Tēvāram:Worshipping Gods on Stage

Building on the idea of “ritual quotation,” this article offers a new perspective on rituals enacted within contemporary theatrical performances in South India. Drawing from an existing corpus and reproduced in a different framework, the ritual tēvāram is embedded in a broad web of intertextual relationships comprised not only of items of repertoire and prescriptive manuals, but also of elements of ritual practices, shared beliefs, claims of social status, and ongoing negotiations between individual imagination and collective expectations. Usually a Nampūtiri domestic ritual, tēvāram is also carried out within Kūṭiyāṭṭam performances. Through a detailed analysis, I argue that the enactment of tēvāram on stage is not merely the stylized reproduction of a religious service, but it is rather an integral part of the narrative and aesthetic body of the theater practice. The performative and textual milieu of tēvāram creates scope for variations that modify both the plot and the tēvāram ritual itself. Kūṭiyāṭṭam-tēvāram thus becomes a transformative action and a tool of negotiation in the positioning of individuals within the social matrix

Polluted by a purifying text: The order of signs in a pre-modern literary Malayalam world

Considered lost until the latter part of the twentieth century, the Tiruniḻalmāla, “The garland of sacred shadows,” has been defined as a “ritual text” and as an account of rituals performed in the Āṟanmuḷa temple of central Kerala. Yet the manuscripts that came to light were preserved in the northern part of Kerala. On the one hand “The garland of sacred shadows” raises fundamental questions about its composition and transmission, and more fundamentally about the relation between textuality and performativity. On the other hand, it invites a reflection on the interpretative and epistemic approaches that scholars adopt towards forms of text which include an oral and visual dimension at their core. In fact, this poetic work that has been dated to the 13th/14th centuries intersects with two ritual and performative practices from contemporary Kerala. The first is the Uccabali-Teyyam, a particular form of Teyyam or possession worship performed by low-caste communities in parts of costal Karnataka and northern Kerala, and the second is the deliverance ritual called Kanneruppāṭu. This article aims to analyse how the rituals are presented and reproduced within the Tiruniḻalmāla in dialogue with the contemporary rituals. By highlighting how the text’s author refers to a religious and social 0world altogether different from his own, I argue that the Tiruniḻalmāla as a whole might have been conceived as the poetic re-creation of a ritual. In this sense, the text can be understood as a linguistic endeavor to conjure up something that resembles a ritual while openly stating, by its own textual nature, its disconnection from the reality it is supposed to depict. In other words, I take the performative nature of this text to be understood in terms of reproduction and simulation. If the “Garland of Sacred Shadows” was conceived for the high caste communities, then its intended audience was allegedly meant to keep a distance from the same practices that represent the core of the text. In this sense, the text, which has at its core the purification of the main deity of Āṟanmuḷa, might act, by way of inversion, as a source of pollution for its audience

How to Carve a King:Janna’s Inscription in the Temple of Amṛteśvara

The article provides a reading of a twelfth-century inscription composed by a courtly poet in Karnataka. At its most rudimentary level, the inscription praises the king and glorifies his commander. However, a closer reading demonstrates the poet playing with the conventions of his time. One of the techniques used to enhance the power of the ruler was to represent the commanders as replicas of their king. The author turns this mechanism into the inscription’s poetic motif. He uses the very dynamic of reduplication to subtly show the limits in the construction of power

Changes in the semantics between the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā and the Brāhamaṇas

This research focuses on the changes in the semantics of the root van- / vani- shading a light on the duplicity of the Indo-European root *u̯en- / *u̯en-H. Moreover, the study offers an interpretation to account for the diastratic distribution of the meaning “to desire”, that is reconstructed for the Indo-European (I.E.) and Vedic levels. The possibility of reading the two different I.E. forms, *u̯en / *u̯en-H, meaning respectively “to win” and “to desire”, is quite problematic as far as the Vedic outcome is concerned: van- / vani- doesn’t show such symmetry between pseudo-morphologising phonetics and semantics. As early as the first Indian attestations we shall speculate a coalescence of the reconstructed verbal roots. This process has left no traces and we must assume a hiatus between the two I.E. forms and the Vedic one. The present work aims at proving that in the R̥gvedic text this opposition could be replaced by the nuclear meaning ‘to appropriate’- ‘to make one’s own’, that is deployed in most of the occurrences; beside it, a ritual meaning is used to convey the idea of evoking the gods to the sacrificial area. In the post-R̥gvedic Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas the verb hardly keeps its ritual value; it is rather employed to express the idea of an appropriation and a sharing, as a further development of the idea of transference, in any case no longer involving a ritual exchange. The different uses which van- / vani - undergoes, can be traced back to a change in the perception of the rite. The sacrifice of the post-R̥gvedic period had to be predictable, while the action of summoning the gods presupposes inspiration and the possibility of failure. The semantic field of desire could be arguably considered absent in the R̥gvedic occurrences, yet it is attested at the I.E. level and in the Atharvavedic tradition. The hypothesis of the author is that two linguistic traditions have survived independently: the one that came down to us through the R̥gveda Saṃhitā and the one that is partially recorded in the Atharvedic sources. In the latter the meaning “to desire” is clearly present, while in the first one has almost disappeared. The linguistic tradition fragmentary attested in the Atharvaveda texts hail from the I.E. period and it is plausible that it has continued –though we have but scanty attestations of it – later on through the Vedic period. We could image it as hidden, submersed wave that comes rhapsodically to the surface. What we see in the Atharvaveda occurrences is a social counterpart of the ritual meaning eventually lost in the Brāhmaṇas. This reconstruction is an attempt to account for the different developments of verbal root. The nuclear meaning, and even more the ritual meaning, which were alive in the R̥gvedic period, fade away in the Brahmanical period, i.e. when the redactional enterprise to create a common rite took place, while the meaning “to desire” which was at the very outset not connected with this part of the society, escaped, as it were, this vanishing process. The examination of the root van- / vani- furnished us with a deeper understanding of the perception of ritual within the passages between the R̥gveda Saṃhitā and the liturgical texts; on the top of it, has provided important elements on the strong presence within the Vedic society of what may be called “heterodox” groups leaving their traces within the texts

The Epigraphia Carnatica Digitization Project

Epigraphia Carnatica – the major oeuvre of L B Rice – established for itself a name in among historians of the region that comes surpassing most if not all other enterprises of comparable design. It is truly extraordinary both in volume as it is in the scope of detailed and systematically furnished information. That makes this corpus not only an invaluable source of historical and other data but also a material for the study of important concepts of knowledge organisation

Lithium abundances in globular clusters

Lithium is created during the Big Bang nucleosynthesis and it is destroyed in stellar interiors at relatively low temperatures. However, it should be preserved in the stellar envelopes of unevolved stars and progressively diluted during mixing processes. In particular, after the first dredge-up along the RGB, lithium should be completely destroyed, but this is not what we observe today in globular clusters. This element allows to test stellar evolutionary models, as well as different types of polluters for second population stars in the multiple population scenarios. Due to the difficulty in the measurement of the small available lithium line, few GCs have been studied in details so far. Literature results are not homogeneous for what concerns type of stars, sample sizes, and chemical analysis methods. The Gaia-ESO survey allows us to study the largest sample of GCs stars (about 2000, both dwarfs and giants) for which the lithium has been analysed homogeneously

Looking outside the Galaxy: the discovery of chemical anomalies in 3 old Large Magellanic Cloud clusters

By using the multifiber spectrograph FLAMES mounted at the ESO-VLT, we have obtained high-resolution spectra for 18 giant stars, belonging to 3 old globular clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud (namely NGC 1786, 2210 and 2257). While stars in each cluster showed quite homogeneous iron content, within a few cents of dex (the mean values being Fe/H]= -1.75+-0.01 dex, -1.65+-0.02 dex and -1.95+-0.02 dex for NGC 1786, 2210 and 2257, respectively), we have detected significant inhomogeneities for the [Na/Fe], [Al/Fe], [O/Fe] and [Mg/Fe] abundance ratios, with evidence of [O/Fe] vs [Na/Fe] and [Mg/Fe] vs [Al/Fe] anticorrelations. The trends detected nicely agree with those observed in Galactic Globular Clusters, suggesting that such abundance anomalies are ubiquitous features of old stellar systems and they do not depend on the parent galaxy environment. In NGC 1786 we also detected two extreme O-poor, Na-rich stars. This is the first time that a firm signature of extreme chemical abundance anomalies has been found in an extragalactic stellar cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

Internal kinematics and structure of the bulge globular cluster NGC 6569

In the context of a project aimed at characterizing the properties of star clusters in the Galactic bulge, here we present the determination of the internal kinematics and structure of the massive globular cluster NGC 6569. The kinematics has been studied by means of an unprecedented spectroscopic dataset acquired in the context of the ESO-VLT Multi-Instrument Kinematic Survey (MIKiS) of Galactic globular clusters, combining the observations from four different spectrographs. We measured the line-of-sight velocity of a sample of almost 1300 stars distributed between ~0.8" and 770" from the cluster center. From a sub-sample of high-quality measures, we determined the velocity dispersion profile of the system over its entire radial extension (from ~ 5" to ~ 200" from the center), finding the characteristic behavior usually observed in globular clusters, with a constant inner plateau and a declining trend at larger radii. The projected density profile of the cluster has been obtained from resolved star counts, by combining high-resolution photometric data in the center, and the Gaia EDR3 catalog radially extended out to ~20' for a proper sampling of the Galactic field background. The two profiles are properly reproduced by the same King model, from which we estimated updated values of the central velocity dispersion, main structural parameters (such as the King concentration, the core, half-mass, and tidal radii), total mass, and relaxation times. Our analysis also reveals a hint of ordered rotation in an intermediate region of the cluster (40"<r<90", corresponding to $2 r_c<r<4.5 r_c$), but additional data are required to properly assess this possibility.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal; 21 pages, 10 figures, 4 table

ECACL (European and Chinese Approach to Commercial Law)

L'ordinamento cinese ha avuto, negli ultimi decenni, una profonda evoluzione, per molti aspetti correlata alla clamorosa crescita in termini economici di cui \ue8 stata protagonista la Repubblica Popolare. Questo ha fatto s\uec che all'enorme interesse riservato dall'imprenditoria occidentale a tale mercato si sia accompagnata una crescente attenzione della dottrina europea e nordamericana nei confronti delle innovazioni che hanno caratterizzato, in tempi recenti, quell'ordinamento giuridico. Il fenomeno, proprio per via della sua correlazione con la sottostante realt\ue0 economica, ha interessato in maniera particolare il diritto commerciale, ossia quella branca del diritto che ha certamente, tra i diversi suoi ambiti d'indagine, i temi dell'innovazione e della globalizzazione. La conoscenza, in Europa, delle soluzioni normative implementate in Cina a partire dagli scorsi anni '80 \ue8 tuttavia \u2010 per motivi storici, geografici e per l'ostacolo costituito dalle rilevanti differenze linguistiche \u2010 ancora oggi insufficiente, soprattutto per quanto riguarda gli aspetti attuativi. In effetti la dottrina italiana, nella sua quasi totalit\ue0. ha sempre privilegiato, nel proprio approccio comparatistico, l'Occidente all'Oriente, e ci\uf2 \ue8 ancor pi\uf9 vero se ci si limita a considerare gli studi giuridici caratterizzati da una specifica attenzione alle ragioni economiche: la carenza d\u2019innovazioni in ambito economico che ha contraddistinto la realt\ue0 cinese lungo gran parte del Novecento, in uno con la difficolt\ue0 a reperire dati su tale ambito, hanno difatti costituito un serio impedimento a questa tipologia di studi. Le lacune ricordate abbisognano, tuttavia, di essere colmate. Lo sviluppo dell'apparato produttivo e commerciale della Cina ha infatti poggiato anche su un ordinamento giuridico sempre pi\uf9 articolato e sofisticato e per ci\uf2 stesso contrassegnato da istituti di cui \ue8 bene che il legislatore italiano abbia compiuta conoscenza. Il progetto di seguito descritto intende quindi contribuire a colmare tale gap, tramite un'attenta disamina di taluni, specifici aspetti del diritto commerciale cinese, nell'ottica di appurare quali scelte legislative possano essere utilmente recepite nella nostra realt\ue0 giuridica, alla luce di criticit\ue0 e aspetti positivi. A ci\uf2 si giunger\ue0 tenendo ovviamente in considerazione i diversi modelli di sviluppo economico implementati: da un lato il c.d. \u201csocialismo di mercato\u201d, dove lo Stato svolge una funzione di pianificazione complessiva e partecipa in prima persona all'agone imprenditoriale, dall'altro una tendenziale adesione ai principi liberisti, con l'autorit\ue0 statuale che in linea di principio si limita a reprimere e, prima ancora, prevenire, le condotte abusive poste in essere dai competitor privati. La ricerca che qui si propone sar\ue0 condotta utilizzando differenti metodi interpretativi \u2010 fra cui quello noto come law and economics \u2013 cui accederanno profili di analisi economica in senso stretto. Le numerose modifiche apportate in questi ultimi anni, al sistema di diritto commerciale cinese, hanno suggerito di procedere ad una selezione che trova il suo filo conduttore nel principio della libert\ue0 d'impresa, il quale presenta una differente estensione, all\u2019interno dei due ordinamenti oggetto di disamina, in virt\uf9 delle diverse strategie politiche di base. Conseguentemente, sono state individuate le seguenti aree di ricerca, sulla base delle considerazioni esplicitate nel paragrafo \u201cIdea e obiettivi\u201d: libert\ue0 d'impresa sul piano organizzativo nel diritto societario cinese; capitale e responsabilit\ue0 dei soci: raffronto tra Italia 2 e Cina; la responsabilit\ue0 sociale d'impresa in Cina; la nuova legge cinese sulle class action in materia di securities; propriet\ue0 intellettuale e IA: Europa e Cina a confronto; accesso al mercato cinese e scelte organizzative nei processi d\u2019internazionalizzazione. L'invito presente nel bando a varare un progetto che coinvolga il Dottorato di ricerca attivo presso l'Ateneo maceratese viene accolto sotto due profili. Innanzitutto, il gruppo vede tra i partecipanti una studentessa del Corso di Dottorato in Diritto e innovazione. Inoltre, si proporr\ue0 al Collegio dei Docenti del Dottorato l'inclusione, nel programma istituzionale di attivit\ue0, dei seminari che saranno organizzati nell'ambito del progetto e del convegno che concluder\ue0 quest'ultimo, cos\uec da esporre ai dottorandi i risultati delle ricerche svolte in un contesto di confronto e arricchimento reciproco. L'attivit\ue0 di disseminazione e divulgazione dei risultati parziali e finali del progetto avr\ue0 luogo attraverso seminari e pubblicazioni scientifiche in riviste di classe A e open access. Inoltre, la comunicazione dei risultati conseguiti avverr\ue0 anche tramite iniziative \u2013 quali conferenze e workshop \u2013 destinate a svolgersi attraverso i canali extra\u2010accademici rappresentati da Confindustria Macerata, in quanto rappresentativa di una categoria naturalmente interessata ai risvolti pratici delle ricerche condotte, e dagli Istituti Confucio di Macerata e Venezia, in quanto punti di riferimento privilegiati di ogni iniziativa volta ad incrementare la conoscenza della realt\ue0 cinese. La presentazione del complesso dei risultati raggiunti avverr\ue0 invece in un convegno conclusivo, con la partecipazione in presenza dell'intero gruppo e di esperti esterni ad esso. I lavori progettuali si concluderanno con la pubblicazione, auspicabilmente all'interno della Collana curata dal Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza UniMC e comunque in open access, degli atti del convegno. \uc8 infine previsto il deposito telematico presso il Laboratorio di innovazione delle registrazioni dei seminari, del convegno e del materiale informativo medio tempore prodotto. Responsabile del progetto \ue8 il prof. Alessio Bartolacelli, coordinatore scientifico \ue8 il dott. Carlo Emanuele Pupo. Il gruppo di ricerca \ue8 formato da studiosi dotati di competenze adeguate alla realizzazione del progetto ideato e che si sono gi\ue0 confrontati con le metodiche proprie delle collaborazioni scientifiche. Il team dei giuristi \ue8 interamente riconducibile all'area privatistica, atteso che ricade nell'ambito del diritto privato la disciplina delle transazioni tra privati e la configurazione, da parte dei consociati, del modello organizzativo da utilizzare nell'esercizio dell'attivit\ue0 economica. Il team degli economisti, con i quali s\u2019instaurer\ue0 quel dialogo interdisciplinare richiesto dal bando, garantisce la massima coesione, data la comunione di metodiche di lavoro. L'attivit\ue0 di ricerca sar\ue0 caratterizzata da una continua dialettica interdisciplinare