For. So welcome everybody to this, which is our second meeting in the third series of Ox Intrusion Seminar,
and I'm really excited today to be able to introduce Professor John Mimics of the University of Virginia.
John is a specialist in the religions of Kashmir, and hence he knows about the cultural background from out of which.
According to Tibetan belief and Mozambicans Tibet over the last few years,
corresponding with John and his colleague Ben Williams is completely transformed.
My own understanding of the origins of the Niebuhr tradition.
And I strongly recommend that strategy begins an increased dialogue with scholars of Kashmir intensity.
Tonya is professor of Indian religions and South Asian studies in the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Virginia.
She is the author of the ubiquitous Shiva Somalilanders Majesty and His Tantric Interlocutors,
as well as a sequel Volume C by the same title, both from Oxford University Press.
A third volume of the series is on its way.
John holds a Ph.D. degree in South Asian studies from the University of Pennsylvania and MPhil in Classical Intelligence from the University of
Oxford and M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a B.A. in religion from the University of Rochester.
He was a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2002 to 2003 academic year and director
directeur d'étude only to École Pratique distorted Paris in the spring of 2016.
His current research examines not only 200 philosophical works,
but also the larger intellectual and cultural context with the Valley of Kashmir of the ninth, the 12th centuries.
And currently he's beginning a book on the study of religion and the place of historical and textual studies in the same.
So now very, very grateful you could talk to us today and over to you.
Well, thank you very much. And just set a timer. No, this has been really a nice conversation and thank you for being in touch,
and it's really been a pleasure to get to know you and your work and to read your some of your essays.
And I'm happy to share today, so I'll speak probably for 45 to 50 minutes.
I do have a hand out which I will refer to, but not read in great detail.
So thanks once again. And I think the work that we're doing here of linking our respective intellectual world worlds can be vital.
And it's tragically novel in that so many people, there's a general lack of effort to do so for few, if any, have taken it up in a sustained manner.
Yes, even though it's plainly evident that the historical and geographic areas of our interests.
For me, the Kashmir Valley around the 10th 12th centuries with Sanskrit materials that were written or were
circulated there at that time presents a notable historical circumstance and point of connexion,
where from Mayan Hindu traditions of various kinds, mixed and engaged extensively not only with Indian Buddhism,
but also with Tibetans in particular and other visitors from along the Silk Road network.
So in the course of preparing this talk,
I have found that the work involved in trying to connect these worlds gave me a sort of mixed feeling of seeing what is obvious and feeling
that what I have to share with you is completely obvious on the one hand and then on the other moments of new insight or revelation.
So to share across subdisciplines, I think, requires one not only to reiterate what is well known as I'll do today,
but also it can give occasion to see things in a new light.
In the present instance, this is precisely what preparing the comments I have here left me with for a while.
It's implicitly known that scholars of shared amongst scholars of activism that the teachers identified
with the God Shiva were said to be incarnated on Earth in order to initiate and teach worthy disciples.
I also did not realise until preparing for today that the history of the term with which we often return refer to these incarnated gods as gurus.
The term SIDA or SID does in the plural is complex and in fact has gone on
traced in a change in history of use in the development of Indian religions.
In fact, the term has to be traced to early Buddhism, I think, as well and into Jainism.
I wanted to just put in front of you. I think a lot of you will know this book that Paul Dundas is the Jains, and there's this symbol here of this,
our circle here at the top, which is a symbol for the world where it Sid does, where accomplished people go, it's called the Shila.
This land where people go, where they're no longer be reborn from and live forever.
And so this term, Sinner has kind of two qualities to it.
On the one hand, it refers to a Rob has been writing in his publications using the term Celexa Sanderson uses,
referring to the Avatar Tharaka sedan or the Siddha incarnated on Earth.
We have this phenomenon of gurus who are trace their lineage and trace their very identity to
Shiva claiming to be shiva incarnated on Earth and therefore authoritative in their teaching.
And we have this in shiva tantra. Very common. But before that, we have the term Sid referring to a kind of class of beings,
and we see the term being used in various non tantric works in ways that I think are interesting and bleed into tantric works as well,
and I wanted to show a bit of that in the course of the day. OK, let's see.
The first place I encountered all of this was with my dissertation work, and I wanted to put the hand out one last time.
I know it's redundant for most of us, but for one or two it might not be.
I've put it into the chart so you can download it for what that's worth, and then I'll share my screen here.
Yes, this should be a. Yes,
so the first place I encountered this idea of a Siddha incarnated in Earth as a
guru was with my dissertation and indeed the work I've done for my Ph.D. I in.
And then now two volumes of this translation of this text entitled Shiver Trustee or vision or philosophical vision of the like,
if you like of shiva written by this figure. Saman Nanda is the founding author of this tradition that culminates in the writings of Abhinav a Gupta.
And this is a kind of schematic of the texts that we have that are present and lost along the way.
And at the end of the shivered Rushdie published in the Kashmir series of texts and studies and then also in manuscript sources,
we have something that's a kind of autobiography of some under.
It's written in the first person. I personally don't think he wrote it for a variety of reasons we don't need to go into,
and I've given it to you here with little variance readings and that kind of thing and so on with the Sanskrit translation again,
which I won't read for reasons of time,
except to point out to you in this bold and underline that we have this person who is said to be as a tutor now or class down into the world.
And we have this lineage of his ends with Soma under indeed being called a sinner that are perfected one.
And we have said, does plural 14 of them, in fact, coming down into the Earth to offer teachings and preserve this sacred secret teaching?
That's special. And this translation with the corresponding bold and underline I've given to you here as well.
The point that I'm trying to make is at first, and I'll end with this kind of passage again in the end of the hour.
But the point I'm trying to make is that the history of this term is more complicated than I know it to be God incarnate on Earth to teach.
Yes, we have this all the time and Shi'ism. But this notion of said does being some kind of being.
It is not an incarnate guru.
We have this prehistory of the term as well, and I think we have to disambiguate those who are avatars or of a not crust down to the earth.
Sid does this creature or being that lives.
In fact, we'll see between heaven and Earth. And then of a because it is this kind of siddha embodied that comes from this strain of shy
wisdom certainly is from a tradition of the northern transmission of the colour reform movement.
The details about which of these little branches of Shi'ism you can get in and not this book.
But in this book, the Alexa Sanderson first gave an article Shi'ism in the Township Traditions in this hardy edited this volume,
and he's updated his history there in several articles since.
But you can get a general map of how he is understood these branches and divisions of
Shi'ism mostly represented still even still in mostly unpublished manuscript sources.
So we have a general term Sid that I want to scout in Plato materials now and then I'll show you some passages from the tantric tradition.
So I've mapped it out here with these items like this down through the handout.
And I wanted to show you four places in the map out. There are others, but I just picked for their five or six that use this phrase.
Set a granddaughter of. So the Gandara Savita, that kind of thing.
It scans well and shrunk a metre, and it appears over and over again.
Let me go to my notes and tell you about this passage.
The first one is from the Aranya Ka Pavon, where we have an explanation given by I can't remember who it is.
I'm sorry to various sacred sites you can go to and gain rewards there by.
And one of them is said to be the source of the Cinda. The source of the Indus River, which is worshipped by cities and Gondar rivers, is Siddons.
And then these celestial musicians are these Gandara as another group somewhat indeterminate,
there should be more symbology done to figure out their history as well.
So you can see this term there, I want to give you a second one just to give you a sense of the frequency of this right, said the Gundotra.
Savita Savita's The Next One. We have neat little yoga parvin of the mobbar to again, maybe second century.
This is quite early, probably even earlier than that.
We have these passages in the Mahabharata referring to a place in this case a mountain that is full of special IRBs that are useful for medicine.
And it was frequented by cities and done to her of us.
So we have that example as well in the yoga programme when they're trying to convince the crowd of us not to fight.
Honda was a third example here we have from the drone up carbon.
This is one of the battle or war books of the Mahabharata, as I'm sure all of you will now be seen as being taken out of commission.
And we have drawn a fighting and we have this passage here that I've highlighted.
So we have Davar registered a gun out of our house side inside the apologia.
So they're saying Syed was sobbing, right? Bravo brother Dave as vicious sisters and as was honoured, these two fighting.
We have car now fighting with Bheema here in this passage.
You get the point. And then yet another one that we have here, right?
Worship this. This person is being worshipped by citizen drivers as well as by gods, as well as by riches.
So we clearly have passages that are suggesting these cities are kind of being a special kind of being along the lines of in the lines of cantatas,
which is drivers and so on. The reason that I had my mind on this passage, there are other places.
I'm sure there are many, many other places. I haven't searched it completely. I'm sure there are many other places in the Mahabharata and elsewhere,
certainly in pharaonic literature as well, where cities are mentioned in this kind of vein.
But the reason I look for Indian dharma in this compound is that I recall that of memory,
a text that I edited and translated at Oxford for my end and subsequently published.
I gave you the reference here in the footnote.
Yeah, I called the Judas and the Hammer Tantra, and this is a text we haven't to customers the first to maybe second,
but it reads and appears and presents almost like a truncated complete tantra.
And it starts with this description of this place where we have the day of a day of Mahesh, one of the gods shiva sitting seated.
Excuse me, and it's described as Sudha Kongara Fujita.
And that line had stuck in my mind. And this is a text tantric text that's part of this Counter-Reformation.
So it's even a later part of at present, somewhat later partnership with centrism using this kind of stock phrase that we
certainly have from the Mahabharata and elsewhere coming into a tantric scriptural work.
We also see it in the temple, said Baba Tantra.
As I've given you in this footnote, the same phrases there in the temporal lobe.
This is my longish way of coming around and saying these sectors have a free history, a pretty long history.
When we say the phrase, we're going to have to think about what it possibly could mean when we find it even in tantric works,
because it seems evident to me that this of a kind of compound we have is a stock phrase.
It's pre tantric that's fed into tantric works as well.
Now I wanted to share a little bit more information about these.
Sid does that comes from non-toxic and free tantric works.
And here I've given you two passages. I'm just checking the time so I don't speak German.
I'm giving you two passages here from the yoga studio.
And its commentary are the same as posture of the asset, who it's been argued is the same person as Patanjali.
But here we have this passage of yoga a two point forty four.
It says that if you reduce my desire, then you will get a connexion.
You'll make a connexion with your ish today avatar. But the commentary says that those who are the person who is skilled in smart
guy right will have come into his vision divas Rishi's and Sid does so again.
This looks like a class of being yeah, that's similar to gods and riches and so on.
But the really clinching evidence that we have that absolutely think about this as a class of beings and it's pretty tantric context is what we
have in the yoga suture and the beauty part of this famous third book of the yoga sutures where the cities are mentioned in the intro itself,
there's the set, the darshan.
But the commentary says this about the cities that they course in the Inter, in the intermedia, around between Earth and heaven.
And this is indeed where we see this kind of world of cities. Maybe I don't know.
I have. This is what was new to me in preparing this by Rob's question.
And maybe something from Jain tradition is feeding into epic and this kind of classical Sanskrit.
We could say Hindu texts. Yeah, I don't know what the history is exactly, but clearly we're.
I'm talking in these earlier contexts about avatar accidents or perfected God coming to Earth,
manifest on Earth in the form of a perfected human being, which we have much of, as we'll see shortly.
There's an intermediate intermediary phase in coming to this idea of a Siddha, that's an avatar,
as we saw in that first passage I shared at the beginning of the talk from that so-called autobiography of Samantha that,
by the way, one of the reasons I'm not sure on underwrote it is because there are places in the manuscripts where it's not included in the text.
OK, that's no big deal. But then there are manuscripts that include it and only a call it, a variety, some kind of commentary.
So it's a little bit funny in the manuscript transmission. The other thing about it is that it mentions the so-called local language.
It uses a nonsense word to refer to this person who's somehow someone on this line or through whom someone on this line is said.
To have been manifested in that reference to the vernacular doesn't feel like something Salamander would have done.
It feels like something that would have happened after his time. But that's neither here nor there.
I wanted to show you and I won't read it,
but I want to show you this passage here that comes from this famous commentary on the past partial courtesy from the partial cut early.
This is what we sometimes call a prototype trick work. It's not part of what we know, as was referred to as the one from the path of mantras.
But by later, shy of a contract, tradition's was referred to as the etymology or the outer path or the extreme pass.
But these partial putters from 2nd century on. And we know that this commentary was probably fifth sixth century, this commentary of India.
And here we have the notion expressed of God coming to Earth to teach.
I descended to Earth using this term of a teacher now and this we have in this commentary on the partial part of Suchas.
This is a well known passage. However, also quoted by Ben Williams, with whom I know Rob has been speaking.
And as it happens, Ben and I work together.
We read Sanskrit together on Skype or Zoom. And he came to Virginia last week and gave a lecture, in fact.
So I just saw him in person about eight or nine days ago.
But he says of this passage in his Ph.D. dissertation regarding quotes regarding the partial Panopto based ascetic traditions,
there is evidence that Laco Alisha identified in the 6th century commentary on the past she practised,
such as as Shiva descending into the Shiva Sanctuary of Pi of a Southerner and assuming the son of a
Brahmin came to be venerated as the earliest and most revered foundational teacher of the tradition.
And here we have, in other words, an early reference perhaps in Shi'ism wisdom.
I think so far, I think in wisdom, the earliest reference we have to the notion of Shiva manifesting itself as a teacher in a human form.
And the translation given here, also cited by Ben Williams in his dissertation, is by Hara,
the great scholar who has this wonderful dissertation and then book is this from a dissertation on the participants of tradition?
Recently, there is a book that came out and then I'll come to the more properly tantric material shortly.
But recently there's a book that came out by Elizabeth Sesso.
I don't know if you can see what's sharing the screen. Also, the cover of the book entitled Mapping the Past, the Landscape and As It Happens,
I was just asked to and did publish a review of this book that's in the The Iranian Journal the most recent issue, and it's a lovely book.
It's also full of that one hundred and six or 108 colour plates.
It's really a beautiful book, well-researched and totally available and open access, and I would recommend it to you.
It's a nice book looking at this history of this early phase of activism of this party.
Margaret, if you like tradition and mapping the ways in which the scandal that articulates a vision for this posture of tradition is
engaged and worked with in the material culture of three regions in west and southwest India and around the 6th century,
or take a few centuries, depending on the material.
So in any event, she either cites this passage from the Purana that I've given to you in this handout item number 11.
And it's an interesting passage that again refers to these partial patas understanding their guru to be a manifested form of Shiva as a human.
And you see that they're different, you guys, when he comes down, I guess I can read this passage, why not?
I won't read the transcript. It's there for you.
And in the crypto UGA, he became horrible in this country, bearing the Pinaka bow and having borne the burden of the choice for him.
He threw that burden into the normal rhythm and the great lord out of compassion, with a desire for the liberation from birth of those who are mortal,
became independent in the trade, the age cutting off their heads to effect their liberation and end the devil put age.
He became Russiagate and graced humanity with dance in the same way of life.
So Shiva himself is descended to Earth in this country of corona.
In every other racing there, the Brahmins, whose hearts or minds menaces the world are pure.
And of course, we know that continuous commentary on the passion of success is intended for Brahmins,
although the tradition may have had a wider ambit than that outside of his interpretation of it.
There are two other things from Sasol's book that now I'd like to follow up on because of this initial initiatives.
This impulse from this kind of engagement with Rob and that is that Cecil notes in two places unfortunately didn't give the text of these passages.
She notes in two places interesting passages that use the term Siddha one is another place must come to Parana,
which I surely can look up that uses the term to refer to posh adepts as Sid does.
And these are ones that are said to have gained a union with shiver, a shiver yoga, a connexion with shiver in the city of Banaras.
Savara and I see also.
She mentioned an inscription from the West Coast in the Konkan coast in India in what is today currently within the city limits of Mumbai,
Kolkata on a hill. There is an inscription there in Brahmin script that refers to a religious specialist who might be associated with the of cultures.
He's a specialist named Lucila, and he is referred to as a said that I don't think we're dealing with this Sid.
This is interesting. I don't think we're dealing with the other Tharaka that's captured Rob's attention because the
posh parties don't have that non duellist theology and suggestion of total union or identity with.
So there's something else still going on here. Of course, we said that just means accomplished someone who's accomplished.
It's a term. We also have suggested that know these kinds of things, sadhana.
We have these kinds of terms in general ways with religious practise, also in philosophy.
So tracing this figure of the incarnated perfected Shiva as Sid.
That on Earth takes a little bit of digging around one kind of hard landmark we have
for sure of where this term seems well to be being used in the way that matters today.
In a kind of tantric sense is Indrajit Sarangani.
You may well know this is a 12th century text definitely written in Kashmir by someone in California.
It's a really wonderful work. I took out my copy. It's in three volumes.
This is the Sanskrit volume, the third eye. It's not that you need it.
Then there are also annotations and corrections and additions made by several other scholars.
But the graduate Sarangani skilfully edited.
It's twice been translated. This is Stein's edition,
which has a rich salamon from University of Washington and one other have made some corrections have found additional manuscript sources,
but it's a solid edition with a solid translation.
And this is a 12th century where it goes and gives a history of Kashmir, the Kashmir valley from the dawn of the collega to the author's day.
So it's really quite an interesting text. He attests in the beginning of the work to his historical sources.
That's something that's very surprising for Sanskrit works.
He talks about inscriptions and other kinds of sources for iconic works he had and that kind of thing and how he accessed them.
It doesn't tell us how he weighed them relative to one another. But clearly he was interested in doing what we could probably call historical work.
It's been argued, whether it's proper history or not, it doesn't really matter all that much for our purposes.
What does matter is his use of vocabulary here. In this passage, I've quoted an item number 12,
right where he talks about cities that were descended to Earth right in the time of this King of Anti-environment.
And they did it in order to grace the world of people.
Look on a number of high up and mentioned here is the Sri Calata and others.
And but to see collaterally, of course, now as a shiva author in the township traditions.
And so this is clear evidence of using this work in using this language of
cities and languages to cross down of a tree to press down together like this,
at least in this time. I'm guessing that I don't know.
I don't want to even say, but certainly by around the 10th century, people are talking this way.
So much is also to be found in the earliest commentary on the same ship as soon as the ship's future of immersion came at our object.
And I've given you a passage in item number 13.
I should say that Ben Williams when I came here, this is a famous passage for Ben when he came here the last week or the week before.
Now, anyway, within the last ten days came here.
He gave a lecture, but then he gave a Sanskrit reading for two hours with some of the graduate students and myself and a colleague as well.
And he actually looked, amongst other things, at this passage here,
which is interesting and I thought should be brought to your attention if you're not aware of it already because of the content, it's involved.
But here we certainly have the language of Seders being used.
The passage is controversial, however. It attributes the authorship of this to researchers, not to us.
Gupta, as, but to Bhaskara, had done or did do excuse me,
but to a timeless treasure that is found by Russell on the surface of a magically overturned
rock ship in this narrative gives him knowledge of that and a dream which he then finds.
He finds that rock and partakes of and shares.
The knowledge that's recorded there in this narrative is said to have been purified and heart by Eugenie's ancestors.
This is a pairing yoga needs and so on. I'll highlight here.
I hope I think you can see on the screen share citizen yoga.
These are purifying this person. This combination siddha and yoga need rather than sit ins and diversidad de la shoes and so on and so forth.
This combination is much more in the flavour we would expect of as terrorism and shy, but some and we do see it a lot.
OK. And in that in this narrative, excuse me, he is said to have been purified in the heart by yoga knees, and so does.
And the passage goes like this. I think it's worth reading out how are we for time?
I'm going to be not too long, which is good because no one wants to be tucked up too long.
Here in Kashmir, there was a certain venerable venerable guru named Vasu Gupta, who was wholly devoted to Shiva.
Yes, at the auspicious Maha Davor Mountain.
Each of the superior quality of his devotion to Shiva, which was ever opening as a result, the force of the descent of Shiraz Power.
He did not accept the teaching of cities such as Naga Modi, who took up a position at a lower level of religion.
He was intent on worship of Shiva, his heart having been purified by the true tradition of the various Shirey organisms.
So this at some point. Moreover, part of my shiver raised him and rendered him of an inspired vision, which is awakened in a dream.
This because he shiva was intent on gracing him as a doctor with the sight in mind that the secret tradition should
not be interrupted in the world of living beings dominated as it was by the perfume of dualistic philosophy.
And he was indeed graced since he is said to him Here on this mountain, there is a secret teaching written on the surface of a great stone.
Find it and then reveal it in the presence of those fit for such divine grace and thus awakened.
He was too good to sort out that stone after turning it over by merely touching it with his hand.
He saw, as his dream confirmed from that he obtained these shiva sutures.
These sutures about shiva, which are a brief compendium of the secrets of shiva.
And having studied them properly, he revealed them in the presence of true disciples such as back to Sri Calata.
The person we had mentioned in the Rajah Germany, amongst others,
just as he also made a digest of them with the Sun, caught us by the author of this passage.
Shame on Argentine,
if possibly properly made clear the meaning of the was on cosmic vibrations and that which had been obtained by way of that genealogy.
This in my own sun near Maya. The researchers, in turn, are made clear in this commentary.
This is the beginning of his emotional commentary on the researchers explaining the source of this text,
referring to this kind of discovery of a treasure,
if you like, by overturning the stone and talking also about this tradition of systems that communicates knowledge.
OK. Excuse me, just to check again the time.
I think there's enough time left to do the third thing that I wanted to do.
So first, I wanted to look at this term, Sid, and it's pretty much fun to say we have these beings.
And I think somehow that idea of being in a celestial world is being pulled into shy wisdom and combined with this notion of the avatar.
Of course, the concept that we have with Christian in the Mahabharata and being combined to say we have teachers that come down from heaven,
they're perfected. Are literally perfected. And they can provide teachings to the world.
So we looked a little bit at these pretty places where this group of being sisters are described as being in that land between Earth and heaven.
We looked at some passages that show cognisance of sinners as teachers of terrorism, as teachers,
of shy of some tantra, including Roger Sarangani, where I think the reference is clear to that phenomenon.
The famous reference nothing new there.
Also, this famous passage that introduces shame, a graduate student about the novel to shame Raja's commentary on the Shiv astuteness.
But the last thing I wanted to do and I wrote about this, quite frankly, a long time ago, I gave a talk at Harvard in 2014.
That's when I met Ben Williams. And then it was published in the first trip for Alexa Sanderson.
Under the title, I should be able to give you the title of the article, I wrote.
It'll come back to me in a moment, but it's in the Sanderson and best shrimp innovation and social change in the Valley of Kashmir.
That's the title of the article, and I want to come to the issue that I raised in that article,
which is what having these cities can do theologically if we can speak that way for the tradition.
So in certain Buddhist traditions, it's possible ever to find authority for new teachings by way of suggesting that such new teachings,
new to humanity at least were passed down from the Buddha who taught them himself in secret lineages with their fortunes theologically,
if we can say that in that very loose way can justify the emergence and history of what are apparently
novel teachings and practises new that is to the is being introduced to them for the first time.
The argument I made in the Sanderson fresh shrimp is if these cities work that way in Shi'ism and that they are meant to and explicitly so.
So I want to show you these passages dealing with these Scheiber authors Saman under his immediate disciple,
each palliativa and also a passage or two.
Some I didn't have a Gupta and show what they do with this idea of something new coming into the world.
Justified by the fact that if God comes down to Earth from an unchanging,
transcendent form in sit alone in the world of the desert and shiver loca in the abode of Shiva,
what is bringing is the eternal and transcendent and yet enters into history in a particular moment in the form of a personage imagined as historical,
I say. But to come out to was and therefore appears in that historical work, the larger Tangney.
So in that article, I first consider it an idea argued by Sheldon Pollock,
which I felt was really rich and useful, but somewhat overwrought and overly determined,
and claiming that Sanskrit texts could not allow for any dialectical interaction between theory and practise on Pollock's view theory was the preserve
an elite of an elite who predetermine what could possibly be real and kept this from changing by claiming a timelessness to their textual and i.e.,
religious authority. The argument was the Vedas are astralis and timeless, and what they record is as true as the periodic table.
It's not something discovered. It's not sorry, it's not something created.
It's something merely known by way of the vision of riches to be the nature of reality.
And since it was permanent and unchanging, it could neither be challenged nor change.
If one took seriously their argument of the eternal nature of the sources offering that knowledge,
one no more could change their views of these texts,
then one could change the nature of the periodic table, both being natural, permanent, simply existent and not created.
This is to say that the purportedly timeless and often this works to find the world in terms of what is and should and only could be,
rather than articulating any contingency theory,
one that could be subject to revision on the basis of practise on the ground or new information or events.
There could be no dialectical relationship between the theory offered in scripture and the practise to be performed on the ground.
Pollock says. For here on a scale probably unparalleled in the pre-modern world, I'm quoting him.
We find a thorough transformation adopting now.
Gewirtz is Clifford Geertz, as well known dichotomy as models of human activity transformed into models for human activity,
whereby texts that initially had shaped themselves to reality so as to make
it graspable and by asserting the authority to shape reality to themselves.
This is Pollock's view, which I'm arguing is too narrow. You can have new ideas in religion.
We can have new ideas and ism by way of these symbols. We can have new ideas that are explicitly said to be new, as I'll show you in a moment.
But the idea here is Pollock's idea was and I've I've finished going through this and then wrap up my comments.
He said that there were three consequences to his theory of shastra and criolla
theory and practise the creation of knowledge was exclusively a divine activity.
Knowledge was by and large views viewed as permanent and fixed in its dimensions.
And third, and finally, there could be no conception of progress of the forward movement from worse to better on the basis of innovations in practise.
Now. He's right and is wrong there, too.
He's right in those arguments were put forward,
but he's wrong in the sense that there were two dimensions of textual production in pre-modern South Asia and in the Hindu interest and quite frankly,
in Buddhism, the challenges. The first is that there are canons of works that are open or at least remained open for a long time.
You can have new sources proliferated or reveal at different times and allow for new scriptural facts to emerge on the ground.
And the second fact closely related to that is the so-called ahistorical A.
The term Pollock uses the basis for the author is some transcendence.
The public has shown furnished religious authority is a historical city was conceived in various ways, including in the form of the Sydnor personage.
And because of that, you could imagine a complex formation of religious authority whereby other scriptures come
in and they had technical exegetical ways of weighing them in relation to one another.
Claiming This is timeless teaching of Shiva. But what does she was the one who brought it?
So you could do both, paradoxically at the same time,
you have something like this going on in the tradition that I work on this past year between our two big tradition.
The term means the recognition recognition that what you're experiencing is nothing but the dynamic change in activity of as consciousness.
And I wanted to give these passages to show how this is mapped out in the tradition.
First, we have Padova saying at the beginning of his famous text, you should have to your car because it somehow he's become a servant of sugar,
a serving of Mahesh fiddle, and he wants to offer assistance to all people to facilitate recognition and shiver in your own experience.
All they do now is shiver in this dynamic for. And he explicitly and I mean, have adopted to refer to the authority of their teacher,
the person I've been working on on under, who in the beginning of his text,
sorry, this is never very fun and says this year a small group of Somalis, Sparkman Money borrowed anybody a shiver credit to me.
J.R. The article today, whichever who has penetrated or taken possession of the language of possession has taken my form, possessed my form,
my very body by warding himself off by means of his own self may shiver pay homage to his all extensive self by means of his own power.
All the dynamic functioning of consciousness on an individual level of the universe that we know is this movement,
the sequence of shivers, energies and powers.
So there's an identification of the author with Shiva himself also in the autobiographical passage stuck in this handout at the beginning.
And then we have a claim that's made that's very interesting at the end of the eastern part, two big car doors of each elevator,
he says that the path he's charting there is philosophy that tells you how to come to know what really counts, how to know God.
He says it's new. This is really quite fascinating in the context of Indian tradition,
it so often obscures the historical nature, the historical location of texts and ourselves.
And so it's really a remarkable comment to have been made.
I'm not the first to have noticed this, but I understand it, I think in relation to the civic tradition, I'm certainly the first to have done that.
So I just have two or three pages left in my talk or read.
This little bit out here is about how to of Paris was the first scholar explicitly to note the significance of this title passage.
Asia Margot. Never, never. Yeah, and she suggested that holiday refers to the novelty of the path he describes in his car.
It does because he wishes to indicate that it does not authenticate authenticate itself by any overt appeal to scripture.
I think that's true. I also had proposed, however, that one must understand a rather different.
Also understand another justification for Davis's description of the past as new.
It's not merely the fact that one need not appeal to shave scriptures to follow it.
It's also I suggest that the primary sense which post gave description of the path of new is that it's new to humanity.
And this is events in Somalia and his autobiography that the threat to begat teachings were said to have been concealed by great stages
at the beginning of the college age preserved as they were by means of a secret lineage described therein brought down to Earth.
Or were these mine born to three because who were sisters and revealed subsequently for the benefit of those who come to be initiated into its ways?
I do think that passage that I showed you at the beginning, we come back to it and show it at the end of the talk.
I link it to this idea of something being new because so does I have a good time now I give you a little blast.
Hear what the term new means in the commentaries that the commentary that holiday era has auto commentary that he writes on his own text.
I give it to you in this footnote here. Thirty two pieces.
So my Ananda, whose very appearance is that as a great lord pomace, right in front of one's eyes of Samantha, his teacher was God himself incarnate.
We get the idea. But Abby never Gupta also talks about it being new and so on, and gives this comment here in hand.
Item number 17, which maps out this lineage.
In a manner that highly reflects what we have in Somalia on this so-called autobiography of a novel
and his favourite TV marshalling on this passage that says this is a new path refers to this.
Can this sequence of daddy's free content not to do advisers to Trojan back up to America,
which is exactly what we have in those parts in Somalia on this autobiography?
The point is whether we can line these two up or not.
I think we can clearly.
I mean, Gupta is thinking about novelty in terms of this idea of something crashing down through this sort of tradition into the world,
and that's the only point I want to make.
The practical idea presents the reader with a self-conscious understanding of their shastra as divinely sanctioned.
Yes, it's guaranteed by the identity of the authors in the in the lineage.
As cities, they are nothing other, no one other than Chevette himself.
And yet, while this divinely sanctioned the Shasta's they disseminate,
their texts are intimately, inextricably tied to the biographies of individual agents.
These are understood as people who lived in Kashmir on a particular day at a particular time which holiday was so, so minor, and I never got that.
So this is something like the avatar theory we have with Krishna God.
Yes, transcendent, yes. But in history, in a particular place and time.
So this concurrence of historicity and divine authority finally allows the issue to be Gadkari to where I took this never marga passage for you.
This new past passage for you to claim, to offer or offer something that is both new and transcendent.
So my conclusion?
The threat big, yeah, through the doctrine of the oratorical system, thus achieved in its explicit and implicit theoretical formulations.
The apparently paradoxical aims of both offering something both in history,
historically located and new on the one hand and yet transcended on the other.
The teachings being ultimately authored and authorised by Shearer himself and thus held to be uncontained by any historical bounds,
even if they come into history, incarnated Guru of a term that presents in these traditions from time to time.
We have it with Christian in the Mahabharata.
We have it here as well, allowing for flexibility and dynamism in doctrine such as new practises and ideas,
and a host of other concerns that make their way into an authoritatively presented reception
in history and yet be transcendent and yet find their way historically into modernity.
So that's what I wanted to say to kind of go through this idea of this avatar to sit down
and look at its prehistory in a certain way and think about how it might connect up.
I hope we can think about how it might connect up to the things you're reading. By having this kind of background.
OK, thank you very much. Thank you, John, for a really fascinating talk.
Really sums up so many of the things that we need to know.
I mean, really, really interesting stuff.
I think there's been so little work done on innovation in Indian religions, so much emphasis on the sort of timelessness.
And really, I think this whole Series of Treasures seminar is aiming to kind of look at that.
We've already had it necessarily come as wonderful took on the double barnacles and there is more to come.