- » Adrián Navigante,
Director Alain Daniélou Foundation Research and Intellectual DialogueALAIN DANIÉLOU: SACRIFICE AND COMPOSITION OF THE WHOLE
This essay was written for the second symposium on the question of Sacrifice organised by the Alain Daniélou Foundation Research in collaboration with the Association Recherches Mimétiques (ARM) in September 2020. Adrián Navigante’s reflection on Alain Daniélou’s conception of sacrifice began in 2019 within the framework of the seminar “Perspectives on Sacrifice” at the Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand (BNF) in Paris, France; it has later been deepened and amplified beyond the Indian context to include Greek antiquity and Daniélou’s project of a ‘return to paganism’. This English version of this essay (originally written in French) has been slightly modified for Transcultural Dialogues.
Read » - » Anand Mishra,
Department of Classical Indology, University of Heidelberg, GermanyVEDIC SCIENCES AND OUR CHANGING PERSPECTIVES TOWARDS THE VEDAS
In the Brahmanic tradition, Vaidika Vijñāna (knowledge of the Veda) has been exercised to preserve the wisdom contained in the Vedic corpus. The modern interpretation of it by Indian scholars has transformed this concept into a “Vedic science” aimed at reading the whole development of Western modern science into the Vedic corpus. Anand Mishra traces this transformation back to Svāmī Dayānanda Sarasvatī and the roots of Hindu Nationalism and shows the pitfalls of that enterprise through Svāmī Karpātrī’s critique of Dayānanda Sarasvatī. The essay poses the question of tradition, its preservation and the conflict-laden dynamics of change and legitimation also in dealing with modern culture and the universalist project of Western science.
Read » - » Amanda Viana,
Post-doc researcher at the University of Freiburg (Germany), Alain Daniélou Foundation Intellectual DialogueTHE IDEA OF A RELIGION OF LIFE IN NON-CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
In this essay, Amanda Viana examines the validity of the innovative Western philosophical trend called ‘Religion of Life’. Although ‘Religion of Life’ postulates universal validity prior to any cultural determination, the essay shows, through a consideration of Hindu Tantra and Amerindian Shamanism, the inherent difficulties of such a position, since universalism is taken as coinciding with the affirmation of a general validity of Western parameters. Since Religion of Life rests on a speculative mystic conception stemming from Meister Eckhart, Amanda Viana asks whether a discourse (however performative) about Life itself can be up to the aspiration of totality it displays without considering differences inherent to the sphere of what is deemed ‘pure experience’.
Read » - » BOOK REVIEW / Adrián Navigante, CHIARA POLICARDI’S DIVINE, FEMININE, ANIMAL A GUIDING THREAD THROUGH TANTRIC PALIMPSEST OF YOGINĪ CULTS
Chiara Policardi. Divino, femminile, animale. Yoginī teriantropiche nell’India antica e medievale, Alessandria, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2020. 290 pages with 3 tables, 65 images and a thematic bibliography.
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