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Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today. Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today. Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today. Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today. Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.
Every day, tens of millions of people use mantras all around the globe. Originating in South Asia and then spreading via practitioners, texts, rituals, and iconography, mantras have been grounded in speech and sound but also take a range of material forms. For instance, they are inscribed on surfaces, written in manuscripts, printed on posters, visually encoded in diagrams, or worn as amulets and textiles. Not surprisingly, mantras also circulate widely in digital spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Borayin Larios about the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia, and about digital mantra research. Funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, MANTRAMS is a pioneering, large-scale research project entirely dedicated to mantras, past and present. The interdisciplinary and comparative six-year project will investigate mantras across millennia and around the world, examining the roots of mantra, their circulation across South and Southeast Asia, and their transcultural significance in global contexts today. Borayin Larios is Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His research interests span contemporary and classical Indian religious traditions, including the anthropology and history of mantras, popular and everyday Hinduism, material religion, and Yoga and Tantra traditions. In his interdisciplinary approach, he combines cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology. He is a Principal Investigator in the ERC Synergy project MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/digital-humanities
If you've ever walked along city streets in India, chances are you've noticed Hindu street shrines. These are public spaces where people worship deities, saints, and spirits. Wayside shrines come in all shapes and sizes, from humble altars to full-on temples. You could think of them as crowd-sourced devotion: they seem to arise organically in response to the urban environment—at the base of a tree or near a busy intersection. The shrines usually house a sacred object, some incarnation of spiritual presence: a statue, an image, a stone. Going about their days, Hindus pause here to pray, reflect, and leave offerings of incense, flowers, money. But street shrines go beyond the religious: they're also foundations for community building, political activism, and informal economies. Indeed, according to Borayin Larios, Hindu street shrines express an “everyday defiant religiosity.” Borayin is assistant professor of modern South Asian studies in the Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. He's been doing ethnography for more than a decade in and around the state of Maharashtra. His research interests include popular devotion, material religion, and priestly education. Show Notes Find out more about this podcast and the Center for Contemporary South Asia at our show page. Make sure to check out other podcasts from the Watson Institute here. We're eager for your feedback and support: please subscribe and then rate the show on your favorite platforms so that others can find us. You can email us at southasia@brown.edu. Much of the material discussed in this episode comes from a special journal issue on street shrines edited by Borayin Larios and Raphaël Voix. Larios, Borayin, and Voix, Raphaël. "Introduction. Wayside Shrines in India: An Everyday Defiant Religiosity." South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 18, no. 18 (2018): South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Larios, Borayin. "From the Heavens to the Streets: Pune's Wayside Shrines.” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal 18, no. 18 (2018): South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. To learn more about Borayin's work on Vedic schools: Larios, Borayin. Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra. Warsaw ; Berlin: De Gruyter Open Poland, 2017.
Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE. What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus? Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE. What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus? Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE. What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus? Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE. What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus? Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra(De Gruyter, 2017; open access) probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE. What does the process of that transmission look like? What does it take to apprentice to learn the Vedic corpus? Why is there an emphasis on precise ritual enunciation of these utterances even above and beyond their semantic meaning? Join me as I talk with Dr. Borayin Larios, Assistant Professor at the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vienna) about his work on the traditional “gurukula” education and training of Brahmins. Based on his study of 25 contemporary Vedic schools across the state of Maharashtra, we discover how contemporary Brahmin males learn with scrupulous care how to recite, memorize and ultimately embody the Vedas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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