Browsing by Subject "Hinduism"

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Architectural History of the Bangladesh Region as Background of Louis Kahn's Dacca Project
(0000-00-00) Ali, Meer Mobashsher
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Cursing Kṛṣṇa : gender, theodicy, and time in the Mahābhārata
(2016-05) Wilson, Jeff Scott; Brereton, Joel P., 1948-; Freiberger, Oliver
In this paper, I will discuss the doctrines of theodicy and time in the Mahābhārata, with particular attention to the concept of gender in the epic milieu. I argue that the parallel narratives of Draupadī and Gāndhārī play a central role in establishing what Emily T. Hudson refers to as “the aesthetics of suffering.” Draupadī and Gāndhārī’s respective arguments against Kṛṣṇa, especially, raise a number of crucial theodicean questions that ultimately contribute to the overall argument of the text in regards to the necessity of detachment (vairāgya) and the ravages of Time (kāla). As such, this paper endeavors to provide a reading of the text that contextualizes Draupadī and Gāndhārī’s theodicean arguments in terms of Kṛṣṇa’s identification with the epic’s concept of Time, the interplay of gender and ethics that inform these arguments, and finally, a possible answer to these arguments that incorporates the above insights. In the end, I hope to provide a fitting testament to both the moral and theological depth of the epic as a whole.
Padavali-kirtan : music, religious aesthetics, and nationalism in West Bengal’s cultural economy
(2014-05) Graves, Eben Morse; Slawek, Stephen; Erlmann, Veit; Ghosh, Kaushik; Hansen, Kathryn; Kumar, Shanti; Moore, Robin
This dissertation studies the devotional musical genre of padāvalī-kīrtan from the early twentieth century until the present in the Indian state of West Bengal. In particular, I study how the interrelated spheres of religious aesthetics, Bengali cultural nationalism, and the genre’s relationship with economic exchange impact the performative and discursive spheres of padāvalī-kīrtan. The textual repertoire of this genre draws from, and informs, the Hindu devotional practice of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, specifically focusing on the religious aesthetic concept of the “devotional mood” (bhakti-rasa). This connection with religious aesthetics further impacts the performance style of padāvalī-kīrtan, which uses a specific type of musical form with long meters and slow tempos to create padāvalīkīrtan’s ritual frame of performance. In addition to the influence of religious aesthetics, I investigate how the Bengali nationalist elite defined padāvalī-kīrtan as a symbol of Bengali cultural nationalism in the early twentieth century, and thus sought to overturn a sense of cultural loss experienced under colonial rule. This project re-emphasized the image of the religiously devout and musically skilled kīrtan musician as a way of distancing the genre from other Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava-influenced traditions that were in a state of ill repute at that time. The current phase of padāvalī-kīrtan performance that I study through performance-based and ethnographic analysis is defined by the rise of entrepreneurial and marketing strategies that musicians employ to find new audiences for padāvalī-kīrtan. This move to create new markets for kīrtan becomes an issue of contention with urban-based musicians, journalists, and cultural activists, and I study these debates surrounding padāvalī-kīrtan’s relationship with economic exchange through the theoretical lens of the cultural economy. I argue that the pejorative attitudes directed at present-day professional kīrtan musicians overlook the genre’s long history of adapting to shifting systems of patronage and financial support throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods.
Rational belief in classical India : Nyaya's epistemology and defense of theism
(2010-05) Dasti, Matthew Roe; Phillips, Stephen H., 1950-; Sosa, Ernest D.; Koons, Robert C.; Bonevac, Daniel; Juhl, Cory; Bryant, Edwin F.
Nyāya is the premier realist school of philosophy in classical India. It is also the home of a sophisticated epistemology and natural theology. This dissertation presents a distinctive interpretation of Nyāya’s epistemology and considers how it may be developed in response to various classical and contemporary challenges. I argue that it is best understood as a type of reliabilism, provided relevant qualifications. Moreover, I show that a number of apparently distinct features of Nyāya’s approach to knowledge tightly cohere when seen as components of a thoroughgoing epistemological disjunctivism. I defend Nyāya epistemology as a viable contemporary option, illustrating how it avoids problems faced by generic reliabilism. In the second portion of the dissertation, I examine the way in which Nyāya’s knowledge sources (perception, inference, and testimony) are deployed in support of a theistic metaphysics, highlighting Nyāya’s principled extension of its views of knowledge acquisition. In an appendix, I provide a full translation and commentary on an argument for God’s existence by Vācaspati Miśra (a 10th century philosopher who is unique in having shaped several distinct schools), found in his commentary on Nyāya-sūtra 4.1.21.
Resurrection from the Dead? The Brāhmaṇical Rite of Renunciation and its Irreversibility
(Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005) Freiberger, Oliver
Sanātanadharma in Sanskrit Literature
(2019-05-16) Jayaraman, Vaishali; Davis, Donald R. Jr
This thesis explores the occurrences of the Sanskrit term, sanātanadharma, in many Sanskrit texts to gain more insight into the range of its meaning. The term is a Sanskrit compound of the words sanātana, meaning “eternal, everlasting,” and dharma, meaning “law, righteousness, duty.” Sanātanadharma is often translated as “eternal religion,” “eternal law,” and “ancient and continuing guideline,” to mention a few examples. The notion of sanātanadharma is popularly understood among the majority of the Hindu community as the original term for Hinduism. It is perceived to inherently signify the entirety of the religion and is the focus of many textbooks on Hinduism from the nineteenth century to modern times. This concept of sanātanadharma is used to confer an interpretation of a Hinduism that is eternal and universal or some combination of the two. Scholars of Sanskrit and religion who have been interested in this twofold representation of sanātanadharma are particularly fascinated by the eternality associated with the foundation of Hinduism, and how the term is used to present the religion as unique and universal. Consequently, to understand what sanātanadharma means, they are determined to research the emergence and establishment of the term in alignment with the perception of modern Hindus. For a term that is so important in contemporary Hinduism, there is a dearth in academic scholarship that focuses strictly and elaborately on its textual perspective. This thesis will contribute to the body of scholarship on the study of sanātanadharma by casting some light on the term from the standpoint of classical Sanskrit literature. The significance of framing this topic within this scope is to explore the earliest usages of the term and analyze the various contexts of its original usage. Through this indepth analysis of the term as richly supported in a vast expanse of Sanskrit texts, I argue that sanātanadharma is multidimensional and contains many facets of implication, countering the more singular, contemporary notion.
Transnational perfromances : race, migration, and Indo-Caribbean cultural production in New York City and Trinidad
(2010-08) Tanikella, Leela Kumari; Visweswaran, Kamala; Gordon, Edmund T.; Costa Vargas, João H.; Godreau, Isar P.; Scher, Philip W.
This dissertation examines the production of culture among Indo-Caribbean communities in New York City and Trinidad. It seeks to understand how cultural producers use performance as a way to mediate their experiences of racialization in local, national, and transnational spheres. Based on a multisited ethnographic study, I analyze the Indo-Caribbean diaspora as a result of nineteenth and twentieth century indentured labor migration and as a focus of post-1965 transnational migration. To do so, I introduce the idea of "transnational performances," which I employ to examine how expressions of Indo-Caribbean identity are performed in Trinidad and New York City as a way of mediating global processes. Specifically, this dissertation begins with a geographic and historical overview of Indo-Caribbean transnational populations, then provides an ethnographic study of contemporary Hindu religious festivals in Trinidad, an Islamic festival held in both New York City and Trinidad, Indo-Caribbean media in New York, and a cultural and arts center in New York. In all these sites Indo-Caribbean cultural producers engage the politics of public representation of Indo-Caribbean identity. I argue that while Indo-Caribbean religious, festival, media, and cultural producers engage with diasporic formations of identity and develop diasporic narratives that address Indian origins, they simultaneously develop new, creative, and flexible Indo- Caribbean transnational performances in the public sphere often coproducing their identities in relation to other diasporic communities. Concerns about authenticity exist alongside the desire to create new cultural practices that employ hybridity as a strategy to assert belonging. These transnational performances are spaces from which Indo-Caribbean communities develop a public voice that responds to perceived exclusions and erasures. The geographies of belonging that are central in the transnational performances of Indo-Caribbean cultural producers suggest that we must attend to the cultural practices developed within and across boundaries while taking a historical perspective on global processes that are reconfigured in the contemporary period.
Van Govind
(2022-08-12) Institute for Diversity & Civic Life; Department of Religious Studies
This interview is with Van Govind, a pharmacy school student in Houston, Texas who was born in the Texas Valley and later moved to San Antonio, TX with their family following the 2008 recession. They describe the events and institutions that shaped their perception of community and self. They explain how their family navigated culture and community growing up since neither of Van’s parents were born in India. Van discusses their connection to Hinduism and how developing an academic understanding of modern day India helped them navigate their queer identity.