During the early medieval period Tantric traditions - including Śaivism,
the Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra, the Buddhist Mantrayāna, and Jaina Tantra
– grew to become an integral part of the religious landscape of the
early medieval Indic world, reaching across South, South-East and East
Asia. Major scholarly advances in the past decades – notably the works
of Alexis Sanderson – have demonstrated on the basis of textual and
epigraphical sources by what means Tantric initiatory groups, which
initially appear to have constituted a marginal phenomenon, quickly
extended their reach towards the wider public and in some cases even
succeeded in forging close ties with the ruling elite. Given the far-reaching
impact of Tantrism, it becomes then difficult to define the range of what
constitutes a “Tantric community”, from an emic as well as an etic point of
view. This task is further complicated by the fact that the surviving Tantric
textual sources are prescriptive in nature and rarely intentionally address
questions of social relevance so that the social reality of how initiatory
groups were organized on the ground and concretely interfaced with the
wider community of non-initiates or with competing traditions during this
period is still little understood. The papers presented at this symposium
will explore the surviving textual sources with the aim of identifying and
exploring topics that will help to recover aspects of the socio-religious
environment within which these Tantric groups negotiated their position
in society and conceptualised their visions of community.
VISIONS
OF
COMMUNITY
SFB – Spezialforschungsbereich
Tantric
Communities
in Context:
Sacred Secrets
&Public Rituals
Location:
Institute for the Cultural &
Intellectual History of Asia
Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Vienna
Underground Stop: U3 Kardinal-Nagl-Platz
Contact & Information:
Mail: [email protected]
Tel.: +43 1 51581 / 6416
grafikdesign: dagmar Giesriegl
http://www.ikga.oeaw.ac.at/Events/Tantric_Communities
International Symposium
5th-7th February 2015
rGya-gar Paṇḍita and Mi-nyag King:
Indian-Tangut relations between the
11-13th centuries
Haoran Hou, Leipzig University, Germany
Inclusivism revisited: The worship
of other gods in the Śivadharma, the
Skandapurāṇa and the Niśvāsamukha
Peter Bisschop, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Conversion, theft, and culture:
On some potential explanations for
scriptural flows and interactions
between Tantric communities
Paul Gerstmayr, University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
The Self as a community
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch
Representations of women in the
Brahmayāmala
Shaman Hatley, Concordia University, Montreal,
Canada
Mātṛtantra texts of South India with
special reference to the worship
of Rurujit in Kerala and to three
different communities associated
with this worship
S.A.S. Sarma, École Française d’Extrême-Orient,
Pondicherry, France
A note on damanotsava (a spring
rite of reparation) and on the
twelfth-century Saiddhāntika ritual
manual called the Jñānaratnāvalī
Dominic Goodall, École Française d’ExtrêmeOrient, Paris, France
16:30 - 17:00
10:00 - 10:30
10:30 - 11:00
Csaba Kiss, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest,
Hungary
Power, protection and politics:
Hanumān worship in the
late Malla period
Gudrun Bühnemann, University of WisconsinMadison, U.S.A.
The Tantric initiation of
a Digambara monk
Ellen Gough, Yale University, New Haven, U.S.A.
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 - 12:00
11:30 - 12:00
12:00 - 12:30
The bhasmāṅkura, the offspring of a
Śaiva ascetic and a Śūdra prostitute
12:00 - 12:30
Florinda De Simini, University of Naples
»L‘Orientale«, Italy
Christian Ferstl, University of Vienna, Austria
Saturday 7th February
12:30 - 13:00
9:30 - 10:00
Klaus-Dieter Mathes, University of Vienna, Austria
12:45 - 14:00 Lunch
Aspects of the cult of the book
in the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava Tantric
traditions
Friday 6th February
Péter-Dániel Szántó, University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
Sahajavajra’s integration of Tantra
into mainstream Buddhism:
An analysis of his Tattvadaśakaṭīkā
and Sthitisamuccaya
Gergely Hidas, British Museum, London,
United Kingdom
Aśvaghoṣa’s and Bāṇa’s literary
representations of Śaiva hermits
Judit Törzsök, Charles-de-Gaulle University - Lille
III, France
14:00 - 14:30
14:30 - 15:00
15:00 - 15:30
The King of Tantras as Obtained
from the Sweat of the Goddess
Further Mahāpratisarā fragments
from Gilgit and aspects of the social
settings of dhāraṇī literature
Whose dharma? Śākta Tantric
community rules (samayas) and
dharmaśāstric prescriptions
14:30 - 15:00
Harunaga Isaacson, University of Hamburg,
Germany
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break
10:00 - 10:30
11:15 - 11:45
11:45 - 12:15
12:15 - 12:45
From ear to ear, from mouth to
mouth: Glimpses of Indian Buddhist
Tantric transmission
Kenichi Kuranishi, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan
15:00 - 15:30
Alexis Sanderson, University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
Ryugen Tanemura, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break
Narratives as a medium for
appealing to the royal court: A look
into the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā
Marion Rastelli, Institute for the Cultural and
Intellectual History of Asia, Vienna, Austria
Rhetoric of a military cult: The case
of the Ahirbudhnyasaṃhitā
Francesco Bianchini, University of Vienna, Austria
How to become an Ekāyana
Robert Leach, University of Zurich, Switzerland
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 - 16:30
Keynote address:
How public was the Śaiva
Mantramārga?
16:00 - 16:30
Maria-Christina Lutter, University of Vienna,
Austria
16:30 - 17:00
A short introduction to the “Visions
of Community” project
Quotations or re-quotations:
Scholarly activities in the Buddhist
monasteries
10:30 - 11:00
9:30 - 9:40
9:40 - 10:00
10:00 - 10:50
Vincent Eltschinger, Institute for the Cultural and
Intellectual History of Asia, Vienna, Austria
10:50 - 11:15 Coffee break
14:00 - 14:30
programme
Welcoming
On the recipient of the Buddhist
Tantric funeral rite
An ideal rule by an initiated Śaiva
king described in a Kashmirian
courtly poem
Yuko Yokochi, Kyoto University, Japan
Somdev Vasudeva, Kyoto University, Japan
subject to change
Tantric Communities in Context: Sacred Secrets & Public Rituals
Thursday 5th February