This thesis offers a multi-faceted exploration of image worship theology and practice within a Vaishnava Hindu theistic devotional tradition founded in the sixteenth century, flourishing today largely in north and northeast India and, since recently, spreading worldwide. The thesis serves two aims. First, it augments existing scholarship on Hindu temple image worship and Caitanya (Gaudīya) Vaishņavism by focusing on two contemporary temple communities one in the north Indian pilgrimage centre Vrindavan, the second near Watford, outside London. These represent, respectively, an "embodied community" and a "missionizing tradition," following Barbara Holdrege's typology in her studies of Hindu and Jewish traditions. By considering the practice of worship (mūrti-sevā) in terms of two persistent themes, namely rule-governed practice (vaidhī-sādhana) and emotion-driven practice (rāgānuga-sādhana), I show how the elements of "embodiment" and "missionizing" blend to produce variations on the overarching theme of Krsna bhakti, devotion to Kŗşna as the supreme divinity. Second, by focusing on the divine image in these two temples and the practice of worship, I offer one study of how "religious truth" is understood within these communities in terms of three dimensions of truth proposed by the Comparative Religious Ideas Project at Boston University (1995-1999; Robert C. Neville, et al., Religious Truth, State University of New York Press, 2001). At the same time I offer an attempt to extend the scope of that project by adding the dimensions of physical image and ritual practice to its existing dimension, religious ideas. I show how the central notion of devotion to Kŗşna as God (bhagavān) entails a complex web of discursive, ritual, and narrative expression to sustain image worship as a truth of embodiment/practice (the opposite of failure) which is also expressive truth (the opposite of deceit) that follows from propositional/epistemological truth (the opposite of error).

李志誠. / "2013年8月". / "2013 nian 8 yue". / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-151). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in Chinese and English. / Li Zhicheng.

The thesis examines the contemporary Bengali practice of worshipping clay images. By clay is understood 'unbaked' clay. The thesis makes a distinction between 'baked clay' (terracotta) images and 'unbaked' clay (terracruda) images and examines the preference for worshipping terracruda images. The worship of clay images is examined within the context of image worship in general in India, referring to the classical iconographical canons and other texts in which clay is mentioned as a suitable medium for the making of religious icons. The study is restricted to the Hindu religion. The thesis does not restrict itself to a purely iconographical approach. The thesis discusses the artistic tradition that gave rise to the clay images of Bengal,as well as attempting to understand the religious significance of the images. In tracing the tradition, the author has used vernacular sources as well as early records of travellers. In describing the contemporary technique of clay image making, the author has relied on recorded interviews and photo-documentation taken during a three month period of fieldwork in West Bengal. The thesis establishes that there has been a tradition of worshipping clay images in Bengal that is at least two centuries old and suggests that there are earlier precedents for the tradition. It also concludes that it is a strongly regional tradition that developed in Bengal and influenced the neighbouring states of Bihar, Assam and Orissa. The worship of terracruda images in Bengal is a regional practice that is the product of both classical and 'folk' influences.

As a debate over the legitimacy of the liturgical use of images, the Byzantine Iconoclastic controversy (ca. 726-843) had important political and theological implications, which modern scholarship generally tends to treat unconnectedly. The primary object of this study is to explicate the relationship between the political and theological dimensions of the controversy and to reconstruct the debate over images in a comprehensive approach that accounts for both its political and theological dimensions. / The main argument of the thesis is that the question of images was a politico-theological problem and the prospects of 'political expediency' and 'theological propriety' were correlated in the minds of both the Iconoclastic reformers and their Iconodule rivals. Indeed, it was through their respective soteriologies that the two parties gave meaning to the theological and political dimensions of the debate in relationship with their respective theological first principles. Therefore, the Iconoclastic debate is explained as a soteriological dispute where the worldview represented by the traditional Byzantine religio-political ideology and the worldview represented by the proponents of images were set over against each other. / The main contribution of our thesis to modern scholarship of the Byzantine Iconoclastic controversy is to reconstruct the debate in the light of the contending theological paradigms of the two parties, which shaped not only their attitudes towards images but also their political stands in relation to the Byzantine Empire's involvement in ecclesiastical politics. This new synthetic reading explains the debate in reference to two essential theological cornerstones of the Byzantine tradition---the Eusebian "Imperial Theology" and the Christological definition of the council of Chalcedon---both taken as key reference points, against which the political and doctrinal stands of both parties were constructed and interpreted.

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