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South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology (Brill, 2025) examines the history and practice of animal omen divination in South Asia, comparing it to similar traditions in Mesopotamia and classical antiquity. It provides critical …
Guest: Kenneth G. Zysk
Date: 5/14/2026
Manusmriti occupies a prominent place in Indian textual tradition as one of the authentic sources of dharma. However, contemporary engagement with the text has been wrought with prejudice and discomfort left in the wake of colonialism. …
Guest: Nithin Sridhar
Date: 5/7/2026
Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producing a history and anthropology of mantras. The six-year project investigates mantras …
Guest: Carola Lorea
Date: 4/23/2026
Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or …
Guest: Gudrun Bühnemann
Date: 4/16/2026
Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (British Academy, 2025) focuses on exploring the role of different 'ways of knowing' or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in …
Guest: Karen O'Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe
Date: 4/9/2026
Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India (HASP, 2025) brings together essays that offer in-depth explorations of Hindu sacred …
Guest: Ewa Debicka-Borek and Ofer Peres
Date: 3/19/2026
The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu Great Goddess Durgā, one of the most significant deities in the Hindu pantheon, who is …
Guest: Hillary Rodrigues
Date: 3/5/2026
Chips from a Calcutta Workshop: Comparative Religion in Nineteenth Century India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the development and nature of comparative religion in nineteenth-century India. It focuses on the ideas and …
Guest: Neilesh Bose
Date: 2/19/2026
In The Meeting of Rivers: Translating Religion in Early Modern India (Oxford UP, 2025), Elaine Fisher reconstructs Vīraśaiva origins from unstudied multilingual archives, overturning the conventional narrative of a monolingual Kannada …
Guest: Elaine Fisher
Date: 2/12/2026
Hillary Langberg discusses Wisdom of the Goddess, an online exhibition she curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art featuring nine goddesses across Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Langberg traces her path from fieldwork …
Guest: Hillary Langberg
Date: 2/5/2026