The Journal of Hindu Studies
October 11, 2024
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
This paper proposes the model of “manifestation” (abhivyakti) as an alternative to panpsychism while countering the model of hard emergence. First, it examines the passages from the Mahābhārata to contextualize the model of “manifestation” (abhivyakti). Second, it explores contemporary panpsychism and engages the examples from the Mahābhārata in this light. In conclusion, the paper advances the...
The Journal of Hindu Studies
March 26, 2024
Aleksandar Uskokov
Abstract: This article interprets the religious epistemology of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava theologian Jīva Gosvāmin, specifically his division of perception in ‘learned’ and ‘ignorant’, to argue that ‘learned’ perception is supersensible cognitive experience shaped by learning and language. The article goes on to show that the contemporary scholarship on religious experience can learn an important...
The Journal of Hindu Studies
August 28, 2018
Hugh B. Urban
18 citations
This article examines the worship of the snake goddess Manasā in Assam, with special attention to the dynamics of gender, identity, and spirit possession. Specifically, the article focuses on two different forms of possession performance in honor of the goddess: the more ecstatic and bloody performance by male dancers at Kāmākhyā temple and the more folklorized and domesticated performance by...
The Journal of Hindu Studies
October 1, 2011
Jeffrey S. Lidke
6 citations
In this article, I utilise current scholarship on synesthetic experience as a lens for evaluating the multi-layered cognitive and artistic processes by which Śrī Vidyā practitioners construct, visualise, and embody the primary symbol of their clan, the Śrī Vidyā diagram. This diagram is simultaneously a multi-hued visual image and a resounding symphonic field of luminous, reverberating...
The Journal of Hindu Studies
October 1, 2011
Loriliai Biernacki
4 citations
In a famous pronouncement on the defects of India’s monistic traditions, the German scholar Paul Hacker declared that advaita, or nondualist, traditions could never achieve the ethical pre-eminence of Christianity since in the ultimate analysis, in a world where all is ultimately the ‘absolute one’, there is no room for the ethical engagement inspired by the Other. This article explores what I...
The Journal of Hindu Studies
March 9, 2010
Stuart Ray Sarbacker
Frederick Smith's The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature provides a number of groundbreaking insights with respect to conceptualisations of and methodological approaches to the phenomenon of possession (āveśa, praveśa, and samāveśa) in the Indian traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and more broadly in South Asian religion. Smith's analysis of the...