The Sacrifice of Battle and the Battle of Yoga, or How to Word Away a Discontented Wife (original) (raw)
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A MARGIN'S MARCH TO THE MAINSTREAM-'THE STORY OF MY SANSKRIT'
Trans Stellar Journals, 2021
In the context of dalit women narratives, testimony and autobiography involves discovering the words behind certain kinds of in articulations. Crucially still, it also entails finding alternate strategies for tracing the very contours or shapes of their silences. This article examines the complex and various different ways in which writing by a subaltern woman may be read, both collectively and individually, as practices of bearing witness to forms of resisting silence and voicelessness. For the most part, the text taken up for study, "The Story of My Sanskrit", an excerpt from Antasphot (Outburst), may be viewed as telling tales of structured oppression, subjugation and everyday humiliations faced by a dalit girl in her academic pursuit and offer testimonies to what Lorna Goodison evocatively refers to in her poem 'Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move' as "the half that has never been told". As such, the reading of Kumud Pawde's narrative requires much more complex, attentive and more accountable exercises of listening and critical engagement than what had been offered by Western canons of literary analysis and interpretation.
Studia Orientalia, Vol. 123, 2022
viii the paper if they wanted to do so, and to take care of the English language editing of the two volumes, on the condition that the two volumes would first appear in Studia Orientalia, the journal of the Finnish Oriental Society. Republication of a printed version of these volumes is the prerogative of the MLBD, who, we trust, will also be happy for the completion of the series. Dr. Butters is a specialist of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and thus also qualified to handle Sanskrit studies. It has been an arduous task for him, but he has succeeded. We are most grateful to him, and also to all the authors who nearly without exception have welcomed his initiative. Helsinki and Rantasalmi,
Yogabῑja: a Critical Transcription of a Text on a Haṭhayoga
Nova Tellus, 2016
Este trabajo brinda una transcripción crítica de un texto temprano e importante en materia de haṭhayoga. La transcripción se basa en tres recensiones procedentes tanto del norte como del sur de India. Uno de los propósitos es tratar de solventar algunos problemas de interpretación causados por las discrepancias existentes entre diferentes ediciones del texto. Además, busca fomentar la labor académica, exegética y filológica, entre los estudiosos tanto en torno de este texto, como de la tradición textual del haṭhayoga.
2024
Doctoral thesis in History of Religions, Stockholm University. (With an inserted list of corrigenda, last updated December 2024.) The dissertation identifies the ideal renouncer and the path to liberation on the basis of nearly 3500 “independent verses/stanzas” (gāthās, ślokas), in early Brahmanic, Buddhist, and Jaina literature, including Mahābhārata, Suttanipāta, Dhammapada, Saṃyuttanikāya, Uttarajjhayaṇa, Sūyagaḍa, Isibhāsiyāiṃ, and other texts. It is argued that this genre of poetry is important for our knowledge about the ascetic milieu in Northern India around the 5th century BCE. Verses from the three traditions are compared with one another, the verse- material is compared with selected texts belonging to other genres, and the literature is placed in its historical context. Attention is given to vocabulary, formulas, similes, and recurrent themes. Hypotheses about the early history of the renouncer-traditions are tested against the verse-material. Part 1 discusses aim, theory, method, terminology, previous studies, earliness and authenticity of the verses, origins and characteristics of the genre, and relevant texts. Part 2 treats the debated origins of emancipatory askesis, brāhmaṇa and śramaṇa, authority and founder-figures, and female ascetics. Part 3 proceeds along an ideal path to liberation: from reasons for giving up mundane pursuits, to going forth into homelessness, practise of austerity, itinerancy, solitude, seclusion, mendicancy, purification, non-harm, restraint, heroic overcoming of obstacles, and meditation, to attainment of gnosis and awakening, and finally liberation from saṃsāra. Part 4 is the conclusion. The Appendices contain the entire verse-material, as well as defining sentences in final pādas, shared whole verses, and key-terms. It is concluded that in the three verse-corpora one can identify a shared outlook, which is world-rejecting, autocentric, and telos-oriented, and a shared renouncer-ideal, which is male, heroic, and austere. The same outlook and ideal are found in narrative accounts about Śākyamuni, Mahāvīra, and others who attain the highest goal. Differences between the three traditions concern mainly the use of certain terms, formulas, and similes, less so doctrine, but the differences are not reducible to a divide between Brahmanic and Buddhist/Jaina. Generally speaking, each tradition has composed its own verses that promote a renouncer-ideal and a path to liberation, rather than having borrowed verses from another tradition or from a common source. The many similarities between the three traditions are primarily due to their common origin in the ascetic milieu, in which the gāthā was an established literary medium for making authoritative statements. It is argued that the shared outlook and ideal were established before the introduction of two-step ordination, nuns’ order, fourfold community, devotion to an exalted founder-figure, and the building of monasteries. The verse-content points to a rural environment and a stratified society rooted in late Vedic culture. The renunciant movement of the 5th century BCE can be seen as the culmination of a centuries-old ascetic tradition in ancient India.
2012. Yogasūtra 1.10, 1.21–23, and 2.9 in the Light of the Indo-Javanese Dharma Pātañjala
This paper discusses a series of sūtras of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, namely 1.10, 1.21–23, and 2.9, in the light of their paraphrase and/or interpretation found in the Dharma Pātañjala (‘Book/System of Patañjali’), an Old Javanese-Sanskrit Śaiva scripture retrieved from a rare West Javanese codex unicus dated ca. 1450 AD. Besides a philosophical exposition of the tenets of a form of Śaiva Siddhānta, the Dharma Pātañjala contains a long presentation of the yoga system that apparently follows the first three chapters of Patañjal’s Yogasūtra, either interweaving Sanskrit excerpts from an untraced versified version of the latter text with an Old Javanese commentary, or directly rendering into Old Javanese what appears to be an original Sanskrit commentary. Although the Old Javanese prose often bears a strong resemblance with the arrangement and formulation of the topics treated in the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, it diverges from that commentary in several respects. The Dharma Pātañjala often presents specific doctrinal details that are found in other (sub)commentaries or in the Arabic rendering of the sūtras-cum-commentary composed by al-Bīrūnī before 1030 AD, or adds original elements that are unattested elsewhere. The testimony of the Dharma Pātañjala turns out to be useful in order to solve some of the dilemmas posed by the selected sūtras. It may also help us to better understand the textual cultural transmission and cultural reception of Patañjali’s work in both South and Southeast Asia, for its author, rather than freely borrowing from different Sanskrit commentaries, appear to have drawn upon an as yet unidentified, and possibly lost, ‘common source’.