The sacred geography of Kapila: the Kapilasrama of Sidhpur

To most scholars of Hinduism, the sage Kapila is a person associated only with ancient India and known mainly as the mythical founder of the Sāmkhya system of religious thought. This is the Kapila whose teaching is known through Yuktidīpikā, the Sāmkhyakārikā by Isvarakrsna and other Sāmkhya texts and the tradition of technical commentaries on them. In India this Kapila belongs to a scholarly tradition preserved mainly by pandits with a knowledge of Sanskrit and, for the last hundred years, also by professors in the Indian university system. In this article, the symbolic significance of one of the most important pilgrimage centres connected with Kapila, Sidhpur in Gujarat, is explored. The close connection between the sacred narratives and the rituals performed at the pilgrimage centre is a significant feature of the sacred places devoted to Kapila. At every place of pilgrimage to Kapila there are narratives about him which account for the sacredness of the place. These narratives belong to the geography of Hindu India as much as to the mythology of the Hindu tradition. The life history of Kapila is engraved in a sacred landscape. The place where Kapila was born, the place where he gave the sacred knowledge of ultimate reality to his mother, the different places where he performed tapas, the place where he killed the sons of King Sagara are all part of India's imagined landscape. The promise of the Kapila pilgrimage sites is that these places have power in themselves to remove moral impurity and grant moksa to the pilgrims. The sacred narratives of Kapila function to make this promise trustworthy

Revivals of ancient religious traditions in modern India: Sāṃkhyayoga and Buddhism

The article compares the early stages of the revivals of Sāṃkhyayoga and Buddhism in modern India. A similarity of Sāṃkhyayoga and Buddhism was that both had disappeared from India and were revived in the modern period, partly based on Orientalist discoveries and writings and on the availability of printed books and publishers. Printed books provided knowledge of ancient traditions and made re-establishment possible and printed books provided a vehicle for promoting the new teachings. The article argues that absence of communities in India identified with these traditions at the time meant that these traditions were available as identities to be claimed

Early pilgrimage traditions in South Asia

Postponed access: the file will be available after 2022-05-30This chapter looks at early history of pilgrimage in South Asia. Sacred sites that were believed to offer rewards to those who visited them have been a significant feature of South Asian religious traditions since at least the first centuries CE. This chapter suggests that some pre-Buddhist, non-Vedic religious rituals in north and central India associated with sacred trees, pools of water, and shrines, might have been objects of pilgrimage travel also in prehistoric times. The chapter analyses statements about pilgrimage in two early texts that promoted pilgrimage, the Mahāparinibbānasutta and the Mahābhārata and suggests that different forms of ritual travel associated with pilgrimage are promoted in these texts and argues that they had different roots. The chapter suggests that perhaps the pre-Buddhist, nonVedic religious traditions were of some importance for the development of South Asian pilgrimage.acceptedVersio

From the History of Religions to the Science of Religion in Norway

The focus in this article is on the developments in the study of religion in Norway during the last fifty years, reflecting over continuities and breaks with the past, over changes in themes, theories and methods as well as over relations to the surrounding world.

HAPEE, a statistical approach for ionospheric scintillation prediction in the polar region

International audienceThrough several studies, CNES, ONERA, NSC and NMA have sought to define a prediction model for ionospheric variations that can disturb e.g. GNSS-based systems. The studies have focused on the high-latitude region, with a particular focus on the auroral oval. A first model was proposed in 2014. The model was a simple empirical model driven by the Kp geomagnetic index, and where the main output was the instantaneous mean Rate-of-TEC Index (ROTI) value. The model was found to not be sufficiently reliable to be used as an operational prediction model. In 2019, an updated model is proposed, where the main inputs are now the solar wind parameters pressure (the solar wind pressure p) and B z (the z component of the solar wind magnetic field). Moreover, a distribution of predicted ROTI or σ φ index is provided instead of a mean value. Thus, the model allows estimating the percentage of time of occurrence for a level of ROTI (or σ φ) to be exceeded in the next 5 minutes or 1 hour, or the exceeded ROTI (or σ φ) for a corresponding percentage of time. This empirical approach is based on 10 years of GNSS/scintillation data collected by more than 15 GNSS stations in Norway

Daniel Enstedt & Katarina Plank (red.), Levd religion: Det heliga i vardagen

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Consequenses of increased rotation length as climate change mitigation

Globale klimaendringer er en av vår tids største miljøutfordringer. Global oppvarming i form av økt karbondioksidinnhold (CO2) i atmosfæren fører blant annet til økt gjennomsnittstemperatur på jorda og økt havnivå, som vil gi store konsekvenser over hele verden. Norge har etter regjeringens nye klimamelding av februar 2015 påtatt seg et 40 % utslippsreduksjon av klimagasser innen 2030 sammenlignet med nivået i 1990. I denne meldingen beskrives skog som et av de viktigste virkemidlene for å nå dette målet. Regulering av omløpstiden er en effektiv måte å forvalte skogens karbonbudsjett på. Selv om signalene fra regjeringen er positive til økt utnyttelse av skogressursen, er forpliktelsene til utslippsreduksjoner svært kraftige på kort sikt. Skogeierne skal ikke ta for gitt at det ikke kan bli innført konkrete klimatiltak også i skogbruket, og et av dem kan være å forlenge omløpstiden. I denne oppgaven ble konsekvensene av å la skogen stå over økonomisk hogstmodenhet i den hensikt å binde karbon undersøkt. Det er utført økonomiske beregninger rundt rånetto, total karbonbinding og sammenlignet kostnaden ved forlenget omløpstid med et økonomisk optimalt bestand gjennom grunn- og venteverdiberegninger. Resultatene viser at både volum pr. dekar, karbonmengde bundet i skogen ved hogsttidspunkt og ved langtidslagring i materialer økte med økende omløpstid. Den årlige tonnprisen for å lagre karbon i bestandet ved å utsette hogst ble redusert med økt omløpstid, sett bort i fra bestandet som står på kalkholdig, tørkesvak mark. Det var mer økonomisk kostnadseffektivt å binde karbon i alternativet med 20 års forlenget omløpstid i forhold til alternativene med kortere omløpstid.Global climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time. Global warming in terms of altered carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere leads to an increase in the mean temperature on earth and an increased sea level that could in turn lead to severe consequences all over the world. In a new report, the Norwegian government states that they have undertaken the task of reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases by 40 % by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. In this report forestry is claimed to be one of the most important instruments to reach this goal. Regulating the rotation length is an effective way to manage a forest' carbon budget. Even though the signals from the government are positive to an increased utilization of the forest resource, the commitment to the reduction levels is so ambitious that forest owners should not take for granted that measures to sequestrate carbon dioxide in forests not will be taken. One such measure could be to increase the rotation length of forest stands. In this paper I have examined the consequences of increasing the rotation length as a function of sequestrating carbon dioxide. I have done economical calculations on net income, total carbon sequestration and the cost of increased rotation length by comparing an economically optimal stand with different durations of increased rotation length. I found that both volume pr decare, carbon level sequestrated in the stand and in materials made from the saw timber increased by increasing rotation length. The yearly tonnage cost of sequestrating carbon by delaying the harvest time was reduced by increased rotation length. The only exception was the stand with increased rotation length and limestone ground, that had the highest yearly tonnage cost. It was more cost-effective to sequestrate carbon in the stand with increased rotation age of 20 years, than the alternatives with shorter rotation length

A study of low-energy plasma in the inner magnetosphere of Saturn

In this thesis the inner magnetosphere of Saturn has been studied using data from the Langmuir probe on the spacecraft Cassini. A program has been developed to analyze data from the Langmuir probe. Using this program, three topics have been investigated. The first topic is the effect of photoelectrons on Langmuir probe measurements. Photoelectron current from the probe is found to depend on spacecraft attitude. It is found that a leakage current from the stub is a likely cause of this. Because the probe is relatively close to Cassini, photoelectrons emitted from Cassini can dominate over plasma electrons under certain conditions. The second topic is the analysis of Langmuir probe data from Saturn orbit insertion, from 20 R$_S$ to closest approach and back out to 15 R$_S$. The results reveal a diverse plasma environment showing signs of interaction with the rings and moons of Saturn. The last topic concerns velocity measurements by the Langmuir probe, which in certain areas differ from the velocity measured by other instruments. A combination of ions moving at corotation velocities and ions moving at Keplerian velocities can produce the results and explain why other instruments did not get the same results as the Langmuir probe

High Latitude Ionospheric Gradient Observation Results from a Multi-Scale Network

In this article, a cluster comprised of eight Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) receivers surrounding five supplemental test stations located on much shorter baselines is used to form a composite multi-scale network for the purpose of isolating, extracting, and analyzing ionospheric spatial gradient phenomena. The purpose of this investigation is to characterize the levels of spatial decorrelation between the stations in the cluster during the periods with increased ionospheric activity. The location of the selected receiver cluster is at the auroral zone at night-time (cluster centered at about 69.5° N, 19° E) known to frequently have increased ionospheric activity and observe smaller size of high-density irregularities. As typical CORS networks are relatively sparse, there is a possibility that spatially small-scale ionospheric delay gradients might not be observed by the network/closest receiver cluster but might affect the user, resulting in residual errors affecting system accuracy and integrity. The article presents high level statistical observations based on several hundred manually validated ionospheric spatial gradient events along with low level analysis of specific events with notable temporal/spatial characteristics.publishedVersio