This dissertation examines three contemporaneous religious philosophers active in early modern South Asia: Muhibb Allah Ilahabadi (d. 1648), Madhusudana Sarasvati (d. 1620-1647), and the Safavid philosopher, Mir Findiriski (d. 1640/1). These figures, two Muslim and one Hindu, were each prominent representatives of religious thought as it occurred in one of the three pan-imperial languages of the Mughal Empire: Arabic, Sanskrit, and Persian. In this study, I re-trace the trans-regional scholarly networks in which each of the figures participated, and then examine the various ways in which their respective networks overlapped. The Chishti Sufi Muhibb Allah, drawing from the Islamic intellectual tradition of wahdat al-wujud, engaged in "international" networks of Arabic debate on questions of ontology and metaphysics. Madhusudana Sarasvati, meanwhile, writing in the Hindu Advaita-Vedanta tradition, was busy adjudicating competing interpretations of the well-known Sanskrit text, the Yoga-Vasistha. Mir Findiriski also took considerable interest in a shorter version of this same Yoga-Vasistha, composing his own commentary upon a Persian translation of the treatise that had been undertaken at the Mughal imperial court. In this Persian translation of the Yoga-Vasistha alongside Findiriski's commentary, I argue, we encounter a creative synthesis of the intellectual contributions occurring within Muhibb Allah's Arabic milieu, on the one hand, and the competing exegeses of the Yoga-Vasistha circulating in Madhusudana's Sanskrit intellectual circles, on the other. The result is a novel Persian treatise that represents an emerging "sub-discipline" of Persian Indian religious thought, still in the process of formulating its basic disciplinary vocabulary as drawn from these broader Muslim and Hindu traditions.

This dissertation examines the production of culture among Indo-Caribbean communities in New York City and Trinidad. It seeks to understand how cultural producers use performance as a way to mediate their experiences of racialization in local, national, and transnational spheres. Based on a multisited ethnographic study, I analyze the Indo-Caribbean diaspora as a result of nineteenth and twentieth century indentured labor migration and as a focus of post-1965 transnational migration. To do so, I introduce the idea of "transnational performances," which I employ to examine how expressions of Indo-Caribbean identity are performed in Trinidad and New York City as a way of mediating global processes. Specifically, this dissertation begins with a geographic and historical overview of Indo-Caribbean transnational populations, then provides an ethnographic study of contemporary Hindu religious festivals in Trinidad, an Islamic festival held in both New York City and Trinidad, Indo-Caribbean media in New York, and a cultural and arts center in New York. In all these sites Indo-Caribbean cultural producers engage the politics of public representation of Indo-Caribbean identity. I argue that while Indo-Caribbean religious, festival, media, and cultural producers engage with diasporic formations of identity and develop diasporic narratives that address Indian origins, they simultaneously develop new, creative, and flexible Indo- Caribbean transnational performances in the public sphere often coproducing their identities in relation to other diasporic communities. Concerns about authenticity exist alongside the desire to create new cultural practices that employ hybridity as a strategy to assert belonging. These transnational performances are spaces from which Indo-Caribbean communities develop a public voice that responds to perceived exclusions and erasures. The geographies of belonging that are central in the transnational performances of Indo-Caribbean cultural producers suggest that we must attend to the cultural practices developed within and across boundaries while taking a historical perspective on global processes that are reconfigured in the contemporary period. / text

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This thesis examines William Blake’s conceptions of time and space in the light of the philosophies of Hinduism and Islam. In order to perform this analysis, source material, often from rare and neglected texts, is utilized to examine Blake’s possible unorthodox influences. The analysis of influences takes a three-pronged track: literary, symbolic, and linguistic; Blake’s possible knowledge of Orientalist translations; the symbols in his poetry, prose, and paintings are analyzed; and his potential knowledge of major Orientalist languages is also examined. Once this has been examined in sufficient depth, an excavation of Blake’s views on time and space is then undertaken. This analysis of Blake’s philosophical perspectives utilizes a comparative phenomenological approach in order to show their similarity to the perspectives of the Hindu Vedanta and Ismaili Islam. Throughout this analysis, I aim to demonstrate both that Blake’s views on space are inherently mystical (space as limitless and unbound by the physical universe), and that his view on time, having a similarity to that of the Platonists, views Eternity as the one true reality.

This study is a comparison of the philosophical systems composed by the Indian philosopher Sankara (788-830 CE), and the Muslim mystic, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 CE). The primary thesis found in this study is that the conceptual systems constructed by Sankara and Ibn Arabi are not perfectly new creations derived from the core of their mystical realizations. Rather, they contain fundamental pre-existing principles, concepts, and teachings that are expanded upon and placed within a systematic philosophy or theology that is intended to lead others to a state of realization. A selection of these presuppositions are extracted from within each of these thinkers’ philosophical systems and employed as structural indicators. Similarities are highlighted, yet the differences between Sankara and Ibn Arabi’s thought, witnessed within their philosophical systems, lead us to the conclusion that the two mystics inhabited different conceptual space. / iv, 195 leaves ; 29 cm

Hindu religious culture has a rich and long-standing performance tradition containing many genres and regional types that contribute significantly to an understanding of the living vitality of the religion. Because the field of religious studies has focused on texts, the assumption exists that these are primary, and performances based on them are mere enactments and therefore derivative. This thesis will challenge this common assumption by arguing that performances themselves can be constitutive events in which religious worldviews, social histories, and group and personal identities are created or re-negotiated. In this work, I examine the history of performance cultures (understood both as genres and the groups that develop and perform them) in the Telugu-speaking regions of South India from the sixteenth century to the present in order to elucidate the cross-fertilization among various performance spheres over time. / My specific focus is on the figure of Satyabhama (lit. True Woman or Woman of Truth), the favourite wife of the god Kṛṣṇa. Satyabhama represents a range of emotions, which makes her character popular with dramatists and other artists in the Telugu-speaking regions of South India where poets composed hundreds of performance-texts about her, and several caste groups have enacted her character through narrative drama. / The dissertation is composed of four substantive parts - text, context, memory, and mimesis. The first part explores the figure of Satyabhama in the Mahabharata and in three Sanskrit Puraṇic texts. The second examines the courtly traditions of poetry and village performances in the Telugu language, where Satyabhama is innovatively portrayed through aesthetic categories. The third is based on ethnographic work with women of the contemporary kalavantula (devadasi) community and looks at the ways in which they identify with Satyabhama and other female aesthetic archetypes (nayikas). The final section is based on fieldwork with the smarta Brahmin male community in Kuchipudi village, where men continue to perform mimetic representations of Satyabhama through a performative modality known as stri-veṣam ("guise of a woman").

This study examines the situation and activities of Hindu temple women (devadasis) in the 9th-13th centuries, as revealed in Tamil inscriptions. These temple women, unlike their male counterparts or the devadasis of more recent times, were not primarily identified as temple servants, with professional expertise or ritual responsibilities, but were instead defined with reference to a particular status, predicated on relationship with a temple. This relationship was secured through the donations that temple women made to temples. In the course of the Chola period, the status of "temple woman" became increasingly well-defined and the numbers of temple women increased, while other types of women disappeared from public view. Temple women's strengthening links with--but marginal positions in--the temple are analyzed in this study with reference to the changes that occurred during this period in the structure of the temple and in the temple's position within the social environment.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1988.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1984.

This study entitled "Hinduism and Abortion: A Traditional View" outlines what the Hindu Smriti and Shruti texts have to contribute in the abortion debate. It is important to consider what an ancient tradition, Hinduism, has to contribute with regard to a modern controversy. The study undertakes a cursory look at bioethics and then proceeds to examine the Hindu world view and the Hindu view of the unborn. The important Hindu teachings with regard to dharma, kama, the ashrama dharma system, the samskaras and karma and reincarnation are considered in some detail. The unborn is considered not only in terms of its embryological development but also in terms of its social and spiritual significance. This study concludes that Hinduism is opposed to abortion except in certain very specific circumstances, for example, severe congenital abnormalities in the foetus, where the continued pregnancy is life-threatening for the mother, rape and incest. The traditional Hindu standpoint is pro-life and the Hindu scriptures provide a comprehensive and multi-faceted argument against abortion. The foetus is considered sacrosanct from the moment of conception. The view arrived at in this study is that the foetus is a person with rights, and abortion is a violation of those rights. Abortion is considered to be murder. An important and salient contribution from a Hindu perspective is the fact that the foetus is a bio-psycho-socio-cosmological and spiritual being and as such the abortion debate transcends individual ethics thus raising important social and cosmological concerns. Hinduism has much to contribute to the abortion debate and many of the Hindu teachings cited in the study are relevant for today. Celibacy, the Hindu view that the sexual act ought to be seen as a deeply spiritual act, the emphasis on the Ashrama Dharma system and ahimsa are important principles that need to be emphasized to face the challenges of the increasing demand for abortions. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.