Category: Academic
Summer Course in Kathmandu
Study in Kathmandu this Summer
This year we are launching an extraordinary new summer university programme. A two-week course that takes place in Kathmandu, Nepal, where students will be engaging in cultural fieldwork, local excursions, yoga classes, paired with academic lectures and workshops.
This is a great opportunity for students to connect their formal educational knowledge to real-world experiences. The summer program will include attendance at a myriad of rituals and cultural practices, group excursions throughout the city’s many cultural sites, and other enriching local activities.
The programme will also offer ECTS accreditation for undergraduate students in attendance.
If students have any questions, they can contact
Gitte Poulsen,
Manager and Tutor
gitte@ochs.org.uk
Laura Anderson,
Manager
laura@ochs.org.uk
Śākta Traditions Online Lecture Series | Professor June McDaniel
Śāktism and Ethnography: Some Major Styles of Worship and Belief among Practitioners
Śākta Traditions Online Lecture Series: Contributions to a growing field of Śākta Studies
This week in the Śākta Traditions Online Lecture Series we welcomed Professor June McDaniel. Professor Emerita in History of Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston she did her PhD from University of Chicago and her MTS from Emory University. Her research areas include Mysticism, Religions of India, Psychology of Religion, Women and Religion, and Ritual Studies. She did several years of field research in West Bengal, funded by Fulbright and the American Institute of Indian Studies. In her lecture this week, she talked about the study of Shaktism being a relatively new field with the development of new methodologies to befit the perceptions of practitioners and devotees. The regional focus was on West Bengal, India. There was additionally a brief note on how traditional Shakta ideas have been incorporated into nationalism by politicians, and into hedonism by modern entrepreneurs.
Please enjoy the lecture below.
Readings by Prof. Alexis Sanderson
Readings in the Tantrāloka
Yesterday we had the pleasure of welcoming our J.P. and Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow Professor Alexis Sanderson for his first reading on the Tantrāloka. The next talk will be on 10 February at 2.00 pm.
Forthcoming talks
Week 4, 6, 8, Thursday, 2.00-3.30
In these lectures Professor Sanderson will introduce the opening verses of the Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025), that author’s monumental exposition of the Śaiva Tantras from the standpoint of the Śākta Śaiva tradition known as the Trika and the philosophical non-dualism of the Pratyabhijñā texts.
Alexis Sanderson began his Indological career as a student of Sanskrit at Oxford in 1969, studying the Kashmirian Śaiva literature in Kashmir with the Śaiva Guru Swami Lakshman Joo from 1971 to 1977. He was Associate Professor (University Lecturer) of Sanskrit at Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College from 1977 to 1992 and then the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College from 1992 to 2015. Since then, he has been preparing a critical edition of the Tantrāloka with a translation and commentary. His field is early medieval religion in India and Southeast Asia, focusing on the history of Śaivism, its relations with the state, and its influence on Buddhism and Vaishnavism.
Watch the first talk here:
Handbook of Hinduism in Europe
Book Launch
Handbook of Hinduism in Europe
Please join us for the launch of the Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill)
edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Ferdinando Sardella.
The event will take place online on Zoom.
During the event, there will be talks from:
Prof. Gavin Flood
Prof. Knut A. Jacobsen
Prof. Ferdinando Sardella
Shaunaka Rishi Das
Ross Andrew
and others
Date and Time:
Monday 22 November 2021
4.00 – 5.30 pm (GMT)
Join on Zoom here
All are welcome!
New Phenomenology Conference 2021
The Phenomenology of Religion as Philosophical Anthropology - A Virtual Conference -
The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Campion Hall, Oxford University welcome you to join the Phenomenology of Religion as Philosophical Anthropology conference, a three-day online event where we will discuss and rethink the Phenomenology of Religion as an intellectual discipline.
The conference is directed by Professor Gavin Flood, FBA.
From 4 October to 6 October, 2021
It is free to participate and everyone is welcome.
You can read more about the conference and download the abstracts on our website: newphenomenology.org
We recently launched a new research project at the OCHS. “The Phenomenology of Religion as Philosophical Anthropology” directed by Professor Gavin Flood FBA.
New research project
We recently launched a new research project at the OCHS:
The Phenomenology of Religion as Philosophical Anthropology
directed by Professor Gavin Flood FBA.
The project will include a three-day Virtual Colloquium from October 4th to 6th. More info will follow later.
Read more about the project here!
Haṭhapradīpikā
Haṭhapradīpikā
Project description
Danish title:
Haṭhapradīpikā – Haṭhayogaens hovedværk, Forlaget Univers (2022).
The first full translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā (also known as the Haṭhayogapradīpikā) into Danish. The translation is annotated with an introduction and essays and includes the full Sanskrit text in devanāgarī. The book is illustrated with photos of a traditional and a modern yoga practitioner to show different ways of interpreting the āsanas and mudrās presented in this work. The translation is based on Svāmī Digambarjī and Pītāmbara Jhā’s edition of Svātmārāma’s Haṭhapradīpikā (Lonāvlā: Kaivalyadhāma Śrīmanmādhava Yogamandira Samiti, 1980). The translation group consists of former and present Sanskrit students from the research unit for South Asian Religion (SAR) at the Department for the Study of Religion, Aarhus University.
For a study of the Śākta dimension of the Haṭhapradīpikā please see:
Mallinson, James. 2016. ’Śāktism and Haṭhayoga’, in Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen (ed.), Goddess Traditions in Tantric Hinduism, p. 109-140. Oxford: Routledge.
Wernicke-Olesen, Bjarne and Silje Lyngar Einarsen. 2018. ’Übungswissen in Yoga, Tantra und Asketismus des frühen indischen Mittelalters’, in Almut-Barbara Renger and Alexandra Stellmacher (eds), Übungswissen in Religion und Philosophie: Produktion, Weitergabe, Wandel, pp. 241-257. Berlin: LIT Verlag.
Project leader
Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen
Dr Silje Lungar Einarsen
Translations group
Dorte Effersøe
Elizabeth Rosendahl
Erik Grammagnat
Gitte Poulsen
Jesper Moeslund
Lena Molin
Lisa Bukhave
Lisette Hededal
Sander Rosenkilde
Tanja Louise Jakobsen
Therese Udklit
Introduction and essays
Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen
Silje Lyngar Einarsen
Jens Toft Pedersen
Creative Manager
Tanja Louise Jakobsen
Illustrator
Lisette Hededal
Yoga practitioners
Mathilde Kjelberg
Sudeep Kumar Puthiyaparambath