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Vajrācārya & Baké (1931), mudrā & caryā

Siddhiharṣa Vajrācārya, performer; A. A. Baké, photographer. [Mudrā & caryā poses]. 16mm film digitally archived at Salamandre, Collège de France. Kathmandu: 1931.

Comment: Newly emerged film of Surataśrī Mahāvihāra’s pundit Siddhiharṣa Vajrācārya (1879–1952) demonstrating mudrā and caryā poses, now digitised from 16mm reels, may be the earliest documentary footage of Newar Buddhism in existence. The film was shot in Kathmandu in 1931 by A. A. Baké at the request of Sylvain Lévi (1863–1935). (Thanks to confreres at the Collège de France for the notification and some details.)

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Widdess, Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City (2013)

Richard Widdess. Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City. Music, Performance and Meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal. SOAS Musicology Series. Ashgate, December 2013 [official site]. 378 pages (w/ “50 b&w illustrations, 50 music examples and 1 map”). ISBN 978-1-4094-6601-7.

From the blurb

Dāphā, or dāphā bhajan, is a genre of Hindu-Buddhist devotional singing, performed by male, non-professional musicians of the farmer and other castes belonging to the Newar ethnic group, in the towns and villages of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. The songs, their texts, and their characteristic responsorial performance-style represent an extension of pan-South Asian traditions of rāga- and tāla-based devotional song, but at the same time embody distinctive characteristics of Newar culture.

Dapha musicians recording, Bhaktapur, 2012 (Source: BBC)
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On not reviewing Wedemeyer’s ‘Making Sense’

Wedemeyer (2012), p.39.
Wedemeyer (2012), p.39.

Currently I have no plans to review Christian Wedemeyer’s Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism (2012), but that’s not to say that it shouldn’t be reviewed. Just a couple of months after its release, it is now on the shelves of over 80 libraries. Moreover, Dr. Wedemeyer promises to publish a minimum of three more volumes on the Śrīsamāja. Hopefully someone — who isn’t me — will soon get around to a review.

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DiValerio, ‘An Historical Study of Tibet’s Holy Madmen’ (2011)

DiValerio, David Michael. ‘Subversive Sainthood and Tantric Fundamentalism: An Historical Study of Tibet’s Holy Madmen’. Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2011, 727 pp. ProQuest document ID: 2516363731.

From the Abstract

This dissertation is an historical study of Tibetan Buddhists generally referred to as “madmen” (smyon pa), whose “madness” carries a positive valuation more often than a negative one. Technically they are referred to as “mad siddhas” (grub thob smyon pa) or “mad yogis” (rnal ‘byor smyon pa). […] This study views this eccentric behavior as strategic, purposeful activity, rather than being the byproduct of a state of enlightenment. This study also considers how these holy madmen have been understood by Tibetans and Euro-Americans, with the purpose of highlighting certain lines of thinking that have become commonplace within those respective discourses.

This study takes into consideration “madmen” living from the 12th century to the present, but with a special focus on the three most famous exemplars of the tradition: Sangyé Gyeltsen (better known as the Madman of Tsang, 1452-1507), Drukpa Künlé (better known as the Madman of the Drukpa, 1455-1529?) and Künga Zangpo (better known as the Madman of Ü, 1458-1532).

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Widdess, ‘Rāga Knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley’ (2011)

Widdess, Richard. ‘Implicit Rāga Knowledge in the Kathmandu Valley.’ Analytical Approaches to World Music 1 (1), 2011, pp.73-92. [abstract / PDF (11 MB)]

Abstract extract

The term rāga is current not only in the classical traditions of North and South Indian music, where it is the subject of an extensive written and oral theory, but also in many non-classical traditions especially of religious music in South Asia. For example, devotional songs (dāphā) sung by groups of Newar farmers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, are regularly attributed to rāgas; but there is little explicit (i.e. verbally expressed) knowledge about rāga among the performers. […] The present study suggests that rāga-preludes sung before each dāphā song constitute melodic models that underlie song melodies. […]

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Knutson, ‘Literary registers in the world of the Senas’ (2009)

Knutson, Jesse. The consolidation of literary registers in the world of the Senas and the beginning of its afterlife: Sanskrit and Bengali social poetics, 12th–14th century. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009. [PDF]

Some interesting insights here on the genesis of the Caryāpada, with reference to the period’s “song-poetry” of Baḍu Caṇḍīdās.