Sensing the Sacred FINNIAN M MOORE GERETY

Histories of art in India never fail to mention the greatest hits: Mughal miniatures, Chola bronzes, the ruins of Hampi. Yet most artworks—not just in India but around the world—are not celebrated masterpieces like these; rather, many are blends and montages, mixtures of materials and methods, styles that can’t be easily classified; made by artists who are anonymous or not widely known. Where’s the history of these arts? A new monograph by Holly Shaffer, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture at Brown University, shines a light on this theme in colonial India: it’s called Grafted Arts: Art Making and Taking in the Struggle for Western India; 1760-1910 (Yale University Press 2022) This remarkable book looks at Maratha military rulers and British East India Company officials who used the arts to engage in diplomacy, wage war, compete for prestige, and generate devotion. Shaffer uses the idea of “graft” in the sense of grafting one plant to another, to produce something new; but also in the sense of cheating or corruption. She highlights the remarkable people and relationships that make up the grafted arts—unknown artists making works for hire, rulers using art for propaganda and prestige, patrons supporting and plundering artworks; officials making a profit through collecting—not to mention an unexpected cameo from William Blake! So we invite you to enter into a visual frame of mind and listen to this conversation.

When you think of alcoholic drinks in world history, you might think of French wine, Japanese sake, Russian vodka...But what about India? Although it’s not well represented in global histories of alcohol, in fact Indian history overflows with drinking cultures and a diverse array of alcoholic drinks. We learn about all this—and more—through the pioneering research of James McHugh, Professor of South Asian religions at the University of Southern California. His new book, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions, is the first-ever academic monograph on alcohol in early India. But it’s not just about alcohol, because drinking in India was rarely an end in itself: whether in rowdy festivals, sleepy taverns, or sophisticated salons, drinking was a social activity; drinks were meant to be consumed with friends and snacks in a convivial atmosphere. By analyzing texts in Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit, McHugh offers insights on the technology of ancient brewing, theories of alcohol and intoxication, and how drink relates to other substances: including betel nut, cannabis, and tobacco. In this interview, he gives us a small taste of this rich scholarship. So pour yourself a glass and settle in…

SHOW NOTES

James McHugh’s book, An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions, was published by Oxford University Press in late 2021. Also highly recommended is his previous book, Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture (OUP 2012). Find out more about this podcast and the Center for Contemporary South Asia at our show page. We’re eager for your feedback and support: please subscribe and then rate the show on your favorite platforms so that others can find us. You can email us at southasia@brown.edu.

Would it surprise you to learn that most people in contemporary India believe in god? That Śiva is the most popular Hindu deity? That while half of Indians meditate weekly, only a third have ever practiced yoga? These are just a few of the findings of the Pew Research Center’s report on religious life in India. Published this past summer, the Pew report is a major milestone in the study of South Asian religions. It represents the most extensive publicly available data ever collected on religion in Indian society—including the intersection with politics, caste, and identity. One of the report’s big themes comes through in the title: “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation.” Even as most Indians value religious diversity and share beliefs and practices across faiths, they nevertheless prefer to keep their communities separate—and they don’t always feel they have much in common with each other. To learn more, I sat down with Neha Sahgal, the report’s lead author and a specialist in international polling on religion. Sahgal is associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank that studies global trends and attitudes. In our conversation, Neha Sahgal made a compelling case for studying religion using survey research—and explained how quantitative data can shed light on even the most controversial aspects of Indian religions.

To find out more about the Pew report, visit: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/

Sanskrit is known as the classical language of India, especially Hindu traditions. But over its 3000 year history, Sanskrit was widely used in other Indian religions, as well. And not only religions. Sanskrit was a lingua franca in Early India—a window onto cosmopolitain, literary, intellectual, and political cultures of the past. On this episode, Finnian talks with Audrey Truschke, a historian of South Asia at Rutgers University, who has made her name studying Sanskrit texts and Islamic power on the subcontinent. Her most recent book, “The Language of History: Sanskrit Narratives of Indo-Muslim Rule” (Columbia UP), presents a ”history of Sanskrit views of a Muslim Other.” For those on the far-right of identity politics in modern India, the very existence of such Sanskrit works about Muslims—not to mention Audrey Truschke’s scholarship—comes as an affront. Hindu nationalists are deeply invested in the idea of a never-ending conflict between Hindus and Muslims. And they’re not above distorting history or attacking historians to preserve their worldview. In this conversation, Audrey Truschke speaks about her work, her ideas about history, the importance of public scholarship—and why her research makes some folks on Twitter so angry.

Learn more about Audrey Truschke and her new book here: https://www.audreytruschke.com/

Highlights of this conversation are featured on the podcast Trending Globally, “Hindu Nationalism, Contested Histories, and Challenging the Fascism Blueprint.” Listen to this episode and subscribe to Trending Globally here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hindu-nationalism-contested-histories-challenging-fascism/id1173544870?i=1000530302801

Find out more about Sensing the Sacred and the Center for Contemporary South Asia here: https://watson.brown.edu/southasia/news/podcasts. We’re eager for your feedback and support: please subscribe and then rate the show on your favorite platforms so that others can find us. You can email us at southasia@brown.edu.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “yoga”? A sequence of postures, maybe; perhaps a seated meditation. But this Sanskrit word has a history going back millennia. Yoga has been—and continues to be—a label for many different doctrines and practices; a spiritual path claimed by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, and many other groups; and a potent symbol in religion, politics and culture around the world. Growing from roots in early Indian asceticism, Yoga today is a truly global phenomenon. At the same time, yoga’s success has also fostered the rise of yoga and meditation studies as an academic discipline. Here, the tried and true methods of scholarship challenge the monolithic perception of yoga. Instead, yoga studies reveals the stunning diversity of yoga’s past and present. On this episode, Finnian talks with Karen O’Brien Kop (University of Roehampton) and Suzanne Newcombe (Open University), two scholars working at the forefront of yoga and meditation studies. Their new edited volume, the Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, is a watershed publication that reflects on key topics including decolonization, “classical yoga,” scholar-practitioners, health, and politics.

Show Notes

Find out more about this podcast and the Center for Contemporary South Asia at our show page. Make sure to check out other podcasts from the Watson Institute here. We’re eager for your feedback and support: please subscribe and then rate the show on your favorite platforms so that others can find us. You can email us at southasia@brown.edu.

Suzanne Newcombe is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University, London and author of the recent monograph Yoga in Britain from Equinox Publishing; Karen O’Brien Kop is a Lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, London and author of the forthcoming monograph, Rethinking ‘Classical’ Yoga and Buddhism: Mind, Metaphors and Materiality. Working together as editors, Karen and Suzanne recently published the massive Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (Routledge 2021), which we discuss at length in this conversation.

Some years before the Buddha lived, another renunciant teacher rose to prominence in ancient India. Known as Mahavira, “the great hero,” he practiced the most difficult austerities. Preaching non-violence, he aimed to transcend his body and escape rebirth. When he finally reached liberation, he became known as the Jina—the victor. His followers, the Jains, worshipped Mahavira as the last in a series of enlightened teachers. Although its numbers are relatively small, Jainism remains a vibrant faith in India up to the present day—making it one of the oldest surviving religions in South Asia. On this episode, Finnian speaks with Ellen Gough, assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University, about her work on Jain mantras and rituals. These are features that most scholarship on Jainism has neglected—or even considered alien to the tradition’s ascetic roots. But Ellen’s research puts Jainism in a new light, showing the importance of mantras, mandalas, healing, and astrology. 

Show Notes

Find out more about this podcast and the Center for Contemporary South Asia at our show page. Make sure to check out other podcasts from the Watson Institute here. We’re eager for your feedback and support: please subscribe and then rate the show on your favorite platforms so that others can find us. You can email us at southasia@brown.edu.

Ellen Gough’s forthcoming book is Making a Mantra: Tantric Ritual and Renunciation on the Jain Path to Liberation (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Formulas, texts, and terms discussed in this program include:

Namokar/Navkar/Panchanamaskar mantra, a popular devotional mantra that praises Jain monks, teachers, and saints

The Jaina Method of Curing by Manju Jain

Bhaktamara stotra, a widely used Jain praise-poem

Riddhis, ‘superhuman powers’ achieved by some Jain teachers and ascetics

Tirthankaras ‘ford-makers,’ 24 enlightened figures whose lives provide a template for Jains to pursue liberation

Rishaba, the first tirthankara

Mahavira, the last tirthankara