Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. Saṃskṛtanāṭyaviṃśatikā: Twenty best Sanskrit plays in performance. New Delhi: Rāṣṭriyasaṃskṛtasaṃsthānam, 2011(?). 20 videodiscs.
Cecile Bründlmayer. Ethnography of the Kumbheśvara temple compound in Lalitpur (Patan), Nepal. Architecture, Iconography and Interaction within a sacred Landscape. Diplomarbeit, Universität Wien, 2011. 149 pp. [official site / PDF]
Fletcher, Margaret; Hunter, Th.; Supomo; Worsley, Peter. Sumanasāntaka – Death by a Sumanasa Flower: An Old Javanese Epic Poem, Its Indian Source and Balinese Illustrations.KITLV Press: January 2013. 1,000pp. USD$125.00. ISBN: 978-90-6718-394-9. [distributed in the United States by UH Press].
Blurb
“This five-part study of a previously unpublished Old Javanese Kakawin contributes to the history of a narrative that had its origins on the Indian subcontinent and was reworked in the form of epic poems and paintings in Java and Bali.”
Irreplaceable Balinese painting of the Sumanasāntaka (now in a private collection).
Giovanni Verardi (appendices by Federica Barba). Hardships and Downfall of Buddhism in India. Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series 4. Delhi/Singapore: Manohar & Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011. 523 pp.
Not a very catchy title, but I doubt that something more direct (say, The Hindu Extermination of Buddhism) would have been very appealing to Singapore’s Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, the book’s publisher.
This book is an extraordinary achievement, all the more so for it relying only indirectly, for the most part, on scriptural and epigraphic sources. Verardi’s contribution is based on something at least as useful: first-hand observation of the key sites and remains, clearly articulated in terms of long-term patterns. It is by far one of the most important contributions to the study of Buddhism in India published in a long time — though I don’t agree with everything in it, by any means. (Given the chance, I will expand on that later.) The omission of any discussion of the Theravādins’ catastrophic role, painstakingly explained in Peter Schalk’s 2002 Buddhism among Tamils volumes, has to be regarded as particularly puzzling — at least until one sees Peter Skilling’s name in the acknowledgements. But let me be clear: Verardi, who has pursued his line of inquiry for over three decades, has succeeded in making sense out of a slew of data in a way that is unlikely to be bettered for some time.
Valerio-Baumann, Sabine. ‘Die Bedeutung weiblicher Gottheiten im ikonographischen Programm des Vaitāl Deul. Eine Kritische Analyse unter Berücksichtigung der Devī-Darstellungen von Śakti-Tempeln in Orissa.’ Diplomarbeit (Magistra der Philosophie), Universität Wien. 2011. 140 pp. [official site/PDF]
From the Abstract
This thesis focuses on the significance of the female goddesses in the iconographic program of one of the most important Śakti-temple in Orissa – the Vaitāl Deul. This monument is situated in the city of Bhubaneśvar and was built during the reign of the Bhauma-Karas-dynasty. […] While a large number of devīs can be found on the temple walls and inside the sanctum, male figures are rare but situated on important positions of the building, e.g. in the caitya-medallions of the gaṇḍi or inside the shrine. Part of this thesis focuses on the sociohistorical and religious background of the Vaitāl Deul. By means of a comparative analysis, I studied the relation of the iconographic program of the Vaitāl Deul both with Sanskrit-śilpa-manuscrip[t]s (Śilpa-Prakāśa and Śilparatnakośa) and with the iconographic programs of other, representative Śakti-temples of Orissa. These analyses have shown that every Śakti-Temple has its own independent iconographic program. […]
(Fortunately, this Orissan masterpiece is still standing. It helps to be on the right side of history in Hindustan — not like these guys.)
Zo Margaret Newell. ‘Picturing the Goddess: Images and the Imagination of Modern Hindu Religious Identity’. PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, May 2011. 293 pp. [official site / PDF]
From the Abstract
This project inquires into the role of visual print technology in the construction of a pan-Indian sense of religious identity at the end of the colonial era. I take as my starting point the statement by Sri Ramakrishna of Calcutta that “a real Hindu” is someone who has, and worships, pictures of deities — specifically, pictures of the mother goddess — and proceed to the phenomenological and historical consideration of a selected set of images.
Zonewell (2010:258 Fig.42). A good man goes to war.
Jessica Lynn Vantine Birkenholtz. ‘The Svasthānī Vrata Kathā Tradition: Translating Self, Place and Identity in Hindu Nepal’. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2010. 337 pp. UMI Number: 3408505.
From the Abstract
This dissertation presents an alternate social and cultural history of Nepal through the lens of a textual-historical study of the Svasthānī Vrata Kathā (SVK). A popular Nepali Hindu textual tradition, the SVK has an unbroken history that spans five hundred years and three languages (Sanskrit, Newar, and Nepali). Beginning in the sixteenth century, the text expanded from a handwritten eight-folio palm-leaf local legend on the origin of the Svasthānī vrat, or ritual vow, into a Purāṇic sourcebook of thirty-one chapters in over four hundred printed pages. The SVK’s medieval-modern historical span, the diversity of forms of its textual (re)production, and its sustained uniform core narrative provide a lens through which both immediate shifts and gradual transformations in Nepal’s literary, linguistic, social, religious, and political history can be viewed and interpreted.
Michael Allen. ‘The worship of young virgin girls as goddesses in the secular state of Nepal’. Guest lecture, 23 May 2011, 13:00-15:00, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen).
Abstract
In this lecture I intend to focus on some of the current debates in Nepal concerning the worship of young virgin girls as living forms of the goddess. At the heart of these debates is the issue of just what weight should be given to religious beliefs, practices and morals, in this case both Hindu and Buddhist, in what is now constitutionally a federal democratic republic formally committed to the propagation of predominantly secular ideals. Yet, prior to the success of the Maoist-led revolution in 2006, Nepal had been a Hindu monarchy of an orthodox kind in which the divine King and the virgin goddess were the twin pillars that together gave legitimacy to the state. My lecture concludes with some brief insights into just how both the goddess and the state survive today without their king – albeit somewhat precariously so.
Michael Allen is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney.
Pflanzen, die von Newars zur Gaṇeśacaturthī verwendet werden
Astrid Zotter (née Krause). ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal: Bestimmungen des Puṣpacintāmaṇi‘. Universität Leipzig: PhD dissertation, 2009. [In German; PDF] 408 pp., illus.
Dr. Zotter’s dissertation on the medieval flower-offering manual Puṣpacintāmaṇi presents a critical edition of the Sanskrit and Newar texts, and discusses the role of this important work in Nepal from the reign of Pratap Malla onwards. This is a new milestone in Newar studies, and more generally another welcome contribution to the study of the transmission of Sanskrit texts and vernacular translations in medieval South Asia. A few words from the abstract (roughly translated):
From the Abstract
The Sanskrit text Puṣpacintāmaṇi (PuCi) treats flower offerings (upacāra) in the most important worship ritual of Hinduism, the pūjā. In 400 verses, about 200 names of flowers prescribed as appropriate or inappropriate gifts for various deities and pūjās are listed. The text is a compilation (nibandha), in which the contents of 47 named source texts are reported. […]
The aim of the thesis is not only to edit this text, which was published for the first time in 1966, anew on the basis of all traditional manuscripts and to translate it for the first time, but also to fit it into its context. Here, the context of the historical development of the text, the position of the PuCi in the textual tradition and the varieties of interpretation are taken into account. […] Continue reading “Zotter, ‘Pūjā-Blüten in Nepal’; on the Puṣpacintāmaṇi (2009)”
Giuseppe Tucci Symposium, Monash University (Caulfield), 2010
The Giuseppe Tucci Symposium jointly convened in Melbourne by Monash University, IsIAO and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura over September 29 to October 1, 2010 has successfully concluded. In my estimation, the quality of presentations was quite high, with a great deal of new material coming forth regarding Giuseppe Tucci’s life, times and scholarly legacy.
Two volumes of proceedings are planned. In the meantime, a foretaste is available in the booklet of the abstracts in downloadable PDF form.
