War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, 2016 Florida State University
War Of The Worlds: Music And Cosmological Battles In The Balinese Cremation Procession, Michael B. Bakan
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
Abstract
This article explores processional action as a form of cosmological intervention in Hindu-Balinese cremation processions, focusing on the multiple and intersecting functions of a particular type of Balinese instrumental music ensemble: the gamelan beleganjur. It explores the alternately “enlivening and protective aspects” (DeVale 1990, 62) that underlie the use of beleganjur music in the ngaben, or cremation ritual, showing how beleganjur’s sonic power and rhythmic drive serve to combat malevolent spirit beings, strengthen and inspire processional participants in their efforts to meet challenging ritual obligations, and grant courage to the souls of deceased individuals embarking on their …
Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, 2016 College of the Holy Cross
Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz
Journal of Global Catholicism
Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.
Authority, Representation, And Offense: Dalit Catholics, Foot Washing, And The Study Of Global Catholicism, 2016 College of the Holy Cross
Authority, Representation, And Offense: Dalit Catholics, Foot Washing, And The Study Of Global Catholicism, Mathew Schmalz
Journal of Global Catholicism
In reflecting on a sharp scholarly exchange at a conference, this article explores issues of authority, representation, and offense in global Catholic and South Asian Studies. Focusing on the act of foot washing by Dalit Catholics, the article examines how scholarly offense is linked to particular claims of representational authority. The article also puts this discussion within the context of contemporary debates about Western portrayals of Indian culture and society.
The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, 2016 Colby College
The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.
Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, 2016 College of the Holy Cross
Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …
The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, 2016 Villanova University
The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico
Journal of Global Catholicism
This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …
In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, 2016 Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, Chennai, India
In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.
Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, 2016 University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire
Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston
Journal of Global Catholicism
This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …
Tantric Alchemy Of The Soul: A Philosophical Analysis And Synthesis Of Jung And Kashmir Shaivism, 2016 Oglethorpe University
Tantric Alchemy Of The Soul: A Philosophical Analysis And Synthesis Of Jung And Kashmir Shaivism, Derek C. Wolter
Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research
One of the most fascinating parts of intellectual globalization is the dialogue that occurs between two vastly removed systems of thought. One particular area of interdisciplinary dialogue that has emerged in the last century is between Western psychology and traditional Eastern religious and philosophical thought. Two particular disciplines that bear a striking resemblance ripe for comparative study are Jung’s psychology and Indian Tantrism. Some of this dialogue has already taken place, to a limited extent by Jung himself, but more so by modern pundits of Tantrism, particular Buddhist Tantrism. While some truly important work has been done in the comparative …
Shirdi Sai Baba As Guru And God: Narasimhaswami’S Vision Of The Samartha Sadguru, 2016 Bucknell University
Shirdi Sai Baba As Guru And God: Narasimhaswami’S Vision Of The Samartha Sadguru, Karline Mclain
Faculty Journal Articles
B. V. Narasimhaswami (1874–1956) never met Shirdi Sai Baba face to face, for he arrived in Shirdi eighteen years after Sai Baba’s death in 1918. However, the overwhelming sense of loving union he experienced in Shirdi convinced him that Sai Baba was still accessible from beyond the grave. For the remaining years of his life he worked relentlessly to spread Sai Baba’s name throughout India. This article examines the tension between inclusion and exclusion in Narasimhaswami’s interpretation of Sai Baba. Narasimhaswami believed that Sai Baba was a divinized guru with two interconnected missions: The spiritual uplift of individuals and the …
Faith And Foreign Policy In India: Legal Ambiguity, Selective Xenophobia, And Anti-Minority Violence, 2016 Butler University
Faith And Foreign Policy In India: Legal Ambiguity, Selective Xenophobia, And Anti-Minority Violence, Chad M. Bauman
Chad M. Bauman
Bali: The Land Of Many Gods, 2016 Western Kentucky University
Bali: The Land Of Many Gods, Brian E. Coutts
DLPS Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Avatars Of Oneself, 2016 Duquesne University
Avatars Of Oneself, Patrick L. Miller
Sophia and Philosophia
Zoe is an American woman who has found that “drawing the line and standing firm has always made me feel like a bitch, and, actually, I feel that people saw me as one too.”[3] For two years, however, she played an online role-playing game using a male character where “as a man I was liberated from all that.” She made mistakes in her unfamiliar role, but learned from them. “I got better at being firm but not rigid,” she says; “I practiced, safe from criticism.” Case is an American man, who plays a similar game but always appears as a …
Tarian Perdamaian: Enacting Alternative Hindu/Christian Identity Discourses Through "Secular" Balinese Performing Arts, 2016 Wesleyan University
Tarian Perdamaian: Enacting Alternative Hindu/Christian Identity Discourses Through "Secular" Balinese Performing Arts, Dustin D. Wiebe
Yale Journal of Music & Religion
This article examines the nature of interreligious relations between Protestants of the Bali Church and Hindus as enacted through dramatic forms of Balinese music and dance. Particular attention is paid to the influence of mass tourism as a contributing factor in this process. Since the early twentieth century these arts have formed a central component of a pan-Balinese identity discourse known as" kebalian." The first Balinese converted to Christianity during the 1930s and were subsequently excommunicated from their ancestral villages for refusing to participate in local customary practices (including the ritualistic use of gamelan music). For this reason, Balinese …
Editor's Introduction, 2016 University of Notre Dame
Editor's Introduction, Bradley Malkovsky
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
One of the oldest and most persistent challenges to faith in an all-good and all-powerful Creator is the reality of evil and suffering. This issue of the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies addresses the perennial issue of theodicy in a wide-ranging way, examining both well-known and lesser-known Hindu and Christian approaches, even going so far as to question the very legitimacy of theodicy itself.
Narasimha, Lord Of Transitions, Transformations, And Theater Festivals: God And Evil In Hindu Cosmology, Myth, And Practice, 2016 Shawnee State University
Narasimha, Lord Of Transitions, Transformations, And Theater Festivals: God And Evil In Hindu Cosmology, Myth, And Practice, Lavanya Vemsani
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
This paper focuses on the multi-faceted nature of the divine depicted in Narasimha and the unique perspectives on God and evil offered by the myths of Narasimha, which is also subliminally represented within the religious practice and performance traditions associated with Narasimha.
Practice And The Comparative Study Of Mysticism: The Yoga Sūtra And The Cloud Of Unknowing, 2016 Rockhurst University
Practice And The Comparative Study Of Mysticism: The Yoga Sūtra And The Cloud Of Unknowing, Glenn Young
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
In his entry for the term “mysticism” in the updated edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion, Peter Moore writes that “the varieties of mystical practice tend to receive less scholarly attention than the varieties of experience or doctrine.”1 Bernard McGinn similarly claims that many studies of mysticism “so emphasize the moment of mystical contact . . . that they neglect the study of the fullness of the via mystica, particularly the ascetical and moral preparation for such contact.”2 Following from suggestions such as these, this article will do a comparative reading of two mystical texts: the Yoga Sūtra, a third-century …
Viewpoint: Hinduism And The Academy: Towards A Dialogue Between Scholar And Practitioner, 2016 Utah State University
Viewpoint: Hinduism And The Academy: Towards A Dialogue Between Scholar And Practitioner, Ravi M. Gupta
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
Gupta articlulates a rationale as to why the position of both the academician and the practitioner are necessary for meaningful religious dialog.
Book Review: Sacred Matters: Material Religion In South Asian Traditions, 2016 Truman State University
Book Review: Sacred Matters: Material Religion In South Asian Traditions, Lloyd W. Pflueger
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
Book Review of Sacred Matters: Material Religion in South Asian Traditions. Edited by Tracy Pintchman and Corinne G. Dempsey. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015, xi + 221 pp.
Book Review: Re-Imagining South Asian Religions: Essays In Honour Of Professors Harold G. Coward And Ronald W. Neufeldt, 2016 Laidlaw College
Book Review: Re-Imagining South Asian Religions: Essays In Honour Of Professors Harold G. Coward And Ronald W. Neufeldt, Bob Robinson
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
Book Review of Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt. (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, volume 141.) Edited by Pashaura Singh and Michael Hawley. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013, xxv + 302 pp.