Co(s)mic Vision

The Bhagavata Purana (BhP) is a popular sacred Sanskrit text characterized by its devotion for Krsna and the many narratives concerning him and his incarnations. These narratives have an edifying quality. A great number of them bring their point across through the use of humour. Though the comic tradition of India has been covered by scholars, such studies primarily discuss the performing arts. I argue that there is a strong presence of humour in the BhP, and that this humour communicates a playful attitude which has a prominent place in the overall religiosity of the BhP, thus communicating a worldview I term the co(s)mic vision. This study contributes to the discussion on the ludic dimensions of religious traditions and indicates how religious discourse is established through the entertaining and edifying effects of humour. Narrative is used as an entertaining alternative to religious instruction as exhortation, theological assertion, or propositional excursuses.

Nasal reconstruction

Reconstruction of nasal skin is one of the earliest recorded procedures of what is now referred to as the discipline of reconstructive plastic surgery. In the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text, ‘Sushruta Samhita’ (600–700 bc) the forehead rhinoplasty is described and later the Italian surgeon Tagliacozzi (1597) performed nasal reconstruction with skin pedicled from the upper arm. These early procedures treated the defects left by the ancient punishment of nasal amputation. Sir Harold Gillies and colleagues reinvigorated the art of plastic surgery after the First World War and provided the sound principles of reconstruction that are followed to this day. In more modern times, the refinement of this surgical technique has advanced considerably due to the work and publications of Dr Gary Burget and Dr Frederick Menick. They have greatly flattened the learning curve and finesse of the paramedian forehead flap and associated procedures.

An Unpublished Fragment SI 4645 of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra from the Serindia Collection of the IOM, RAS

The article provides a study of a newly discovered manuscript fragment from the Serindia Collection (IOM, RAS), containing the Sanskrit text of the Lotus Sutra. Currently, the group of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra manuscripts from the Serindia Collection comprises 28 items. Some folios and fragments among them remain unpublished. The goal of the article is to introduce to the specialists a previously unpublished fragment of the Sanskrit Lotus Sutra. This manuscript fragment is preserved in the Oldenbourg sub-collection (part of the Serindia Collection), call mark SI 4645. According to the documents from the IOM RAS archive, this fragment was acquired by Serguei F. Oldenbourg in Kizil-Karga during his first expedition to Eastern Turkestan (1909-1910). The text of the manuscript is an excerpt from the 4th chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which contains “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. The article provides facsimile reproduction of the fragment SI 4645 accompanied by transliteration and translation into Russian. It also outlines the physical features of the manuscript, provides a brief description of the text of the fragment SI 4645 and offers its comparison with the other well-known texts of the Lotus Sutra. The comparison of the fragment with several texts representing two Sanskrit “editions” (versions) of the Lotus Sutra shows that the fragment SI 4645 stands closer to the Gilgit-Nepalese “edition” of the Sutra, while the majority of the Lotus Sutra manuscripts from the Serindia Collection reveal features of the Central Asian “edition”.

Who is the Native of the Sarvasiddhāntatattvacūḍāmaṇi?

The British Library, London, holds a unique manuscript copy of a Sanskrit text entitled Sarvasiddhāntatattvacūḍāmaṇi (MS London BL Or. 5259). This manuscript, consisting of 304 large-size folios, is lavishly illustrated and richly illuminated. The author, Durgāśaṅkara Pāṭhaka of Benares, attempted in this work to discuss all the systems of astronomy – Hindu, Islamic and European – around the nucleus of the horoscope of an individual personage. Strangely, without reading the manuscript, the authors Sudhākara Dvivedī in 1892, C. Bendall in 1902 and J. P. Losty in 1982, declared that the horoscope presented in this work was that of Nau Nihal Singh, the grandson of Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore, and this has been the prevailing notion since then. The present paper refutes this notion and shows – on the basis of the relevant passages from the manuscript – that the real native of the horoscope is Lehna Singh Majithia, a leading general of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Projection of Nature in the Śrimad Bhāgavata Mahāpurāna

[email protected] Kṛ ṇa Dvaipāyāna Vyāsa s Śrimad Bhāgavata Mahāpurāna is a reliable text for the projection of Nature. The Nature theory deals with the activities of the Paurānic characters and their love and respect to environment. This study is significant in order to present how Bhāgavata notices the issues on Nature. It traces the far-sightedness of the writer about the condition of Nature despite its writing more than five thousand years before. This analysis is primarily based on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's theory of Nature which confirms the realization of God in Nature and motivates to the readers to love and care Nature as God because of interconnectedness between Nature and life. The researcher has used the English translation of the Sanskrit text of A.C. Bhaktivedānta Svām Prabhupāda. The findings of this investigation endow with the evidences that the text has used the issues on Nature and makes the modern humans aware of the use of Nature maintaining a balance between flora and fauna. The conclusion of the article suggests that Veda Vyāsa is a far-sighted poet of the very ancient time to make to the humans aware of the issues on Nature and motivates them to solve the environmental problems following the advices of the Bhāgavata.

Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence

An account of theories of ownership (svatva) and inheritance (dāya) in Sanskrit jurisprudential literature (Dharmaśāstra). This book examines the evolution of different?juridical models of inheritance—in which families held property in trusts or in tenancies-in-common—against the backdrop of related developments in the philosophical understanding of ownership in the Sanskrit text-traditions of hermeneutics (Mīmāṃsā) and logic (Nyāya) respectively. Ownership and Inheritance reconstructs medieval Sanskrit theories of property and traces the emergence of various competing schools of Sanskrit jurisprudence during the early modern period (roughly fifteenth to nineteenth centuries) in Bihar, Bengal, and Varanasi. The book attends to the ways in which ideas from these schools of jurisprudence shaped the codification of Anglo-Hindu personal law by administrators of the British East India Company during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While acknowledging the limitations of colonial conceptions of Dharmaśāstra as positive law, Ownership and Inheritance argues for far greater continuity between pre-colonial and colonial Sanskrit jurisprudence than accepted previously. Finally, this monograph charts the transformation of the Hindu law of inheritance—through precedent and statute—over the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.

Interpretation of Baladeva and Yamunā at Harivaṃśa 83

In Harivaṃśa chapter 83, Kṛṣṇa’s brother Baladeva changes the course of the river Yamunā, using his plough. This article reviews previous interpretations of Baladeva’s deed by André Couture and Lavanya Vemsani and develops in detail an interpretation briefly proposed by A. Whitney Sanford, whereby the deed is viewed, among many superimposed views, as at some level a sexual assault. This angle is explored in the article in various ways, with close reference to the Sanskrit text. The article includes discussion of the dialogue between Baladeva and the personified Yamunā, Baladeva’s connection to plough agriculture, the dynamic between Baladeva and Kṛṣṇa, and Vaiśaṃpāyana’s commentary on the events.