The Place of Devotion

Hindu devotional traditions have long been recognized for their sacred geographies as well as the sensuous aspects of their devotees’ experiences. Largely overlooked, however, are the subtle links between these religious expressions. Based on intensive fieldwork conducted among worshippers in Bengal’s Navadvip Mayapur sacred complex, this book discusses the diverse and contrasting ways in which Bengal Vaishnava devotees experience sacred geography and divinity. Sukanya Sarbadhikary documents an extensive range of practices, which draw on the interactions of mind, body, and viscera. She shows how perspectives on religion, embodiment, affect, and space are enriched when sacred spatialities of internal and external forms are studied at once. “Sophisticated in areas of theory, The Place of Devotion teases out the subtle nuances of affect for four groups within the Gaudiya Vaishnava community, demonstrating not only how they differ, but how the differently interiorized experiences become social practices that generate strong empathic continuities.” -TONY K. STEWART, Gertrude Conaway Chair in Humanities, Vanderbilt University “With exemplary skill and sensitivity, Sarbadhikary vividly documents the complex mix of emotional, aesthetic, and erotic sensibilities engaged and cultivated at one of India’s most celebrated Hindu holy places. The Place of Devotion is a must read for anyone interested in Hinduism, in India, and in the implications of profound religious experiences for the understanding of self in today’s modern world.” -SUSAN BAYLY, University of Cambridge “Sarbadhikary makes a crucial contribution to the current anthropology of Hinduism by showing the continued vibrancy of a feminine and ecstatic mode of religious experience that has refused to surrender to the masculinist thrust of modern religious reform.” -PARTHA CHATTERJEE, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Columbia University SUKANYA SARBADHIKARY is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Presidency University, Kolkata

ASSESSMENT OF ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITIES OF A SPECIES OF ASPERGILLUS: AN ENDOPHYTIC FUNGUS OF SCHIMA WALLICHII (DC.) KORTH. LEAVES

  Objective: The main goals of this study were to check the antimicrobial and antioxidant potentials of an endophytic fungal strain isolated from the leaves of Schima wallichii (DC.) Korth.Methods: The antibacterial and antifungal activities of the isolated fungal endophyte Visva-Bharati endophyte fungal (VBEF2) were checked by disc diffusion and agar well diffusion methods, respectively, against six pathogenic bacteria and four pathogenic fungi. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values and the mode of action of VBEF2 against Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and Gram-negative Escherichia coli were determined following colony-forming units (CFU) counting method. Antioxidant activity of the isolate was studied following 2, 2-diphenyl-2- picrilhydrazyl (DPPH) reduction assay.Results: The cell-free supernatants (CFS) of VBEF2 exhibited excellent antibacterial activity against all the bacteria used. The ethyl acetate extract of the endophyte was found to have the MIC of 50 μg/ml and 150 μg/ml against S. aureus and E. coli, respectively. It showed bactericidal mode of action against both of them. The CFS of the strain VBEF2 also showed excellent activities against two animal and two plant pathogenic fungi by producing zones of inhibition in the range of 10-20 mm. In the DPPH scavenging antioxidant assay, the ethyl acetate extract of VBEF2 was found with a low IC50 value of 19.01 μg/ml. The strain VBEF2 was identified as a species of Aspergillus based on its colony morphology and structural features observed under a compound light microscope.Conclusion: The strain VBEF2 can be implemented in various fields of pharmaceutical industry as it showed multidimensional beneficial attributes such as excellent antimicrobial and antioxidant activity

Fundamentals and applications of metal nanoparticle- enhanced singlet oxygen generation for improved cancer photodynamic therapy

The introduction of nanotechnology in the field of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) has proven to have great potential to overcome some of the challenges associated with traditional organic photosensitizers (PS) with respect to their solubility, drug delivery, distribution and site-specific targeting. Other focused areas in PDT involve high singlet oxygen production capability and excitability of PS by deep tissue penetrating light wavelengths. Owing to their very promising optical and surface plasmon resonance properties, combination of traditional PSs with plasmonic metallic nanoparticles like gold and silver nanoparticles results in remarkably high singlet oxygen production and extended excitation property from visible and near-infrared lights. This review summarizes the importance, fundamentals and applications of on plasmonic metallic nanoparticles in PDT. Lastly, we highlight the future prospects of these plasmonic nanoengineering strategies with or without PS combination, to have a significant impact in improving the therapeutic efficacy of cancer PDT

The Breathing Body, Whistling Flute, and Sonic Divine: Oneness and Distinction in Bengal Vaishnavism’s Devotional Aesthetics

This paper studies complex narratives connecting the Hindu deity Krishna, his melodious flute, and the porous, sonic human body in the popular devotional sect, Bengal Vaishnavism. From the devotee–lover responding to Krishna’s flute call outside, envying the flute’s privileged position on Krishna’s lips, to becoming the deity’s flute through yogic breath–sound fusions—texts abound with nuanced relations of equivalence and differentiation among the devotee–flute–god. Based primarily on readings of Hindu religious texts, and fieldwork in Bengal among makers/players of the bamboo flute, the paper analyses theological constructions correlating body–flute–divinity. Lying at the confluence of yogic, tantric, and devotional thought, the striking conceptual problem about the flute in Bengal Vaishnavism is: are the body, flute and divinity distinct or the same? I argue that the flute’s descriptions in both classical Sanskrit texts and popular oral lore and performances draw together ostensibly opposed religious paradigms of Yoga (oneness with divinity) and passionate devotion/bhakti (difference): its fine, airy feeling fusing with the body’s inner breathing self, and sweet melody producing a subservient temperament towards the lover–god outside. Flute sounds embody the peculiar dialectic of difference-and-identity among devotee–flute–god, much like the flute–lip-lock itself, bringing to affective life the Bengal Vaishnava philosophical foundation of achintya-bhed-abhed (inconceivability between principles of separation and indistinction)

Religious Belief through Drum-Sound Experience: Bengal’s Devotional Dialectic of the Classical Goddess and Indigenous God

The epistemic question about what constitutes religious belief in non-Western contexts is addressed here through the ontology of sonic experience. I demonstrate that religious beliefs are habitually ingrained as long-sustaining visceral memories, when afforded by sensory—for instance, aural—affects. Bengal’s peculiar devotional milieu constructs a prototype of oppositions. On one end is the urban, classical, martial goddess, Durga, with elite histories of acquiring a high Brahmanical form, and whose autumnal rituals are based on scriptural rules, caste hierarchies, and distance among the devotees and deity. On the other end is the rural, indigenous, non-classical, peasant god, Shiva, whose spring-time worship celebrating primordial death and regeneration is based on intensely embodied and communitarian principles of identity among the caste-equal bodies of devotee men, and even their god. Based on immersive ethnographic analyses, the paper argues that these dual psychological ends of the regional sacred cosmos are made vividly real through differential perceptive experiences of percussion sounds (ubiquitous in these festivities), their varied tempos, textures, volumes, and rhythm modulations. Through phenomenological deep listening, I describe stark styles of making and playing the sacred membranophone drum, dhak, which embodies distinct rhythm styles, relationships with rituals, and psychophysical effects on the devotional ensembles. I show how the bodies of devotees, dhak players (dhakis), deities, and even the dhak, become tied to the tonalities of the drum, which is taught through generations of deft learning among dhakis, to sound distinctly when echoed for Durga and Shiva. The paper’s main argument is that these dhak sounds, which have remained a conceptual oversight in literature, not only aid in, but indeed, enable the experience of and belief in Bengal’s divergent deities. It is through such empowering sensory sedimentations of the different sounds of the same percussion, that people recognize, remember, and maintain the region’s devotional dialectic and complex religious lifeworld. In essence, the body’s powerful experiences of drum sounds make religious belief palpable and possible

Shankh-er Shongshar, Afterlife Everyday: Religious Experience of the Evening Conch and Goddesses in Bengali Hindu Homes

This essay brings together critical archetypes of Bengali Hindu home-experience: the sound of the evening shankh (conch), the goddess Lakshmi, and the female snake-deity, Manasa. It analyzes the everyday phenomenology of the home, not simply through the European category of the ‘domestic’, but conceptually more elastic vernacular religious discourse of shongshar, which means both home and world. The conch is studied as a direct material embodiment of the sacred domestic. Its materiality and sound-ontology evoke a religious experience fused with this-worldly wellbeing (mongol) and afterlife stillness. Further, (contrary) worship ontologies of Lakshmi, the life-goddess of mongol, and Manasa, the death-and-resuscitation goddess, are discussed, and the twists of these ambivalent imaginings are shown to be engraved in the conch’s body and audition. Bringing goddesses and conch-aesthetics together, shongshar is thus presented as a religious everyday dwelling, where the ‘home’ and ‘world’ are connected through spiraling experiences of life, death, and resuscitation. Problematizing the monolithic idea of the secular home as a protecting domain from the outside world, I argue that everyday religious experience of the Bengali domestic, as especially encountered and narrated by female householders, essentially includes both Lakshmi/life/fertility and Manasa/death/renunciation. Exploring the analogy of the spirals of shankh and shongshar, spatial and temporal experiences of the sacred domestic are also complicated. Based on ritual texts, fieldwork among Lakshmi and Manasa worshippers, conch-collectors, craftsmen and specialists, and immersion in the everyday religious world, I foreground a new aesthetic phenomenology at the interface of the metaphysics of sound, moralities of goddess-devotions, and the Bengali home’s experience of afterlife everyday

A Review on Traditionally Used African Medicinal Plant <i>Annickia chlorantha</i>, Its Phytochemistry, and Anticancer Potential

Annickia chlorantha Setten & P.J.Maas belongs to the Annonaceae family and is a multi-purpose medicinal plant, which has been extensively used for the traditional treatment option for malaria in western and central Africa. Its phytochemical composition is dominated particularly by various biologically active protoberberines and acetogenins. This review aims to provide a comprehensive review on the traditional uses, phytochemical profiles, and the toxicology of this plant from a myriad of available publications. Even after its tremendous applications against several different human ailments, this plant has been underestimated for its anticancer potential. Herein, based on the phytochemical composition, we discuss the probable mode of mechanism for its antiproliferative activity, which highlights its importance for cytotoxicity screenings against cancer cells. Additionally, this article discusses several research questions and suggests the future directions of its applications in medicinal plant-based anticancer research