Dear list members,

I am happy to announce a new open access publication by Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing (HASP):

Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz and Ute Hüsken. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2022. ISBN 978-3-948791-22-3(HC), ISBN 978-3-948791-23-0, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.906

For many centuries, Hindu temples and shrines have been of great importance to South Indian religious, social and political life. Aside from being places of worship, they are also pilgrimage destinations, centres of learning, political hotspots, and foci of economic activities. In these temples, not only the human and the divine interact, but they are also meeting places of different members of the communities, be they local or coming from afar. Hindu temples do not exist in isolation, but stand in multiple relationships to other temples and sacred sites. They relate to each other in terms of architecture, ritual, or mythology, or on a conceptual level when particular sites are grouped together. Especially in urban centres, multiple temples representing different religious traditions may coexist within a shared sacred space. The current volume pays close attention to the connections between individual Hindu temples and the affiliated communities, be it within a particular place or on a trans-local level. These connections are described as “temple networks,” a concept which instead of stable hierarchies and structures looks at nodal, multi-centred, and fluid systems, in which the connections in numerous fields of interaction are understood as dynamic processes.

Malini Ambach joined the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia as a doctoral candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ute Hüsken in October 2019. Prior to that she obtained her BA in South Asia Studies as well as her MA in Cultural and Religious History of South Asia/South Asian Studies from Heidelberg University. Her doctoral project studies the multi-facetted sacred geography of the South Indian temple town Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu) as presented in the place's glorifying texts in Sanskrit (māhātmya). It explores the structures, spatial orientations and means of inter- and trans-sectarian negotiation that shape the texts’ design of the city in a broader perspective and on the level of individual sacred sites.

Jonas Buchholz studied Sanskrit and Tamil in Heidelberg and finished his studies with an M.A. degree in 2012. In April 2018, he defended his PhD thesis on classical Tamil literature at the University of Hamburg. From 2014 to 2019, he worked as a research associate in the ERC funded project “Going from Hand to Hand: Networks of Intellectual Exchange in the Tamil Learned Traditions (NETamil)” at the University of Hamburg. He also taught as a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen. Since September 2019, he conducts the DFG funded project “Temple Networks in Early Modern South India” together with Prof. Dr. Ute Hüsken at the University of Heidelberg. His research focuses on South India (Tamil Nadu). Special interests include Tamil and Sanskrit literatures and their mutual relationship, as well as manuscript studies.

Ute Hüsken is Professor and Head of the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia. She joined Heidelberg University coming from Oslo University, where she had been professor of South Asia Studies (Sanskrit) since 2007. Before that, she had been member and project leader in the collaborative research project “dynamics of ritual” at Heidelberg University (SFB 619). Prof. Hüsken’s main research fields are Buddhist studies, Hindu studies, Ritual and Festival studies and Gender studies. In most of her most recent work she combines methods of textual research (Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil) and anthropology.

On the HASP-Platform the entire PDF of the book as well as the individual chapters can be downloaded for free. A hardcover edition of the book also has been published, which can be purchased via stationary bookshops and online booksellers.

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Prof. Dr. Ute Hüsken

Vice Dean, Faculty of Philosophy

Project Leader, „Hindu Temple Legends in South India“, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften

Head of Department, Cultural and Religious History of South Asia (Classical Indology)

South Asia Institute

Heidelberg University

https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/krs/

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