Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Dec 09 2018 18 ep. 59 mins 5.5k

Lectures from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

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Śaivism and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

Dec 09 2018 41 mins

Early Modern Hindu Theology Seminars Dr Anand Venkatkrishnan 16 May 2016 The Bhāgavata Purāṇa (BhP) is primarily considered the prerogative of Vaiṣṇava religious communities. This paper complicates that commonplace historiography by exploring what the BhP meant to a group of Śaivas in Kerala in the fifteenth century. I locate these Śaivas at the nexus of a number o

Nath Siddhas and Hatha Yoga Practices in South India

Nov 09 2018 66 mins

Shivadasani Seminar Dr Prabhavati Reddy 9 Jun 2016 By the fifteenth century, the Nath lineage of Siddhas had emerged as influential teachers and wonder-working yogis in the Telugu-speaking region of Srisailam in South India. Both textual and archaeological evidence suggest that Nath gurus have gained popularity among royal families and common people as well as the establishm

Myth-History Conundrums in the Hagiographies of Satya Pīr: Hindu God and Muslim Holy Man

Oct 09 2018 51 mins

J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellows lecture Prof. Tony K. Stewart 27 Oct 2016 Satya Pīr has been for scholars one of the most puzzling figures in Bengali religious history: for Muslims a Sufi saint and for Hindus none other than Satya Nārāyaṇ. The index to their truly puzzling nature is the fact that in spite of their ubiquity—his manuscript and print literature i

The monastic/ascetic tradition of India and its ramification towards the west

Sep 09 2018 81 mins

Shivdasani lecture Prof. G. C. Tripathi 3 Nov 2016 The lecture would shed light on the Indian phenomenon of monasticism (shrama, shramana) and asceticism (tapas,tapasvin). Buddhist monks are referred to as shramanas, the toilers. The concept of shrama (labour) has a spiritual connotation in the Vedic literature. Monastic way of life, according to me, was not a protest or rev

Subjunctive Explorations of Fictive Vaiṣṇav-Sufi Discourse

Aug 09 2018 46 mins

J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellows lecture Prof. Tony K. Stewart 10 Nov 2016 The early modern Bangla tales of the legendary or mythic pīrs are romantic narratives that speak to the often strange and puzzling encounters between Hindus, especially Vaiṣṇavs, and Muslims, primarily Sufis. They bring together foreigners and locals, courtiers and country bumpkins, in enc

Influence of Kashmir on the Tantric traditions of Orissa

Jul 09 2018 65 mins

Shivdasani lecture Prof. G. C. Tripathi 24 Nov 2016 The paper shall try to trace the close relationship of the Orissan Tantrism and also Vishnuism to Kashmir of the 10th-12th Century. It were most probably the Orissan students learning in the Pathashalas of Kashmir, mentioned (sarcastically) by Kshemendra who brought the philosophy and ritual of Kashmir along with manuscript

The Colloquy between Muhammad and Saytān: The 18th century Bangla Iblichnāmā of Garībullā

Jun 09 2018 49 mins

Lectures of the J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow Prof. Tony K. Stewart 31 Jan 2017 In 1287 bs [=1879/80 ce] a short Bangla work was published in Calcutta under the title of Iblichnāmār punthi by the highly productive scholar Garībullā, who had composed the text about a century earlier. This somewhat unusual text is a colloquy between the Prophet Muhammad and the fa

When Muslim and Hindu Worlds Meet in Fiction: Mapping the Bengali Imaginaire

May 09 2018 50 mins

Lectures of the J.P. And Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow Prof. Tony K. Stewart 16 Feb 2017 A number of Bangla tales dedicated to the fictional or mythic holy men (pīrs) and women (bibīs) in the Muslim community have circulated widely over the last five centuries alongside the tales of their historical counterparts. They are still printed and told today, and performed regular

‘The lotus in the mire’: the Indian reception of Tājika astrology

Apr 09 2018 42 mins

Dr. Martin Gansten 3 May 2017 Tājika is the designation of the Sanskritized Perso-Arabic astrology that arose as an independent school following the second wave of astrological transmission into India in the early centuries of the second millennium CE. It is thus the form of Indian astrology most closely resembling western medieval and Renaissance astrology, which similarly r

Rādhā Tantra and the agonies and ecstasies of studying obscure texts

Mar 09 2018 45 mins

The Rādhā Tantra (RT), also known as Vāsudevarahasya (Vāsudeva’s secret), is a fairly extensive, anonymous Tantric work dealing with the story of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Contrary to what the name might indicate, the RT is not a Vaiṣṇava text; rather, it is a Śākta text giving a Śākta reinterpretation of a Vaiṣṇava story. The RT is by all standards a late Tantra,