noting that in the majority of epic passages the luminous afterlife of sages is not associated with yoga, whereas in some passages that are likely to be later the means of extracting a luminous self (ātman) from the body are portrayed as yogic techniques. 

The relationship between āsana (posture), sukha (bliss), and meditation in early yoga

Week 5, Thursday, 10th November, 11.00-12.00.  
OCHS Library
Valters Negribs

This lecture will explore the ascetic background of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra passage that deals with āsana (2.46-2.48) and offer a new interpretation of that passage. It will argue that Patañjali participates in an earlier discourse on overcoming the hardships of prolonged meditation and ascetic life in the wilderness by using meditative techniques to suffuse one’s body with a pleasant feeling or bliss (sukha) that cancels out the pain (duḥkha) which might otherwise be felt. Such a discourse linking āsana, sukha, and meditation is found primarily in the early Buddhist literature.

Valters Negribs studied social anthropology, study of religions, and traditions of yoga and meditation at SOAS (University of London) before coming to Oxford to work on a doctoral thesis “Ascetic teachings for householder kings in the Mahābhārata”. Valters joins the OCHS as a visiting fellow while waiting for his viva. After a successful defence of the doctoral thesis he will begin a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellowship with Groupe de Recherches en Etudes Indiennes (Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3/ EPHE), working on “Ascetic literature in early Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina traditions”.

Other Lectures

Śākta Traditions Lecture Series

The Body of the Goddess

Week 8, Tuesday 29th November, 2.00-3.00
OCHS Library
Professor Diwakar Acharya 

This talk will explore a Vedic myth of the birth of Śrī — the goddess of excellence, her immediate exploitation by the gods, and subsequent restitution of her bodily possessions through Vedic rituals. It will compare this myth with the Devīmāhātmya myth of creation of the body of the goddess through the contribution of various gods of their powers, and then reflect on the motives and ideas embedded in these two myths. It will also explore the concepts of mantric, geophysical, and micro- and macro-cosmic bodies of the goddess, together with the shades of her beauty from devotional contexts. 

Diwakar Acharya is Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at All Souls College, University of Oxford. His research concerns religious and philosophical traditions of South Asia. He studies ancient and medieval texts, inscriptions, and other historical documents significant for the cultural history of the Indian sub-continent. He is also interested in the critical examination of rites, rituals, and customs of the Indian religions and a keen reader of various genres of Sanskrit literature, starting from the Vedas. 

Pali reading Group

Week 1-8, Wednesdays, 3.00-4.00 (GMT)
OCHS Library
Valters Negribs, Shree Nahata

The informal weekly Pāli reading group aims to bring together scholars and students alike to read and discuss Pāli texts. Attendees will have the opportunity to take turns reading the selected text and engage in lively discussion.

This term we will be reading verses from the Dhammapada along with the Aṭṭhakathā commentary. The commentary provides a narrative frame which explains the circumstances under which the Dhammapada verse was spoken by the Buddha. We will focus on those stories where the Dhammapada verses are said to have been spoken for the benefit of laymen. The Dhammapada has been recognised to contain much general wisdom that is not particularly Buddhist or does not directly pertain to the Buddhist path to awakening. This wisdom literature provides a key link between early Buddhism and texts from other traditions such as the Mahābhārata.

The text of the Dhammapada Aṭṭhakathā can be accessed here.

To join via Zoom, please contact the organisers.
Contactvalters.negribs@wolfson.ox.ac.uk or shree.nahata@balliol.ox.ac.uk

Pre-Requisites: 

  1. Prior knowledge of either Pāli or Sanskrit. Students of Sanskrit should consult Geiger’s A Pāli Grammar [https://archive.org/details/apaligrammarwilhelmgeiger_202003_741_P] to learn the chief differences between Sanskrit and Pāli. Given their similar grammar and vocabulary, the transition from Sanskrit to Pāli, with a little effort, should not be too difficult. 
  2. Curiosity to learn more about Buddhism and Pāli! 

Valters Negribs is a visiting fellow at the OCHS. He works on ascetic literature in Ancient India, with a focus on the Mahābhārata. Shree Nahata is a DPhil student working on Indian philosophy.

Read about the projects our bursaries supported this year

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’ vedāga 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