Suchergebnisse

In recent decades, a great deal of attention has been devoted to critiquing nineteenth and early twentieth century Indological work and its Orientalist assumptions, distortions, and biases. These processes of self-reflection have produced crucial methodological and theoretical revision and have propelled us into an academic era of 'posts', including post-colonial and post-Orientalist alongside post-modern. This essay contemplates what has risen from the ashes of previous generations of Western Indological discourse and where these 'posts' seem to have led us with respect to academic research on Hindu traditions. What kinds of changes have taken place during the last two or three decades, and what new opportunities might they present for the future? What trends have emerged, and what do they suggest about what we have been constructing, and might fruitfully construct in the future, out of all these posts? What might be the present and near future state of Hindu studies in Western academic settings?

Through a brief cultural genealogy of the West's encounter with Asian Tantric traditions from the late 1880s through the early 1980s and some personal reflections on the controversies surrounding the author's Kali's Child, this essay suggests that contemporary Indology's orienting turn to Tantric texts and traditions and its occasional "excessive" focus on sexuality and gender do not derive in any direct or primary sense from Western colonialism, as is often argued, but rather from the altered states and newly won freedoms of a shared American- British counterculture. That is to say, Euro-American scholars turned to Tantric subjects in the 1980s and 90s because the counterculture from which they had just emerged in the 60s and 70s had earlier turned to these same traditions as "Asian countercultures" in which historical actors, accurately or no, saw their own convictions and experiences ecstatically reflected and religiously authorized. This thesis is then fleshed out through brief studies of Pierre Bernard, Sylvais Hamati, Sir John Woodroffe, Atul Behari Ghosh, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Agehananda Bharati. Some final reflections on the poignant integrity of both the controversial scholarship and its critics conclude the essay.

The Clay Sanskrit Library, founded by John and Jennifer Clay, general editor Richard Gombrich, edited by Isabelle Onians and Somadeva Vasudeva. Mahabharata Book Two: The Great Hall, trans. Paul Wilmot, 588 pp., 2005. Mahabharata Book Three: The Forest, Volume Four, trans. W. J. Johnson, 374 pp., 2006. Mahabharata Book Four: Virata, trans. Kathleen Garbutt, 516 pp., 2006. Mahabharata Book Seven: Drona, Volume One, trans. Vaughan Pilikian, 473 pp., 2006. Mahabharata Book Eight: Karna, Volume One, trans. Adam Bowles, 604 pp., 2005. Mahabharata Book Nine: Salya, Volume One, trans. Justin Meiland, 371 pp., 2006. Published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation.

Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka, by Mahinda Deegalle (ed.). Abingdon: Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2006. xv + 277 pp., £75.00 (hb), ISBN10: 0-415-35920-1.

Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s but the cult of Sitala, the Bengali 'smallpox goddess', has resisted. With the spread of AIDS some modifications occurred. Sitala is increasingly worshipped as an AIDS-goddess. Devotees look at contagion as a (desirable) form of possession and believe their faith will protect them. As it was for smallpox, when variolation was preferred to vaccination, the contact with the goddess is looked upon as a form of love, in both maternal and sexual terms. The relation between Sitala, smallpox and AIDS will be analyzed from an indigenous perspective and according to modern ethno-psychoanalytical theories. The issues herein discussed are: (1) the identification of Sitala with smallpox; (2) the existence of a pan-Indian 'plague goddess'; and (3) the consolidated presence of a 'smallpox myth'. I wish so to demonstrate the fallaciousness of those theories which look at Sitala as a response to the irrational or as a manifestation of the untamed female nature. By identifying Sitala with the fertility/agricultural cycle rather than with one or more diseases, I hope to explain the mechanics at the origin of Sitala's worship, a ritual system grounded in the paradox of the 'barren mother'.

The Community of the Many Names of God in Skanda Vale, Carmarthenshire has a number of unusual features. Founded by Guru Subramanium, a Sri Lankan Tamil in the 1960s in London, the Community moved to a valley in South Wales in the early 1970s, since when it has developed into a pilgrimage centre for British Tamils. The centre in Wales boasts three temples to Kali, Murugan and Sri Ranganathan (Vishnu), and the sadhana followed is that of Agamic Shaiva Siddhanta without the usual caste restrictions in worship. The paper will introduce the concept of 'border guardians' to describe a particular kind of charismatic authority. Innovative, intensely counter-intuitive, they creatively guard the border terrain. Whilst assessing the development of Skanda Vale into a sacred space for British Hindus, the paper will explore the contested relationship between Agamic and non-Agamic forms of Shaivism in Sri Lanka. The conclusion will be that such movements that have developed in the West owe more to their beginnings and histories in the place of origin to determine their formation and should be understood as transplanted sampradayas rather than being under the umbrella of the sociological study of new religious movements.

Combining fearsome images, 'magical' rites of subjugation and challenging portrayals of sexuality, wrathful deities appear to epitomize all that makes tantric Buddhism distant from early Buddhism's traditional orientations. On one level, this distance can be attributed to processes of incorporation of 'demonic' elements from other indigenous religious traditions. Drawing from the theoretical perspectives of Durkheim and Mauss, however, I will argue that it is precisely this motif of 'incorporation' that not only gives wrathful deities their distinctive potency, but also positions them at the centre of the ambivalence that is tantric Buddhism. While the tantric Siddha, in common with Mauss's magician, incorporates bodily leavings and peripheral rites, he also, I suggest, absorbs and negotiates potentially poisonous emotional states such as terror and anger through the medium of the subtle body, thereby forming a model of masculinity that is both a defining force within tantric Buddhism and suggestive of further investigation within anthropological studies of male cultures more broadly.

This article arises out of experience teaching Sikhism to undergraduates and critical reflection on professional practice in terms of the representation of Sikhism in scholarship and education. Such experience and reflection reveal that Sikhism tends to be represented in the form of the Khalsa and that the understanding of the Khalsa is modern in character. Hence this article identifies the origins of current orthodoxy in the campaigning activities of Tat Khalsa and identifies how Tat Khalsa style orthodoxy has influenced research and teaching. In so doing, it examines the history of Sikh Studies but especially the debate surrounding Hew McLeod which shows how controversial it is to challenge the consensus. It also reviews school textbooks and school and examination syllabuses in order to demonstrate a pro-Khalsa bias. This article concludes by setting out how research and teaching can provide a fuller and fairer picture of Sikhism by taking seriously diversity and plurality, for example, by the inclusion of other movements and popular practice.