{"title":"Rethinking ‘Classical Yoga’ and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality. Karen O’Brien-Kop","authors":"M. Kapstein","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad030","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"45 20","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139446213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Nyāyamañjarī’s Arguments Against the Existence of God: Translation and Commentary","authors":"Alex Watson, Kei Kataoka","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad025","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"18 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139162261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Care About Freedom and Agency?","authors":"Catherine Prueitt","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In ethical systems that focus on apportioning praise and blame, a key consideration is often whether or not the individual is a free agent since individuals are only held to be responsible for what they freely choose. As various critiques indicate, if it were to be the case that freedom is in some way illusory or radically restricted, these systems would have a significant problem since reactive attitudes would involve holding individuals responsible for actions that they did not freely choose. I will argue that the problem may run even deeper: even if there is such a thing as free agency, it is a mistake to think that autonomous individuals uniquely instantiate this agency. I will draw on arguments from Pratyabhijñā Śaivism, which state that although there is ultimately no such thing as a praise or blameworthy individual agent, free agency is the precondition for manifestation itself. Worlds, not individuals, are the proper unit of analysis for ethical theories. This position picks up on many of the critiques of the kind of substantial self that stands apart from the world that were offered by various Buddhist traditions in the Classical Sanskritic context. At the same time, it does not fall prey to these objections precisely because the self that Pratyabhijñā theorists argue for is neither an unchanging substance nor a minimally thin kind of self-awareness that could be accommodated by no-self theorists. Pratyabhijñā theorists’ particular way of understanding agency, then, presents a productive exchange between some of the most ethically salient ramifications of Buddhist no-self theories and insights into why, nevertheless, freedom and agency are inextricably bound up in our worlds.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"16 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138589553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Oral Tradition to Digital Archive: New Primary Sources for the Study of Baul Traditions","authors":"C. Lorea","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad026","url":null,"abstract":"Practitioners’ notebooks and personal letters are neglected items that deserve attention in the study of ritual and performance traditions, especially if these can be complemented with oral–aural sources. This article presents some features of an unexplored archive of new sources for the study of Baul songs and popular religious movements in Bengal by introducing and complementing the data contained in the digital archive called ‘Songs of the Old Madmen’ (EAP1247, British Library), comprising notebooks of Baul songs and correspondence between an influential Bengali guru and his disciple. I highlight three aspects. (i) The notebook as archive and metadata of Baul performances. (ii) Emic notions of authorship and cultural ownership. (iii) The contextualisation of the digital archive within the history of representation of the Baul tradition. Embedded in such context, this digital archive provides a nuanced and intimate picture where Baul practitioners emerge as neither the lonely minstrels lauded by Rabindranath Tagore, nor as the antinomian materialists portrayed in more recent scholarship on Bauls. Questioning the politics of cultural representation of digital archives, this article integrates oral histories and ethnographic sources collected during fieldwork in West Bengal that are inextricably part of the material digitised through remote capture.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139267613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Theologically Situated Lives of Everyday Things: Essays on Śrīvaiṣṇava Material Culture","authors":"S. Raman","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44633570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biographies","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"108 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136222858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pandit Radheshyam’s Ramayan: A sourcebook for Ramlila scripts in the orbit of Bareilly","authors":"Pamela Lothspeich","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay recognizes the critical but largely unacknowledged role of the Radheshyam Ramayan in the theatre of Ramlila, which enacts the story of Ram in an annual, multi-day fall festival. Further, this essay illustrates the range of ways the text has been incorporated into Ramlila productions in the orbit of Bareilly, the homeland of the author, Pandit Radheshyam Kathavachak (1890–1963). Since the work was first published serially circa 1908-1924, Ramlila organisers have often turned to it for stirring dialogues, and a narrative template for the plotting of their productions. Based on the author’s participant observation and extensive interviews conducted between 2006 and 2019, this essay argues that the dialogues and plotting in Ramlila productions in the vicinity of Bareilly often owe more to Pandit Radheshyam’s Ramayan than to any other source, including Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century Rāmcaritmānas, despite the fact that the Radheshyam Ramayan was composed for the medium of Vaishnav kathā (devotional storytelling), not Ramlila.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60821671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A note on the worship of the Ācārya’s pādukās among the Śrīvaiṣṇavas","authors":"Suganya Anandakichenin","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Worshipping the feet, footprints, and sandals (pādukā) of deities and revered people is a widespread practice across South Asia (and throughout the world) that cuts across belief systems. And the Śrīvaiṣṇavas are no exception: on the one hand, they receive the benediction of the Lord’s feet upon their heads in the form of the śaṭhāri, on a visit to a temple or a maṭha. And on the other hand, they worship the feet of their own Ācārya(s) and/or their pādukās, as well as those who belonged to their Ācārya lineage. In this article, I shall deal with the second practice, with a special focus on the manifold ways in which the Ācāryas’ pādukās are honoured institutionally in some of the Śrīvaiṣṇava maṭhas in South India, and on how the disciples of those religious institutions replicate some of the customs at home for their private worship. Given that there are many branches and families of Śrīvaiṣṇavas, differences in the worshipping practices have inevitably crept in, and in this article, I shall seek to understand those differences based on a few examples.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48961976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Book in the Vaiṣṇava Ācāryas’ Hands","authors":"Ilanit Loewy Shacham","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper focuses on images of human Vaiṣṇava figures holding a book in their hands, and the history and significance of this iconographic detail. The paper argues that in Vaiṣṇava South India, the book as an iconographic marker of human figures is a fairly recent development, though its roots can be situated in the period of the Vijayanagara Empire. The paper also demonstrates that while the book itself may appear as a stable iconographic marker, the meanings attached to it for different figures is not, thereby problematising the notion of iconographic code.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44399556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward a Better Understanding of Medieval Temple Food Practices: The View from Srirangam","authors":"Andrea Gutiérrez","doi":"10.1093/jhs/hiad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Vaishnava food offerings provide abundant evidence for material studies on both historical and modern-day ritual practice. The medieval Chola (9th–13th centuries) record of donative inscriptions offers us a wealth of details on the food cooked as naivedya or holy food offerings for temple deities. I present a range of ideas on material temple food and related food practices as gleaned from Tamil epigraphy and other Sanskrit sources, especially utilising evidence from the Srirangam temple dedicated to the reclining Vishnu, a main site of Vaishnava devotion. This article is a scholarly intervention on some key phenomena often misunderstood when considering South Indian food: controversies surrounding eating naivedya and food offerings, historical developments leading to the practice of eating temple prasad, the true ‘sambhar’ offered in Hindu temples, who cooked temple food, and where this happened. All aspects shed light on our understanding of Hindu religious practices involving food.","PeriodicalId":42357,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Hindu Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49396251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}