Classics and Religion

Conversations around rites of possession and object animation within the Hindu performative sphere have a long history of being relegated to a marginalized space unworthy of academic investigation. Using the concept of dramaturgy popularized by Erving Goffman, this article shifts the gaze from object animation and spirit possession to its social performance, in which a temporary egalitarian social scheme is exhibited. In exploring the case of a specific possession rite locally called taraṅga devatā, which is practiced along the west coast of India, this article introduces the transformation of the deities housed in local shrines as entities capable of movement and communication known as taraṅga. In so doing, I reassess some local Hindu religious practices that were eschewed in the past.

Anthropological fieldwork in rural settlements on the west coast of India has unraveled the close connection between lived experiences, spaces and objects. These “inalienable possessions”, in the words of Annette Weiner, help reconstruct the past through the supplementation of oral traditions. Following this vein, the paper attempts to mesh together the material culture and oral histories to establish the provenance for the plethora of memorials in the state of Gujarat. A series of oral narratives collected in Western India since 2014 has highlighted the role of medieval memorial stelae that commemorate the deceased heroes of war and their wives and companions. This paper creates a niche for the Gujarati oral tradition as provenance for the continued veneration of these memorials. Field observations from 2014–2016 and notes from research in Gujarat from 1985 onwards enabled the study of patterns in the oral preservation of literature. A systematic documentation of the existing stela...

Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs) consist of more than 2500 diverse structures largely restricted to the order Ranunculales and the eumagnoliids. However, BIAs also occur in the Rutaceae, Lauraceae, Cornaceae and Nelumbonaceae, and sporadically throughout the order Piperales. Several of these alkaloids function in the defense of plants against herbivores and pathogens-thus, the capacity for BIA biosynthesis is expected to play an important role in the reproductive fitness of certain plants. Biochemical and molecular phylogenetic approaches were used to investigate the evolution of BIA biosynthesis in basal angiosperms. The occurrence of (S)-norcoclaurine synthase (NCS; EC 4.2.1.78) activity in 90 diverse plant species was compared to the distribution of BIAs superimposed onto a molecular phylogeny. These results support the monophyletic origin of BIA biosynthesis prior to the emergence of the eudicots. Phylogenetic analyses of NCS, berberine bridge enzyme and several O-methyltransferases suggest a latent molecular fingerprint for BIA biosynthesis in angiosperms not known to accumulate such alkaloids. The limited occurrence of BIAs outside the Ranunculales and eumagnoliids suggests the requirement for a highly specialized, yet evolutionarily unstable cellular platform to accommodate or reactivate the pathway in divergent taxa. The molecular cloning and functional characterization of NCS from opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) is also reported. Pathogenesis-related (PR)10 and Bet v 1 major allergen proteins share homology with NCS, but recombinant polypeptides were devoid of NCS activity.

Este artículo analiza la estructura genérica y los fundamentos de la Lacedaimonion Politeia de Jenofonte. La Lac. ha sido frecuentemente considerada como un elogio o defensa de Esparta. Sin embargo, su retórica y estructura narrativa tienen poca similitud con prácticas contemporáneas para la composición de encomios o defensas. Aun cuando esto no impide un motivo elogioso o defensivo, examinar el tipo de retórica y los patrones narrativos de Jenofonte revela distintas afiliaciones genéricas, mostrando que la Lac., al igual que muchos otros escritos de Jenofonte, es un trabajo híbrido con características de la literatura de politeiai y de la investigación filosófica. En efecto, una cuidadosa pesquisa, en particular, de la manera en que Jenofonte utiliza interlocutores imaginarios (característica compartida por ambos tipos de escritura) sugiere que el encomio no puede haber sido el objetivo de este tratado.

Primary lymphoma of the bone is a rare cause of bone tumour. It is often overlooked and mis-diagnosed due to its rarity, uncommon presentation and indistinctive radiographic features. We report a patient who had a slow progressing primary bone lymphoma whose final diagnosis was only made after an open biopsy.

Study of the Twenty Saṃghas in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism published in 2003.  A full monograph on the topic is published in  Stairway to Nirvāṇa: A Study of the Twenty Saṃghas Based on the Works of Tsong kha pa (SUNY, 2008) [ http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4578-stairway-to-nirvana.aspx ].  A text critical edition of Tsong-kha-pa's work on this subject in Tibetan script with Sanskrit and Pāli annotations is in A Stairway taken by the Lucid: Tsong kha pa's Study of Noble Beings (Aditya Prakashan, 2013) [http://www.adityaprakashan.com/]

Buddhists have articulated the central notion of the “path” in a variety of different ways and in a great number of texts throughout the history of their traditions.  Among texts related to the path, the Ornament for Clear Realization, a commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, has had a significant impact on Mahāyāna Buddhist notions of the path and became the dominant Indian text for the study of the path in Tibetan traditions. This article focuses on two general descriptions of the bodhisattva path found in the Ornament for Clear Realization.  The first description centers upon eight ‘clear realizations’ (abhisamaya) that constitute the knowledges and practices of Prajñāpāramitā textual systems. The second description elucidates a system of five paths, shaped by Indian Abhidharma and Yogācāra texts, that is commonly used by Tibetan commentators. The article demonstrates how the eight clear realizations and five paths are interrelated, yet distinct, modes of envisioning the bodhisattva path in the Ornament. While these path structures do not provide details of actual meditation experience, they do provide Tibetan Buddhists who follow the Ornament a structured worldview where a narrative of spiritual progress is possible and where the altruistic goal of Buddhahood can be attained.

This paper examines the use of nirvacana  (‘semantic elucidation’) in selected examples from self-proclaimed Mahāyāna Buddhist texts to theorize, as well as illustrate, one among several rhetorical techniques utilized by early to middle period Indian Buddhist authorial communities in the social formation of what comes to be known as “Mahāyāna.” Numerous Mahāyāna sūtras as well as technical digests such as the Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṃkara and Bodhisattva-bhūmi note that for bodhisattvas to be successful in propagating dharma they must acquire four types of ‘special knowledge’ (pratisaṃvid). The knowledge of languages (nirukti-pratisaṃvid), which includes regional languages (vākya) as well as semantic elucidation (nirvacana), is listed among these four. This paper suggests that knowledge of semantic elucidation serves as a powerful ideological tool for authorial communities in the propagation of Mahāyāna texts. The paper argues, drawing examples from sūtras such as the Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā, Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, and Avaivartikadharmacakra, that the ‘method of nairukta’ (nairukta-vidhānena), through processes of transvaluation and substitution, hollows out mainstream Buddhist understandings of concepts and principles and reformulates the conceptual framework found in mainstream Buddhist formations toward visions of the bodhisattva way found in nascent Mahāyāna communities.

In recent years, French classicist Pierre Hadot has argued that modes of thought and theory in Greco-Roman antiquity and early Christianity are not represented by what modern or post-modern scholars understand as philosophy, but rather as philosophia, a way of life or art of living. Philosophy as a way of life centers around spiritual exercises that are designed to transform one's whole being. Hadot himself has mentioned, but not examined, the many troubling analogies that may exist between the spiritual exercises of ancient Greco-Roman philosophia and so-called "Oriental religious thought." This paper applies Pierre Hadot's methodology to several select examples of Buddhist thought exploring the utility this technique of interpretation may have for cross-cultural understanding.