All Episodes
Episodes
Aleksandar Uskokov, "The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra: An Introduction" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
The Brahma-sutra, attributed to Badaraya (ca. 400 CE), is the canonical book of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition which became the doctrinal backbone of modern Hinduism. As an explanation of the Upanishads, it is...
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A Chat with Sanskrit Scholar John Brockington
Senior scholar John Brockington discusses his scholarship, his role in establishing key conferences, and his work on an online research archive on the spread of the story of RaÌma.
Professor John Brockington graduated...
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Nishant Kumar, "Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary" (Routledge, 2022)
Nishant Kumar's Religious Offense and Censorship of Publications: An Enquiry Through the Prism of Indian Laws and the Judiciary (Routledge, 2022) analyzes the role of laws and the judiciary in the process of...
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Tony K. Stewart, "Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination" (U California Press, 2019)
There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dating to the sixteenth century, the stories--pīr...
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Laurah E. Klepinger, "Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots" (Lexington Books, 2022)
Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots (Lexington Books, 2022) is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga...
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Ching Keng, "Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Today I talked to Ching Keng about his book Toward a New Image of Paramartha: Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha Buddhism Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha are often regarded as antagonistic Indian...
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Divya Cherian, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2022) explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian presents a...
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Andrea Acri and Paolo E. Rosati, "Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia: Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from the Margins" (Routledge, 2022)
Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia: Texts, Practices, and Practitioners from the Margins (Routledge, 2022) explores the cross- and trans-cultural dialectic between Tantra and intersecting...
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Rethinking Community in Myanmar: Practices of We-Formation Among Muslims and Hindus in Urban Yangon
Where does the concept of âcommunityâ come from? How does it shape the lives of Hindus and Muslims in metropolitan Yangon? And how do these people navigate between their ethno-religious and other cosmopolitan...
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Ezra Rashkow, "The Nature of Endangerment in India: Tigers, 'Tribes', Extermination and Conservation, 1818-2020" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Perhaps no category of people on earth has been perceived as more endangered, nor subjected to more preservation efforts, than indigenous peoples. And in India, calls for the conservation of Adivasi culture have often...
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Illuminations Episode 3: Divine Technology
Itâs common to feel that technology removes the magic of the world, but Hindu worshippers in Bangalore have shown that it's all in the approach.Â
Guest
Tulasi Srinivas, associate professor of anthropology at the...
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Audrey Truschke, "The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule" (Columbia UP, 2021)
In her layered and theoretically astute new book The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule (Columbia UP, 2021), Audrey Truschke documents and analyzes a range of Sanskrit texts in premodern...
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