Mathava – The King of Videgha

Listening to Icons: Indian Iconographical and Iconological Studies , 2016

In this article certain established scholarly views about religious life in early Mathurā are put to the scrutiny of material and textual evidence brought together here in a new interpretive relationship. Maintaining that texts construct sacred geography by overlaying narrative and mythic associations on the physical features and spread of the terrain, this article first turns to the Harivam. śa Purān · a for its mythic depiction of Mathurā and the Vraja region and compares it with the scant references from the Divyāvadāna and Paumacariya, for their putatively Brahmanical and Buddhist–Jaina treatments of Mathurā, respectively. The article then draws attention to the paradox that while Buddhism and Jainism had a strong presence in the archaeological remains from early Mathurā, there does not appear to have been textual involvement with the city in these traditions like there is in the cult of Kr · s · n · a worship which, though relatively late in making an appearance among Mathurā's ruins, comes to textually identify itself with the city and its environs. Is this paradox a function of different literary genres and their worldviews? Relatedly, is early Kr · s · n · ite Mathurā to be understood as merely a literary figment, with no connection to ground realities, as some suggest? Or did texts contract complex relationships with sacred spaces, re-fashioning their local histories and multiple traditions of belief and worship to articulate new identities that were yet founded on continuities? This article correlates art and archaeological remains from early Mathurā with textual imaginaries to suggest ways in which to reinterpret the relationship between sacred site, text and practice.

academia.edu, 2024

A transcript of the Tibetan text of Matho vol. 175 Scan nos. 3-4 and a discussion of aspects of this manuscript's contents. I identify the text as a portion of an account of the life of Maitrīpā. This Matho fragment is among the earliest witnesses for Tibetan knowledge of the life of the 11th century Indian master Maitrīpā.

ACTA ORIENTALIA EDIDERUNT SOCIETATES ORIENTALES DANICA FENNICA NORVEGIA SVECIA LXXVI Contents, 2015

2020

The figure of Rāma and his story constitute a privileged topic to analyse the dynamics of the adaptation of Sanskrit classical models into the Braj Bhāṣā literary tradition flourishing in the sixteenth-century North India. They are traditionally acknowledged as authoritative subjects that legitimize the language in which they are narrated as a suitable literary means. With such a purpose, we will analyse how they are variously interpreted in the works of the poet Keśavdās (1555– 1617), who mainly retells the story of Rāma in his Rāmcandracandrikā (Moonlight of Rāmcandra,1601) and Vijñāngītā (Praise of Knowledge, 1610). In the first case, he describes Vālmīki appearing in a dream and empowering him to retell such divine story in the vernacular (bhāṣā), reshaping the content in a new form made of rhetorical figures and a sophisticated literary style. In the second work, the story of Rāma is taken from the Yogavāsiṣṭha and reinterpreted from a philosophical perspective, still open to b...

Endowment Studies 8, 2024

This paper will focus on Sanskrit references to maṭhas and maṭhikās in the early medieval epigraphical corpora of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, Śilāhāras and Yādavas, ruling in the Deccan from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. The most prominent evidence is provided by the five famous Chinchani copper-plate charters covering a period from 926 to 1053 ce, when the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and later the Śilāhāras and their subordinates ruled over the region north of Mumbai. A few late-twelfth-century Śilāhāra stone inscriptions from Kolhapur in south Maharashtra shed light on the multi-functional character of maṭhas. Finally, a Yādava-period stone epigraph from northwestern Maharashtra testifies to the existence of and the endowment for a very special maṭha in 1207 ce.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, ed. Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro. New York: John Wiley, 2021

The second-to third-century ce Indian authorĀryadeva (Tibetan: 'phags pa lha; Chinese: Di po) is considered to be the co-founder of the school of Buddhist (see buddhism) thought known as the "Philosophy of the Middle" (madhyamaka), a philosophy characterized by its use of dialectics to reject all metaphysical positions in favor of a thesisless quietism.Āryadeva was born in Sim. haladvīpa, orŚrī Laṅka, as a prince; he subsequently became a disciple of the great Mādhyamika master, Nāgārjuna, the author of the Madhyamakakārikā (Verses on the Philosophy of the Middle). He was active in the northern Indian Buddhist community of Nālandā and was known for his skill in debate with non-Buddhists. His major work, the Catuh .ś ataka (The four hundred [verse treatise]) criticizes both Buddhist and non-Buddhist positions of the time, inter alia, those of Brahmanical schools such as the sām. khya and vaiśes. ika. Various works, besides the Catuh .ś ataka, have been attributed toĀryadeva, especially in the Tibetan and Chinese canons, but such claims need to be considered critically. One has to differentiate between at least two individuals,Āryadeva I being the Mādhyamika to whom we attribute the Catuh .ś ataka, andĀryadeva II being a tantric author. One also needs to differentiate the Mādhyamika nāgārjuna from a tantric writer of the same name,Ārya Nāgārjuna (c. seventh century ce), or as he is often known, Nāgārjunapāda. Indeed the names and careers of the key tantrikas mirror those of their Mādhyamika counterparts,Āryadeva II being the disciple of Nāgārjunapāda and writing the Caryāmelāpakapradīpa (Lamp that integrates the practices)-which furthers theĀrya (noble) tradition of exegesis on the Guhyasamājatantra (Tantra of the esoteric community; see Wedemeyer 2007)-as well as the Cittaviśuddhiprakaran. a (The treatise on purity of mind) connected with Nāgārjunapāda's Pañcakrama (The five stages) (see Tillemans 1990, 6-7; Mimaki 1987). There is in any case no doubt that the name "Āryadeva" was widely applied to authors of works that could not have been written by the second-third-century author of the Catuh .ś ataka. A clear case is the Madhyamakabhramaghāta (The destruction of errors on Madhyamaka), attributed to anĀryadeva in the Tibetan canon: this text copiously borrows from the Madhyamakahr. dayakārikā (Verses on the heart of Madhyamaka) and Tarkajvālā (The torch of dialectics) of bhāviveka, a.k.a. Bhāvaviveka, a celebrated Mādhyamika who lived in the sixth century (i.e. 500-570 ce). Another such case is the Jñānasārasamuccaya (A compendium on the essence of knowledge), a text which the Tibetan canon ascribes toĀryadeva but which gives the fourfold presentation of Buddhist doctrine typical of the

Clio and her Descendants: Essays for Kesavan Veluthat, ed. Manu V. Devadavan. Delhi: Primus Books., 2018

The names Medvedev & Madhumati: what is the linguistic link? , 2022

The names Medvedev & Madhumati: what is the linguistic link? How are these two very different names from Russian and Sanskrit respectively related?