Buddhist Deities and Mantras in the Hindu Tantras: II The Śrīvidyārnavatantra and the Tantrasāra

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The Place of the Mālavikāgnimitra within Kālidāsa's oeuvre

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Omniscience in the Mahāyānasūtrālankāra and its commentaries

I am indebted to Charles Hallisey, Matthew Kapstein, John Keenan, and J. W. de Jong, each of whom read an earlier draft of this paper and gave me useful criticisms. I have adopted some of their suggestions, and this paper has benefited considerably therefrom. I alone am responsible for deficiencies and errors that remain.     

Madhavi Bhaskar Kolhatkar,Surā: The Liquor and the Vedic Sacrifice

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

The Lives and Afterlives of Vis and Rāmin

This article is a review of the afterlife, or Nachleben, of the romance Vis and Rāmin, one of the first representatives of its genre in New Persian literature. In addition to providing readers with an extensive bibliography of sources and research concerning the poem, it also analyzes these materials to put forward two basic arguments: one, that moral or religious antipathy to the poem’s contents may not have played as great a role in its fortunes as did aesthetic taste; and two, that V&R proved to be a more widely circulated and durable work than is commonly supposed, but on the level of fragments, not the entire text. In light of these arguments, it is proposed that studies structured around the comparison of fragments—themes, ideas, ethics, and motifs, rather than whole texts—may offer more purchase in constructing models of analysis that situate V&R, and Persian literature more broadly, within a literary oikumene in which it connects and interacts with neighboring traditions.     

The Oxus Temple: Localization of the Avestan Vahvi Dāityā

The article describes an attempt to determine the localization of the Avestan river Vahvi Dāityā using archaeological materials from the Oxus Temple (southern Tajikistan). A comparative analysis of archaeological materials and written sources makes it possible to identify the Amu Darya River with the Avestan Vahvi Dāityā.     

Michael Comans,Extracting the Essence of the Śruti: The Śrutisārasamuddharanam of Totakācārya

Indo-Iranian Journal -