Lectures Archive - Page 18 of 204 - Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Archives: Lectures

Sanskrit and Pali Prelims, VII (MT22)

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 Phenomenology, IV (MT22)

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).

Hinduism 1, III (MT22)

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, VI (MT22)

Is Holiness Outside of Language? (MT22)

Lectures: A Phenomenology of Holiness:

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 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.

The luminous ātman within: Beliefs about afterlife and voluntary death of sages in the Sanskrit epics (MT22)

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.

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”.

Readings in Vedānta, III (MT22)

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.