A New Public Theology: Sanskrit and Society in Seventeenth-century South India

This dissertation documents the earliest stages in the emergence of the Smarta Saiva sectarian community of south India as captured by the theological writings of prominent Saiva theologians. I examine the sectarianization of Hinduism in microcosm by telling the story of a particular Hindu sect in the process of coming into being. The Smarta Saiva tradition of south India ranks among a handful of independent Hindu lineages that palpably dominates the public religious life of south India today. As a sectarian religious system, Smarta-Saivism comprises the institution of the Sankaracarya Jagadgurus and the extensive lay populace that has cultivated a relationship of personal devotion with these iconic figures. Historically speaking, however, the Smarta-Saiva tradition equally comprises the trailblazing theologians who first articulated the boundaries of the community, demarcating its distinct sectarian identity in contradistinction to its various Vaisnava and non-Smarta Saiva rivals. As it was these theologians whose pioneering inquiries crafted the systems of meaning that first gave birth to Smarta-Saivism as such, it is in their writings--their doctrine, polemic, ritual procedures, and devotional poetry--that this dissertation grounds its inquiry. My analysis centers on the textual contributions of Nilakantha Diksita--minister, poet laureate, and public theologian of Nayaka-period Madurai, and those connected with him by virtue of kinship, collegiality, or direct antagonism. Nilakantha and his immediate family and dialogical partners form the core of what I refer to as the "Smarta religious system" of the seventeenth century, culturally a direct antecedent of what we know today as south Indian Smarta-Saivism. My analysis takes the form of three parallel case studies, each of which illuminates a dynamic of intersection between intellectual discourse and religious culture that proved foundational to the religious landscape of south India up to the present day. Taken as a whole, these case studies illustrate the micro-dynamics of public theology, articulating key moments of the consolidation of south Indian Smarta identity and religiosity

Language as Ritual: Saying What Cannot Be Said with Western and Confucian Ritual Theories

This dissertation addresses one of the classical philosophical and theological problems of religious language, namely, how to speak meaningfully about matters that appear to be inexpressible. While addressed extensively in a variety of literatures across cultures, the problem persists, particularly in regard to harmonizing theological, philosophical, and linguistic perspectives. The dissertation argues that (i) language is best understood as a species of ritual; (ii) so understood, religious language speaks to and about religious realities subjunctively, that is, as if such realities could be talked about; and (iii) this way of understanding language achieves greater harmony among philosophical and linguistic approaches while achieving some degree of cross-cultural generality. The argument begins with a cross-cultural comparison between modern social scientific ritual theories, especially that of Roy A. Rappaport, and the Confucian ritual theory of Xunzi. This generates a novel theory of ritual capable of engaging theories of language that have emerged in modern linguistics, philosophy of language, logic, and hermeneutics. The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce provides the unifying framework for the theory, which leads to the first conclusion that language can be understood as a species of ritual. When language is understood as ritual, there are several options for interpreting religious speech as meaningful. An analysis of these alternatives on terms semantically demarcated by Hilary Putnam leads to the conclusion that language expresses theological insights in the same way it expresses anything else: as if reality and its elements were the way the language form and process construes and renders them. This analysis both advances critiques of language as understood under the linguistic turn, especially by Terrence W. Deacon and Daniel L. Everett, and establishes the second and third conclusions of the thesis

Theatre and Its Other: Abhinavagupta on Dance and Dramatic Acting

What is Dance? What is Theatre? What is the boundary between enacting a character and narrating a story? When does movement become tinted with meaning? And when does beauty shine alone as if with no object? These universal aesthetic questions find a theoretically vibrant and historically informed set of replies in the oeuvre of the eleventh-century Kashmirian author Abhinavagupta. The present book offers the first critical edition, translation, and study of a crucial and lesser known passage of his commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, the seminal work of Sanskrit dramaturgy. The nature of dramatic acting and the mimetic power of dance, emotions, and beauty all play a role in Abhinavagupta’s thorough investigation of performance aesthetics, now presented to the modern reader

Theatre and Its Other

In Theatre and Its Other, Elisa Ganser revisits a telling debate on the intertwined natures of dance and dramatic acting; preserved in Abhinavagupta’s eleventh-century commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, it reflects complex historical shifts in aesthetic theory and performance practice. ; Readership: All those interested in the history of Indian dance and theatre and in Abhinavagupta’s aesthetics, including scholars and students of Indology, performance, dance, and theatre studies, as well as performers