Nachrichten und Veranstaltungen

Charya Nritya is a highly specialised dance form from Nepal. Originally, these dances were performed by the tantric priests of the Newar community as part of their spiritual practice. Therefore, the dances were only shown to selected patrons or an initiated audience. The first public performance happened during the World Buddhist Conference in Kathmandu in 1956. Since a decreasing number of younger Vajracharyas took up the traditional role as priests, some members of the community decided to teach the dances to persons from outside the original community, both from Nepal and world-wide. During this process the ritual dances of the Vajracharya community got promoted as national treasury of Nepal, similar to the classical dances of India. The lecture demonstration by Raju Shakya (dancer, teacher and dance scholar) will include practical examples and a discussion of the ritual meaning and the contemporary significance of this dance form.

The main ritual and devotional focus of the Jaina traditions are the fully-liberated teachers (jina, tīrthaṅkara). However, non-liberated renouncers are also venerated, both during their life and after death. Memorials of Digambara ascetics were commonly erected in early modern (1400-1800 CE) Western and Central India. Commemorative pillars (niṣedhikā) or carved feet or footprints (caraṇa, pādukā) were typically installed in open pavilions (chatarī). Their inscriptions constitute an important source to reconstruct the history of Digambara Jainism in the so-called ‘Muslim era’. The presentation will also focus on material and ritual aspects, and offer a comparative look at some South Indian, contemporary, and Śvētāmbara parallels. Meeting-ID: 954 1841 9387, Kenncode: 129830

Crushed Underfoot: Patterns of Subjugation and Extreme Dependency in the Buddhist Iconography of Nepal. Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Gudrun Bühnemann Buddhist art from the Himalayan region has become widely known through display in museums and exhibitions. The art from Tibet and Nepal has attracted particular attention and has been idealized as “meditational” and “enlightenment art”. In this talk I will focus on representations of Buddhist Tantric deities that do not support this cliché. Instead, they illustrate the act of subjugation and state of extreme dependency due to sectarian animosity between two competing religious traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism. I will discuss major patterns of such representations in art all of which convey the message of the superiority of the Buddhist figures over Hindu or Śaiva divinities in specific ways.

Emerging Trends in Research on Classical Indian Dance August 25th, 2020 8:00 a.m. (EST), 1:00 p.m. (U.K.), 2:00 pm (Germany), 5:30 p.m. (India) In this Zoom conference PhD candidates and Early Career Researchers present their ongoing research. Origanised by: Department of Asian and Islamic Art History, University of Bonn, Germany Department of Dance, University of Roehampton, UK

Long-distance trade and local exchanges in the Western Indian Ocean (3rd. c. BCE - 7th c. CE) Recent researches on the question of trade in the Indian Ocean have renewed our understanding of the contacts between the Mediterranean world and South Asia. Based on ancient discoveries and new excavations on both shores (notably Egypt, Oman, India, Sri Lanka), this paper will focus on the complementarity between long-distance contacts and local networks. It will enhance the agency of local people and the dynamism of pre-existent interactions, to help in understanding the complexity of the global long-distance network.

Sartorial Contestations of Indianness: Guyanese ‘Indian Wear’ and the Creation of the Indian Other People who define themselves as ‘Indian’ in Guyana consider themselves as descendants of South Asian indentured laborers, who were shipped to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations during British colonial rule and after the emancipation of enslaved Africans between 1838 and the 1920s. From this period, the Guyanese notion of ‘Indianness’ developed, largely as a result of Othering processes and in opposition to Guyanese ‘Africanness’. In this talk, I demonstrate how Indian clothing served as a means to unify and consolidate the diverse group of Indians in the colonial but also in contemporary Guyanese society, which was and continues to be severely impacted by processes of ethno-politicization and inter-ethnic conflicts.

The Iconography of Patañjali. Patañjali was the name of a premodern Indian sage to whom important works on Sanskrit grammar, Yoga philosophy and the medical system of Āyurveda are ascribed. In recent decades increasing attention has focused on Patañjali as the authority on and figurehead of Yoga. Believed to be the author of set of aphorisms on Yoga philosophy (the Yogasūtras), which has attained canonical status in many Yoga traditions, he is eulogized with invocations in Sanskrit recited at the beginning of Yoga classes.

Heute eröffnet unsere Studierenden-Ausstellung "Asian Art as Mirror of Dependencies". Es werden Objekte gezeigt, die von Amulettketten, Öllampen und Wandbehängen bis hin zu verschiedenen Sandelholzobjekten reichen. Die Ausstellung, die in den letzten Monaten unter der Leitung unserer wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiterin Karina Linke und einigen Studiereden unserer Abteilung entstand, ist inspiriert von der Abhängigkeitsforschung des Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Corona-bedingt kann die Ausstellung nur mit vorheriger Anmeldung besucht werden. Wir bitten um Verständnis und freuen uns über zahlreiche Besucher.

Zum Abschluss des Semesters bieten wir einen virtuellen Besuch im imperialen Chola-Tempel in Gangaikondacholapuram (Tamil Nadu, Indien) an. Mitarbeiter von Karuppan Agencies zeigen uns Architektur und Skulpturen dieses Tempels in einer Live-Schaltung per Zoom. Die Veranstaltung wird begleitet von Frau Prof. Dr. Ulrike Niklas (Südasien- und Südostasien-Studien, Uni Köln).

BA-Informationsveranstaltung Montag, den 04.10 um 13 Uhr, MA-Informationsveranstaltung Montag, den 04.10 um 16 Uhr, MA-Einführungsveranstaltung Mittwoch, den 06.10 von 10-13 Uhr und von 14-18 Uhr

This international conference brings together specialist from different disciplines, focusing on a number of regions of Asia, such as India, Nepal, Tibet, the Silk Route, China and Japan. All experts conduct research on extreme forms of dependencies, in which artists, craftspeople and their communities find themselves, as well as on the freedoms they find within their situations.

The lecture-demonstration traces a first of its kind cross-disciplinary analysis of the theory and practise of Nāṭya. Rajyashree Ramesh draws from what she identifies as a two-fold approach to meaning therein, to examine questions on embodied meaning and meaning-making discussed in several current fields of research on embodiment. The point of departure is the notion of embodied meaning from the perspective of Linguistic Gesture Studies in relation to Hastābhinaya - the gestural depiction with hands. Moving on to an analysis of the role of emotions and their corporeal expression in establishing meaning as explicated in the treatise Nāṭyaśāstra, she draws parallels therein to Antonio Damasio’s brain research on emotions. Finally, taking a movement analytic stance that draws also from current fascia research, she will demonstrate how a bhāva-rasa continuum practised in Nāṭya exemplifies the very notion of a primordially fundamental and felt embodied meaning-making process.