Hayagrīva in the Hayaśīrṣa Saṃhitā

Hayagrīva previous to Veṅkaṭanātha seems to have a non-specific Vaiṣṇava iconography, with only his horse-head as a fixed element. He is, for instance, a standing figure in Khajurao, where he carries a club and has one hand in the dānamūdrā.

Hayagrīva at Khajurao

By contrast, after Veṅkaṭanātha, the iconography radically changes and two possibilities become fixed:

Veṅkaṭanātha’s Buddhist quotes

Veṅkaṭanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika) quotes relatively often from Buddhist texts, especially from Pramāṇavāda ones (as was possibly customary within Indian philosophical circles. Does it mean that he could still directly access Pramāṇavāda texts? Or does he depend on second-hand quotations?

Genetics and the Aryan invasion/Out of India theories

From time to time someone tries to have settled a cultural issue through biological elements. I tend to think that this is a fallacy of false cause. Consider, in this regard, the following comment by Jan Houben on the Indology mailing list (published with his consent):

The Error was (19th cent and nazi-time Aryan Invasion Theory) and is (Out-of-India-Theory) to think that GENETICS (and racial theories) can provide explanations in cultural questions in history, such as the well-attested spread of vedism between 1500 BCE (north-west of Indian subcontinent) and 1500 AD (throughout Indian subcontinent). Many scholars have remained unconvinced and unhappy with explanations in these terms from the beginning, innumerable are those who suffered from attempts to base state implemented policies on these theories but scientific ‘truth’ is ‘truth’ and in the absence of any other explanation … As I have been arguing in several studies, however, in our understanding of the phenomenon of the spread of vedism GENETICS need not be invoked at all as a crucial factor as it is to be understood rather in terms of MEMETICS and MEMORY CULTURE taking into account vedism’s interaction over centuries with its ecological and economic environment (for instance http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00673190). Worries about genetic lineage became obsessively important only secondarily in the last or K-strategist (niche-exploitation) phase of vedism reflected in a relatively late work such as Manu (on Hitler and Manu see Halbfass India and Europe p 139).

 

What do you think? Do you trust biological explanations?

It is fun to reconstruct the (Central Asian) puzzle—An interview with Chiara Barbati —Part 1

I met Chiara Barbati long ago in Italy, because we studied at the same University (“Sapienza” University of Rome), but it is only once we had both moved to Vienna that we became friends. She is now a researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and works on Sogdian, which is probably well-known to many of us because of the many Buddhist texts being translated from Sanskrit (or, in a less amount, from Chinese) into Sogdian. All the others will be perhaps surprised to know that Sogdian exists (almost) only as a corpus of translations, from Syriac (in the case of Christian texts), from Sanskrit (Buddhist texts) or from Middle Persian (Manichean texts).

Economic structures and philosophic superstructures: On Scott 2013 and Eltschinger 2013

How was Capitalism born? And, more in general, 1. does the economic structure determine its superstructure (including philosophy or religion), as in Marx; 2. does a certain philosophy, religion, etc. determine a certain economic result, as in Weber; or 3. do important actors select a certain philosophy, religion, etc., because it is more adequate for their needs? Or are there still other solutions (as in Hirschman’s 1977 The Passions and the Interests)?

What was happening in Indian publishing houses at the beginning of the 20th c.?

(apologies again for the lack of diacritics, I am still at home)

After several years, I could finally hold grasp of the editio princeps of Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā. I found it in the University library in Kiel (too good that German Indology has managed to acquire so many important books!), in a volume collecting other works (see below), presumably because they were all parts of the same series.

What is involved in a religious identity? On the Introduction of Leach 2012

What are the Pāñcarātras? Is there anything like a uniform Pāñcarātra Canon and/or Theology? Or are these texts only part of a constellation which has been made consistent by its later interpreters?