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Sarasvatī: Riverine Goddess of Knowledge
This is a fascinating depiction of the transformation of the Indian riverine goddess from the manuscript-carrying vīṇā-player to the Buddhist weapon-wielding defender of the Dharma. Drawing on Sanskrit and Chinese textual sources, as well as Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist art historical representations, this book traces the conceptual and iconographic development of the riverine goddess of knowledge Sarasvatī from some time after 1750 B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E. Through the study of Chinese translations of no longer extant Sanskrit versions of the Buddhist Sutra of Golden Light the author sheds light on Sarasvatī's interactions with other Indian goddess cults and their impact on one another.
Hanumān in the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki and the Rāmacaritamānasa of Tulasī Dāsa
The monkey-god Hanuman, one of contemporary Hinduism's most popular deities, has a long history in Indian art and literature. This study traces Hanuman's gradual evolution from his role as helper and messenger of Rama in the Valmiki Ramayana in the 3rd century B.C.E. to his more dominant function in Tulasi Dasa's Ramacaritamanasa, written circa 1575 C.E.The study begins with a concentrated overview of Hanuman's non-Aryan origins and later associations. It then illustrates and elucidated the growth of his character from Valmiki to Tulasi Dasa through several intermediary stages. The greater part of the book comprises a careful scene-by-scene comparative textual analysis of the Sanskrit and the Avadhi versions of the Rama legend which has been so immensely influential in Hindu culture. In the course of time, Hanuman changes from a perfect messenger to the ideal devotee who becomes an embodiment of his master in his complete surrender to Raghupati.
Recontextualizing the Praises of a Goddess
The Hindu Harivamsa (third to fourth century), well known for its account of the god Krsna's life, contains a hymn to a female divinity, Nidra-Vindhyavasini, asked to step in, at the time of Krsna'
The Goddess
This book explains how Hindus think about divinity in its feminine aspect, as the supreme creative energy of the cosmos. That energy is a single abstract idea but manifests itself in many forms, each imagined as a goddess with particular powers and functions.
Sarasvatī, Riverine Goddess of Knowledge
Drawing on textual and art historical sources, this book traces the conceptual and iconographic development of the Indian riverine goddess of knowledge Sarasvati from sometime after 1750 B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E.
Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China
Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China traces the complex history of lutes as they moved from the far west into China, and how these instruments became linked to various forms of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious marginality within and at China’s borders. The book argues that the lute, a musical instrument that likely originated in the Near East or Central Asia, became a highly charged object replete with associations of ethnic and political identity, social status, and gender in China across the third to seventeenth centuries, and as such, offers a crucial vehicle for understanding interactions between the Chinese center and periphery. Using a richly interdisciplinary perspective...
Buddhism in Central Asia II
The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut) will be explored in a systematic way. The second volume Buddhism in Central Asia II—Practice and Rituals, Visual and Materials Transfer based on the mid-project conference held on September 16th–18th, 2019, at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) focuses on two of the six thematic topics addressed by the project, namely on "practices and rituals", exploring material culture in religious context such as mandalas and talismans, as well as “visual and material transfer”, including shared iconographies and the spread of ‘Khotanese’ themes.
Burning for the Buddha
Burning for the Buddha is the first book-length study of the theory and practice of "abandoning the body"(self-immolation) in Chinese Buddhism. It examines the hagiographical accounts of all those who made offerings of their own bodies and places them in historical, social, cultural, and doctrinal context. Rather than privilege the doctrinal and exegetical interpretations of the tradition, which assume the central importance of the mind and its cultivation, James Benn focuses on the ways in which the heroic ideals of the bodhisattva present in scriptural materials such as the Lotus Sutra played out in the realm of religious practice on the ground.
The Lost River
The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as -Sarasvati' in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, this river was rediscovered in the early nineteenth century through topographic explorations by British officials. Recently, geological and climatological studies have probed its evolution and disappearance, while satellite imagery has traced the river's buried courses and isotope analyses have dated ancient waters still stored under the Thar Desert. In the same Northwest, the subcontinent's first urban s...
Framing Intellectual and Lived Spaces in Early South Asia
The contributions to this book address a series of ‘confrontations’—debates between intellectual communities, the interplay of texts and images, and the intersection of monumental architecture and physical terrain—and explore the ways in which the legacy of these encounters, and the human responses to them, conditioned cultural production in early South Asia (c. 4th-7th centuries CE). Rather than an agonistic term, the book uses ‘confrontation’ as a heuristic to examine historical moments within this pivotal period in which individuals and communities were confronted with new ideas and material expressions. The first half of the volume addresses the intersections of textual, material, and visual forms of cultural production by focusing on three primary modes of confrontation: the relation of inscribed texts to material media, the visual articulation of literary images and, finally, the literary interpretation and reception of built landscapes. The second part of the volume focuses on confrontations both within and between intellectual communities. The articles address the dynamics between peripheral and dominant movements in the history of Indian philosophy.
