The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. 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 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.
Archives: Lectures
Hinduism 1: Sources and Formations: Session 5 (MT18)
This paper offers a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and development of Hindu traditions from their early formation to the medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The lectures will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy.
Sanskrit Prelims I: Week 6 (MT18)
The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. 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 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.
Readings in Phenomenology: Session 6 (MT18)
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 seminar series seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology, and has turned in the past to thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Peter Sloterdijk, Quentin Meillassoux, and others.
This term we will be reading Maurice Merleau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.
Rethinking Advaita Within the Colonial Predicament: The Subject as Freedom and the ‘Confrontative’ Philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya (1875–1949)
In this talk I will examine the distinctive way in which the prominent Indian philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949) engaged with Advaita Vedānta during the terminal phase of the colonial period. I propose to do this by looking, first, at ways in which Krishnachandra understood the role of his own philosophizing within the colonial predicament. I will call this his agenda in ‘confrontative’ philosophy. I shall proceed, then, by sketching out the unique manner in which this agenda was successfully carried out through his engagement with the Advaitic notion of self-knowledge and articulated in his The Subject as Freedom (1930).
Pawel Odyniec is a Ph.D. candidate in Indology at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Sweden. He has worked on several eminent Indian philosophers of the twentieth century and their reinterpretations of the classical Advaita Vedānta with particular attention to the concept of liberating knowledge. His research interest is in the area of Indian philosophy/theology, from classical to modern, in its Sanskrit, Hindi, and English sources which he addresses from a perspective that combines philosophy, philology, and history of ideas. Over the past few years, he has been teaching Introduction to Indian Philosophy and has been assisting in teaching Sanskrit and Hindi.
Sanskrit Prelims I: Week 6 (MT18)
The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. 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 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.
Hinduism 1: Sources and Formations: Session 6 (MT18)
This paper offers a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and development of Hindu traditions from their early formation to the medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The lectures will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy.
Sanskrit Prelims I: Week 7 (MT18)
The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. A range of relevant Hindu and Buddhist texts will be chosen for translation and philological comment. 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 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.
Readings in Phenomenology: Session 7 (MT18)
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 seminar series seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology, and has turned in the past to thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Peter Sloterdijk, Quentin Meillassoux, and others.
This term we will be reading Maurice Merleau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.
Decoding Gandharan Art: Making Of Museum Collections In India
This paper discusses collections of Gandharan sculptures in museums in India along two lines of enquiry: one, the nature and size of collections in some of the major museums of the country, such as the Indian Museum, Kolkata founded in 1814 and with the largest collection of 1602 Gandharan objects; or the National Museum, New Delhi, which was inaugurated on 15th August 1949, two years after Indian Independence and has 688 objects. In contrast to the Indian Museum’s collection made before 1927, the National Museum continued to add pieces until 1987. Other sizable collections include those in the Government Museum, Chandigarh and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, though the history of the collection is unique in each case. How are these differences to be understood or contextualized? The focus on ‘collecting’ rather than ‘collections’ provides insights into the changing nature of engagement between the region of Gandhāra and the history of the subcontinent.
Himanshu Prabha Ray is recipient of the Anneliese Maier research award of the Humboldt Foundation (2014 – 2019) and Member of the Board of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford. She is former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Former Chairperson, National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
She is series editor of Routledge Archaeology and Religion in South Asia book series in collaboration with OCHS. Her recent books include Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia (Routledge, 2018); The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation (Routledge, New Delhi, 2014); The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), as also edited volumes: Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections (Routledge, 2018); Bridging the Gulf: Maritime Cultural Heritage Of The Western Indian Ocean (India International Centre & Manohar Publishers, 2016); Satish Chandra and Himanshu Prabha Ray edited, The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea (Manohar Publishers, 2013).