Karen O’Brien-Kop
Introduction
Although a popular translation for the word ‘yoga’ is ‘union’, recent scholarship shows that throughout history the meanings of yoga have been multiple and subtly shifting: from the yoga-kṣema of the Vedic pastoralists (which indicated habitation cycles of movement and rest) to the…
in Article
M.D. Muthukumaraswamy
Over the centuries, the Dasamahavidyas and the Shakta Tantra systems have been assimilated and integrated into temple rituals and yogic practices that see the human body and the cosmos having similar structures and intersecting points of energy. The ‘yantra’ of intersecting triangles known as Sri…
in Article
Surangama Lala Dasgupta
Surangama Dasgupta: You are a priest and a tantra practitioner. You perform several rituals. I want to ask you a few questions regarding mudra in worship rituals. While performing mantra or Sanskrit chants, you use some mudras. I want to discuss about those.
Subroto Bhattacharya: Mudra, our…
in Interview
M.D. Muthukumaraswamy
Banner image: 'Bhishma Version 2'; Copper and brass welded; Height 210 cm; Collection of Nina Kothari, Chennai
Phyllis Granoff, a Harvard Indic religious studies professor and an art critic, identified early in Nandagopal's sculptures a dialogue with India's ancient religious imagination by…
in Overview
K.V. Haridasan on the evolution of different forms of art
in Library Artifacts
Kirit Mankodi
Rani ki Vav is replete with sculptures that symbolize water and fertility. There are hundreds of sculptures of young celestial women, known as apsarās, surasundarīs or nāyikās; of god Viṣṇu as Nārāyaṇa and personifications of the river goddesses.
Apsarās/Nāyikās
The walls of…
in Article
Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay
[This is the journal of a knowledge-monger, so to say a tongue-trader, who even though specializes in Linguistics, works in a curious amalgamation of physics and linguistic theories following the course of his mission. For the sake of his queer trade he reaches out to the bauls to play the…
in Article
Saptarshi Sanyal
Cultural Plurality and Innovation in Design of Temples in Bengal: Tradition and Continuity
Introduction
The appearance of temples in the cultural region of Bengal seems to be intermittent in its medieval history. Surviving edifices datable earlier than the 17th century are…
in Article