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- Convenors:
-
Lucian Wong
(Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies)
Robert Czyżykowski (Jagiellonian University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Tony K. Stewart
(Vanderbilt University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Omega room
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 5 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
This panel will examine the rich repertoire of bodily technologies developed within the highly diverse religious context of premodern Bengal, in which the body has been understood as a key site of human transformation.
Long Abstract:
For some decades now, the body has been deployed as a productive theoretical lens in the sphere of religion – a domain deeply rooted in bodily schemes. Scholarship on South Asian religions has made an important contribution to this discourse, disclosing the body as integral to ritual, society, and cosmology, among other realms, in this region. This discourse has revealed the centrality of body-centred techniques – or bodily technologies – to the Indic religious lifeworld. This panel will explore a range of such techniques developed within an important and highly religiously pluralistic literary domain in this context, namely that of premodern Bengal. Though the 'Middle Bengali' textual corpus (c. 1400 – 1800) is one of the most expansive premodern Indic vernacular spheres, it remains curiously neglected in Western scholarship. The corpus reflects a multiplex religious milieu that encompasses Tantric, Yogic, Sufi, Shakta, and Vaishnava currents, among others. Texts within the corpus ubiquitously deploy body symbolism that, while evincing a diverse spectrum of attitudes toward embodied existence, invariably portrays the body as an indispensable site for human transformation. In doing so, the corpus articulates a rich repertoire of bodily technologies aimed at facilitating such transformation. Such techniques include new forms of bodily movement and posture, breath and sense control, dietary regimens, as well as subtle visualisation. At times, they might be directed toward the enhancement of the present physical body or the reversal of corporeal flows; at others, the creation or disclosure of a new body, whether devotional, tantric, or yogic. This panel will explore a representative segment of the discourse surrounding these transformative body-centred techniques from Bengal, providing an important opportunity for rethinking the relationship between religion, technology, and the human body in a global context.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 5 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
A queen dies repeatedly performing the tapas she hopes will garner her a son, but comes back to life each time. A rebuffed woman drowns her infant son in a well, and later, the hero restores his life. What is Ruparama saying about living and dying with such plot turns? And why does that matter?
Paper long abstract:
Death, and hence embodiment, is an ephemeral concept in Ruparama Cakravarti's mid-17th century Dharma-mangala. One main character dies repeatedly performing the tapas she hopes will garner her a son, and immediately comes back to life each time. The hero slays a royal elephant and completely pulverizes its body, but later, the elephant comes back to life. An evil woman drowns her infant son in a well when our hero refuses her advances, and later, that hero restores the baby's life. And in the epic's climactic battle nearly everyone dies, but all the "good guys" are returned to life in the grand finale. What techniques render these deaths not permanent? Who can effectively make use of such techniques? What is Ruparama saying about living and dying with such unbelievable plot turns? And why does that matter?
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the Kalika-Mangal poetic tradition of medieval Bengal, centred on the goddess Kalika. It shows how the tradition's use of the 'Bidyasundar' love motif deploys a rich symbolism that connects for the first time poetics, techniques of erotic desire, and devotion to the goddess.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the Kalika-Mangal poetic tradition of medieval Bengal, centred on the goddess Kalika. The tradition develops a love theme known as 'Bidyasundar', framed around two protagonists, Bidya (wisdom) and Sundar (beauty). As well as being rooted in the aesthetics of kavya, this motif displays strong devotional aspects centred on Sundar's dedication to the goddess, and deploys a body symbolism and schema derived from the Kamashastra. The motif is also the locus of the appearance of the reverse mystical coital posture, or viparita-rati, in the Bengali literary domain. Body-centred techniques are thus pervasive in the tradition's development of the motif, being directed toward the pleasure of the goddess or the satisfaction of sensual desire. This paper aims to highlight some of the interesting ways in which the Kalika-Mangal tradition's use of the 'Bidyasundar' motif and its rich symbolism connects for the first time the discourses of poetics, sensual desire, and devotion to the goddess.
Paper short abstract:
In Gopichand legends, the Queen insists the prince renounce the throne to become a Yogi. Bengali versions add that she personally teaches esoteric bodily disciplines to the prince, prompting controversy within the texts themselves around the possibility of women transmitting this knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
Mother, as the common saying goes, is one’s first guru. Usually this is taken to mean that one learns elementary life skills from one’s mother, but in Middle Bengali versions of the Nath Yogi legend of Prince Gopichand, it is also the Queen Mother who imparts teachings on yoga and other ascetic disciplines to the prince. This presentation, based on Sukur Mohammad’s Gopīcandrer Sannyāsa and Bhavānīdās’ Gopīcandrer Pāṃcālī, highlights both the queen’s teachings on bodily alchemy as a technology for attaining physical immortality and internal debates within these texts regarding the status of the queen —a married woman— as a teacher of male monastics. The poems focus on how the prince Gopichand renounces his kingdom to become a Yogi at his mother’s insistence. Familiar Nath themes of esoteric yogic methods, the pursuit of immortality, the interdependence of body and mind are more present here than in the oral traditions heretofore studied, as is the tension between the technical knowledge clearly possessed by Queen Maynamati and the Nath tradition’s general tendency to denigrate women as a way of encouraging its male devotees of the necessity of celibacy/renunciation. The texts seem especially preoccupied with the queen’s religious authority and mediating role in transmitting these yogic teachings and techniques in view of the wide assumed inherent impurity and unsuitability of women as gurus.
Paper short abstract:
This paper is focused on alternative constructions of sexuality and procreation in Bāul and Matua religious knowledge. Techniques of conception and contraception are discussed as a resilient thread connecting Middle Bengali literature with current low-caste esoteric lineages across the Bay of Bengal
Paper long abstract:
Being the primary site of esoteric knowledge about the self and the universe, the body and bodily techniques (deha-sādhanā) of self-realization figure prominently in the Songs and chanted hagiographies of Bengali esoteric lineages.
This paper is focused on techniques of the sexual body and the reproductive body of Bāul and Matua (matuẏā) practitioners. It is based on sonic ethnography, vernacular literature and oral-aural exegeses of premodern corpora of esoteric texts, in particular the compositions of 1. Haure Gosain (BS 1202-1317) 2. Duddu Shah (1841-1911) 3. The collection Śrī śrī Mahāsaṁkīrtan (1900) by Matua saint-composer Tarokcandra Sarkar (Gosain) and Śrī śrī Harisaṅkīrtan (1915) by Aswini Sarkar (Gosain) 4. The digitized notebooks of Vaiṣṇava Bāul families as part of the Endangered Archive Project EAP1247 “Songs of the Old Madmen”. The songs considered in this paper entail systems of theory (mātāpitātattva, dehatattva) and practice (yugala sādhanā, bindu sādhanā), with implications in the fields of ontogenesis, reproductive health and sexuality. Combining textual sources with an ethnography of their contemporary relevance and application among practitioners, I will attempt to follow the historical career of Bāul and Matua gurus as masters of fertility and birth control, tracing the contours of the doctrinal as well as social implications of such control over life (giving birth) and death (immortality, understood as cessation of production and loss of semen). I hope to demonstrate that techniques of the fertile body transmitted by itinerant esoteric performer-preachers for the conception of healthy children, or for contraception and voluntary childlessness, provide a resilient thread connecting Middle Bengali literature with present day Bengali-speaking low-caste esoteric lineages across the Indo-Bangladesh border and on many shores of the Bay of Bengal.