During the early medieval period Tantric traditions - including Śaivism, the Vaiṣṇava Pāñcarātra, the Buddhist Mantrayāna, and Jaina Tantra – grew to become an integral part of the religious landscape of the early medieval Indic world, reaching across South, South-East and East Asia. Major scholarly advances in the past decades – notably the works of Alexis Sanderson – have demonstrated on the basis of textual and epigraphical sources by what means Tantric initiatory groups, which initially appear to have constituted a marginal phenomenon, quickly extended their reach towards the wider public and in some cases even succeeded in forging close ties with the ruling elite. Given the far-reaching impact of Tantrism, it becomes then difficult to define the range of what constitutes a “Tantric community”, from an emic as well as an etic point of view. This task is further complicated by the fact that the surviving Tantric textual sources are prescriptive in nature and rarely intentionally address questions of social relevance so that the social reality of how initiatory groups were organized on the ground and concretely interfaced with the wider community of non-initiates or with competing traditions during this period is still little understood. The papers presented at this symposium will explore the surviving textual sources with the aim of identifying and exploring topics that will help to recover aspects of the socio-religious environment within which these Tantric groups negotiated their position in society and conceptualised their visions of community.

Location:institute for the cultural & intellectual History of asiaapostelgasse 23, 1030 ViennaUnderground Stop: U3 Kardinal-nagl-Platz

contact & information: mail: nina.mirnig@oeaw.ac.attel.: +43 1 51581 / 6416http://www.ikga.oeaw.ac.at/Events/tantric_communities

VISIONS OF

COMMUNITY SFB – Spezialforschungsbereich

Tantric Communities

in Context: Sacred Secrets &Public Rituals

International Symposium 5th-7th February 2015

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Thursday 5th February9:

30 -

9:40 Welcoming

Vincent Eltschinger, Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Vienna, Austria

9:40

- 10

:00 A short introduction to the “Visions

of Community” projectMaria-Christina Lutter, University of Vienna, Austria

10:0

0 - 1

0:50 Keynote address:

How public was the Śaiva Mantramārga?Alexis Sanderson, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

10:50 - 11:15 coffee break

11:1

5 - 1

1:45

From ear to ear, from mouth to mouth: Glimpses of Indian Buddhist Tantric transmissionHarunaga Isaacson, University of Hamburg, Germany

11:4

5 - 1

2:15 The King of Tantras as Obtained

from the Sweat of the GoddessPéter-Dániel Szántó, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

12:1

5 - 1

2:45

Sahajavajra’s integration of Tantra into mainstream Buddhism: An analysis of his Tattvadaśakaṭīkā and SthitisamuccayaKlaus-Dieter Mathes, University of Vienna, Austria

12:45 - 14:00 Lunch

14:0

0 - 1

4:30 rGya-gar Paṇḍita and Mi-nyag King:

Indian-Tangut relations between the 11-13th centuriesHaoran Hou, Leipzig University, Germany

14:3

0 - 1

5:00 On the recipient of the Buddhist

Tantric funeral riteRyugen Tanemura, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan

15:0

0 - 1

5:30 Quotations or re-quotations:

Scholarly activities in the Buddhist monasteriesKenichi Kuranishi, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan

15:30 - 16:00 coffee break

16:0

0 - 1

6:30 Further Mahāpratisarā fragments

from Gilgit and aspects of the social settings of dhāraṇī literatureGergely Hidas, British Museum, London, United Kingdom

16:3

0 - 1

7:00

Aspects of the cult of the book in the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava Tantric traditionsFlorinda De Simini, University of Naples »L‘Orientale«, Italy

Friday 6th February

9:30

- 10

:00 Inclusivism revisited: The worship

of other gods in the Śivadharma, the Skandapurāṇa and the NiśvāsamukhaPeter Bisschop, Leiden University, The Netherlands

10:0

0 - 1

0:30

Conversion, theft, and culture: On some potential explanations for scriptural flows and interactions between Tantric communitiesPaul Gerstmayr, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

10:3

0 - 1

1:00

The Self as a communitySomdev Vasudeva, Kyoto University, Japan

11:00 - 11:30 coffee break

11:3

0 - 1

2:00

Whose dharma? Śākta Tantric community rules (samayas) and dharmaśāstric prescriptionsJudit Törzsök, Charles-de-Gaulle University - Lille III, France

12:0

0 - 1

2:30 The bhasmāṅkura, the offspring of a

Śaiva ascetic and a Śūdra prostituteCsaba Kiss, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

14:0

0 - 1

4:30 Representations of women in the

BrahmayāmalaShaman Hatley, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

14:3

0 - 1

5:00

Mātṛtantra texts of South India with special reference to the worship of Rurujit in Kerala and to three different communities associated with this worshipS.A.S. Sarma, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Pondicherry, France

15:0

0 - 1

5:30

A note on damanotsava (a spring rite of reparation) and on the twelfth-century Saiddhāntika ritual manual called the JñānaratnāvalīDominic Goodall, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, France

15:30 - 16:00 coffee break16

:00

- 16:

30 An ideal rule by an initiated Śaiva king described in a Kashmirian courtly poemYuko Yokochi, Kyoto University, Japan

16:3

0 - 1

7:00 Aśvaghoṣa’s and Bāṇa’s literary

representations of Śaiva hermitsChristian Ferstl, University of Vienna, Austria

Saturday 7th February

10:0

0 - 1

0:30 Power, protection and politics:

Hanumān worship in the late Malla periodGudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A.

10:3

0 - 1

1:00 The Tantric initiation of

a Digambara monkEllen Gough, Yale University, New Haven, U.S.A.

11:00 - 11:30 coffee break

11:3

0 - 1

2:00

Narratives as a medium for appealing to the royal court: A look into the AhirbudhnyasaṃhitāMarion Rastelli, Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Vienna, Austria

12:0

0 - 1

2:30 Rhetoric of a military cult: The case

of the AhirbudhnyasaṃhitāFrancesco Bianchini, University of Vienna, Austria

12:3

0 - 1

3:00

How to become an EkāyanaRobert Leach, University of Zurich, Switzerland

subject to change

Tantric Com

munities in C

ontext: Sacred Secrets & Public Rituals