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Flowers, Gods and Scholars
The Puṣpacintāmaṇi is a 17th-century Nepalese digest (nibandha) that compiles authoritative citations on the use of flowers in Hindu worship (pūjā). This book provides a critical edition and translation of the Sanskrit text and its Newari rendering, along with botanical identifications of the flowers mentioned. Furthermore, it analyzes the historical and cultural context of the text, including its place in the Nepalese textual tradition and its relationship to other texts of its genre.
This is a reworked English version of the thesis “Von Blüten, Göttern und Gelehrten: Die Behandlung von pūjā-Blüten im Puṣpacintāmaṇi” (http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-102174).
Crafting Potency
Crafting Potency investigates the intricate interweaving of knowledge, practice, and materials through which potency is sculpted in Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine). Informed by Tibetan medical literature and extensive fieldwork with practitioners (amchis) from Ladakh, Dharamsala, and Kathmandu, the authors explore how potency is understood and manipulated in the making of multi-ingredient medicines. Taking inspiration from Tim Ingold’s ecologically attuned phenomenology and Pamela Smith’s concept of “artisanal epistemologies,” potency is presented as “efficacy-in-becoming”—a fluid capacity sculpted and layered through skilled artisanship, ritual, and environment, rather than a fixed property of stable substances. Highlighting the deep immersion of amchis in their social, ecological, technical, and spiritual lifeworlds—and exploring what changes when knowledge is transmitted through institutional rather than lineage-based training—the book contributes nuanced practice-based perspectives to the anthropology of craft and the history of science.
Bilaṃpau: The Narrative Art of Newar Scroll Paintings
Bilampau is the first-ever book on the long-format narrative scroll painting of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The book traces the history of this art tradition and explores Buddhist and Hindu religious connections and artistic qualities through visual, textual and contextual analyses. It brings together the study of Bilampaus that were historically painted by Newar artists and presently scattered in world museums and collections in Europe and USA. The study includes field study in Berlin, Germany, and the various Newar Buddhist monasteries in the Kathmandu Valley where these narrative scrolls were painted.
Reframing Tradition in Early Modern India
The volume presents recent scholarly research on Early Modern India by focusing on shifts and challenges to established concepts and norms across various traditions (Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Jain) and from different perspectives. Structured into four parts, it brings new materials and methods used by contributors to investigate transformational concepts and the variety of intentions involved in altering texts and the exchange of knowledge. The contributors examine Sikh encounters with Nāth, Sant, and Islamic traditions and literary texts, the vernacular connections with and diversions from Sanskrit models in Sufi, Jain, Vaishnava, and Shaiva traditions, interactions between texts and images in historical, political, and literary contexts, and bhakti traditions in Vaishnava and Dādūpanthī communities dealing with questions of authority and femininity in early modern texts.
विद्याराधनम् – Vidyārādhanam
Vidyārādhanam – "Worship of Knowledge" – is the title of this Festschrift for Professor Oberlies, an Indologist who has explored a broad spectrum of subject areas and, through his meritorious work in research and teaching, has made an invaluable contribution to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. Vidyārādhanam can also be used to describe the entirety of the essays collected in this volume by colleagues, students, and associates of Professor Oberlies, which reflect his diverse research interests and honor him for his academic life’s work to date.
