Tales of endings and beginnings : cycles of violence as a Leitmotif in the narrative structure of the Bhadrakāḷīmāhātmya

The asura’s demise at the hands of the goddess is a theme frequently revisited in Hindu myth. It is the chronicle of a death foretold. The Bhadrakāḷīmāhātmya, a sixteenth century regional purāṇa from Kerala, narrates the tale of fierce goddess Bhadrakāḷī and her triumph over asura king Dārika. Violence is ubiquitous in this narrative, which was designed with one goal in mind: glorifying the ultimate act of defeating the asura enemy. In its course it exhibits many kinds of violence: self-harm, cosmic warfare, murder, etc. This paper argues (1) that violence comes to serve as a structural aspect in the text. Reappearing consistently at key moments in the narrative, violence both frames and structures the goddess’s tale. Yet, it is not only the violent act that dominates, it is its accompaniment by equal acts of regeneration that dictate the flow of the narrative, creating a pulsating course of endings and beginnings; (2) These cycles, that strategically occur throughout the narrative, come to serve as a Leitmotif referring to the cyclic tandem of destruction and regeneration that has dominated post-Vedic Hindu myth in many forms. The pulsating dynamic of death and revival thus becomes a specific narrative design that aims to embed the regional goddess within a grander framework of Time

Cyclic Length in the Tame Brauer Group of the Function Field of a p-Adic Curve

Let $F$ be the function field of a smooth curve over the $p$-adic number field \Q_p. We show that for each prime-to-$p$ number $n$ the $n$-torsion subgroup \H^2(F,\mu_n)={}_n\Br(F) is generated by $\Z/n$-cyclic classes; in fact the $\Z/n$-length is equal to two. It follows that the Brauer dimension of $F$ is two (first proved in \cite{Sa97}), and any $F$-division algebra of period $n$ and index $n^2$ is decomposable

Evolution of mobility governance in Flanders: opening up for bottom-up initiatives or suffering from lock-in?

Mobility policy in Flanders lacks a clear discourse on implementing the policy objectives for 2020 and beyond. Though mobility planning can show success stories, mobility problems seem to aggravate. For supra local mobility projects in Flanders the executive power often lies with deconcentrated administrations at the level of the province, this is e.g. the case for public transportation and major roads, where province boundaries impede public transport projects across borders. For local mobility plans, the local administration and council have the power. But as these local mobility plans have highly formalised procedures, they tend to be rigid frameworks or administrations and risk to be suffering from lock-in. There is a need for new dynamics in mobility policy in reference to present developments. Here bottom-up or outside-in initiatives can be regarded as the key to real change. To that end radical changes in the organisation and mobility planning itself are necessary to meet these new inititiaves from the bottum-up and outside-in. Next to hardware and software approaches or innovations to turn mobility planning more sustainable, we additionally propose in this paper an ‘orgware’ solution, demonstrated in some case studies. In these cases key actors of bottom-up projects and their associations with other actors are visualised. Furthermore barriers and potentials for implementation are formulated leading onto recommendations for further research in order to improve the implementation of the policy objectives