News
14 January 2025
Peter Bisschop was interviewed on the Kumbh Mela in Dutch national newspaper NRC.
5-18 January 2025
Saran Suebsantiwongse is in Bangkok to attend and research the Triyampawai Ceremony at the Devasathan temple.
24 December 2024
The special issue of the journal Textual Cultures (17.2), edited by Elizabeth A. Cecil and Sonia Hazard, has been published. It is the outcome of the PURANA project symposium `Material Texts: Religion, Mobility, and Responsibility’ held in Leiden in October 2023, and features articles by several members of the project, including Peter Bisschop, Elizabeth A. Cecil, Olli-Pekka Littunen, as well as other presenters at the symposium.
29 November 2024
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘Sanskrit Letter Writing at the Turn of the 20th Century: Jean Philippe Vogel’s Correspondence with Nityanand Shastri‘ and Sanne-Dokter Mersch a paper ‘How Leiden Became a Purāṇic City: The Story of the Skandapurāṇa‘ at the symposium ‘Celebrating Dutch Indology — 100 Years of the Kern Institute’ at Leiden University.
20 November 2024
Ayelet Kotler published an article ‘Retranslation in Mughal South Asia: The Impressive Failure of a Persian Panchatantra’ in Iranian Studies, the outcome of her earlier work on premodern translation in Persianate South Asia.
14 November – 2 December 2024
The PURANA project hosted a temporary exhibition ‘The Cosmic Tortoise: I Feel Like My Ancestors Have Left Me 1000 Voicenotes to Decipher’ at Leiden University, displaying two interactive artworks of Samboleap Tol.
14-15 November 2024
The PURANA project held a two-day symposium `Visualising Ancient Histories’ at Leiden University. The symposium was organised by Sanne Dokter-Mersch and Ayelet Kotler.
2 November 2024
Ayelet Kotler organised a panel ‘Cultural Production During the Long Eighteenth Century in Persianate South Asia’ at the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and presented a paper ‘A Śaiva among Vaiṣṇavas: Persian Purāṇas and Eighteenth-Century North Indian Śaivism.’
30 October 2024
Elizabeth Cecil presented a paper ‘Pūrṇavarman’s Prints: Inscribing Territory in Early West Java’ at the panel ‘Regional Centers in South Asian Imaginaries: Geographies, Boundaries, & Polities’ of the Symposium of the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
25 October 2023
The PURANA project resumed its biweekly Friday afternoon colloquium in which members of the project meet to discuss and present their ongoing work.
4 October 2024
Elizabeth Cecil presented a paper ‘Vraḥ Guhā: Expressions of Religious Belonging in the Caves of Phnom Kulen’ at the conference Buddhist Art History in Medieval South and Southeast Asia: Innovations and Interactions at UC Berkeley.
21 November 2024
Nagaratna Parande (Rani Channamma University, Belagavi) visited the project team and guided a reading session on Kannada vacanas.
3 September 2024
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘Puranic Transmission, Variation and Appropriation’ at the Workshop: Variation as Creation at the University of Vienna.
1 September 2024
We are pleased to welcome a new team member! Saran Suebsantiwongse (PhD, University of Cambridge) has joined the project as postdoc to work on Puranic visual and material cultures in early Southeast Asia.
27-29 August 2024
The PURANA project had an online reading session of the critical edition of the first half of Skandapurāṇa 119.
23 August 2024
Peter Bisschop was interviewed on the Leiden Cola Plates in Dutch national newspaper Trouw.
12-15 August 2024
Ayelet Kotler presented a paper ‘Hindu Devotion in Early Modern Persian Translations of Sanskrit Epics and Mythology’ at the 14th Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City.
11 June 2024
Olli-Pekka Littunen presented a paper ‘An Intermediate Stage of the Textual Sanctification of Vārāṇasī’ at the Vārāṇasī Colloquium at the University of Würzburg.
23-24 May 2024
Ayelet Kotler presented a paper ‘The Persian Translation of the Śivapurāṇa and 18th-Century North Indian Śaivism’ at the Young Researchers’ Indo-Persian Workshop: Writing in the Indo-Persian World, Campus La Viellie Charité, Marseille.
14 May 2024
The PURANA project held a roundtable Telling Stories: Narrative Traditions in South and Southeast Asia in cooperation with the IIAS, Leiden. The roundtable was organised by Arya Adityan; among the PURANA team’s discussants at the roundtable were Arya Adityan, Peter Bisschop and Elizabeth Cecil.
7-8 May 2024
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘Nityaṃ praṇamati: Inscribing Eternal Obeisance at Mount Kālañjara’ at the conference Hindu Temple Legends, Heidelberg Akademie der Wissenschaften.
25-28 April 2024
Arya Adityan presented a paper ‘Bonds Beyond Human: Human-Boar Relationships in the Early Skandapurāṇa and Tulu Paddhanas’ and Elizabeth Cecil presented a paper ‘The Living Rock: Lithic Media, Indigenous Ecologies, and the Building of Hinduism in Southeast Asia’ at the conference More-than-human Religion: Indigeneity, Objects, and Ecologies, Florida State University.
19-21 April 2024
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘The Moving and the Immovable: The Pilgrimage Landcape of Kālañjara’ and Elizabeth Cecil presented a paper ‘Crossing Over: Tīrtha in Early Southeast Asia’ at the 49th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, Cardiff University.
1-5 April 2024
Ayelet Kotler did archival work on Persian Purāṇa translations at the British Library in London.
30 March 2024
Peter Bisschop was interviewed on Sanskrit in Nepal’s national Newspaper Kantipur.
25—29 March 2024
The PURANA team met with researchers at Kyoto University to discuss drafts of the critical edition and translation of four chapters on Pāśupata Yoga in the Skandapurāṇa (chapters 174—177).
15 February 2024
Anwesha Sengupta (PhD candidate at Columbia University, New York) has joined as a visiting researcher working on the 16th-century Avadhi narrative poem Kanhāvat and its relation to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa.
2 February 2024
Peter Bisschop gave a lecture on Three Thousand Years of Sanskrit Cultural History at Sijthoff Cultuur, Leiden.
23 January 2024
Arya Adityan has started her project ‘Museum Dialogues: Intersection of Indigenous Ritual Objects and Western Museological Practices’ for which she will visit several ethnographical museums and conduct interviews with curators.
13 December 2023
Elizabeth Cecil presented a paper ‘Pūrṇavarman’s Prints: Environment and Inscription in Early West Java’ at the Ancient History and Religion seminar series, Cardiff University.
30 November 2023
Sanne Dokter-Mersch presented a paper ‘And then it stopped — the impact of print culture on the perception and growth of Purānas’ in the LIAS Lunch Talk series, Leiden University.
27 November 2023
Elizabeth Cecil published an article ‘Stone Works: The Religious Power of Litihic Media in Contemporary Cambodia’ in the digital journal The Jugaad Project: Material Religion in Context, based on her fieldwork in Cambodia.
Peter Bisschop gave a presentation on the PURANA project in the LeidenGlobal seminar series Beyond Discipline and Place in the Social Sciences and the Humanities.
27 October 2023
Peter Bisschop gave an on-stage interview on Purāṇas at the festival Eindeloos India in De Kunsthal, Rotterdam, commemorating 150 years of Hindustani immigration.
5-7 October 2023
The PURANA project hosted an international symposium on Material Texts: Religion, Mobility, Responsibility at Leiden University. The event was organised by Elizabeth Cecil and Sonia Hazard (Florida State University).
29-30 September 2023
Arya Adityan, Olli-Pekka Littunen and Kexin Zheng presented papers at the 13th IIGRS (International Indology Graduate Research Symposium), University of Cambridge, UK.
27-29 September
Ayelet Kotler did archival work on Persian Purāṇa translations at the British Library in London.
21 September 2023
Peter Bisschop gave a lecture on Script in Ancient India in the Week van het Oude Schrift at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.
15 September 2023
The PURANA project has started its biweekly Friday afternoon colloquium in which members of the project meet to discuss and present their ongoing work.
1 September 2023
We are pleased to welcome two new team members! Ayelet Kotler (PhD, University of Chicago) has joined the project as postdoc to work on Persian translations of Purāṇas and Puranic narratives from the 17th to the 19th century, tracing the shifting translation practices in context. Arya Adityan, a one-year visiting PhD student from Florida State University, will be working on regional oral narratives and performances in South India in relation to the written tradition of the Purāṇas.
29 August—1 September 2023
The PURANA team met to discuss the edition and synopsis of Skandapurāṇa chapter 118 (part of the Vāmana myth) in preparation of volume VI of the critical edition.
14-19 August 2023
Olli-Pekka Littunen, Sanne Mersch and Kexin Zheng presented papers at a special panel on The Reuse and Recontextualization of Purāṇic Material at the 10th Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas (DICSEP 10).
13-28 June 2023
Peter Bisschop and Elizabeth Cecil carried out fieldwork in West and Central Java in connection with their research on Puranization of the landscape.
2 June 2023
Olli-Pekka Littunen presented a paper ‘The Textual Sanctification of Vārāṇasī’ at the 39th Annual Sanskrit Traditions Symposium, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford.
21 April 2023
Sanne Dokter-Mersch presented a paper ‘Purāṇic Influencers: Authoritative Lineages in the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa’ at the 48th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, King’s College, London.
18 April 2023:
Peter Bisschop gave an interview to Tattvam: Centre for Sanskrit Learning on Sanskrit in the Netherlands.
3 April 2023
Elizabeth Cecil has started an extensive period of research and fieldwork in Cambodia, based at the Center for Khmer Studies, Siem Reap.
27-31 March 2023
The PURANA team met for a week at Leiden University to continue work on the critical edition and synopsis of the Skandapurāṇa. We read and discussed the edition and synopsis of chapter 117, prepared by Sanne Dokter-Mersch and Peter Bisschop. Yuko Yokochi discussed the complexities involved in the transmission of chapter 114.
In addition we enjoyed a presentation by Kexin Zheng on the tulāpuruṣadāna (‘gift of the man on the balance’) in the Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas, and we read a part of the Skandapurāṇa’s Vārāṇasīmāhātmya found in the Vārāṇasīmāhātmyasaṃgraha prepared by Olli-Pekka Littunen.
17 February 2023
Peter Bisschop gave a presentation on the critical edition of the Skandapurāṇa at the online lecture series Tadvidyasambhāṣā, Department of Sanskrit Studies, University of Hyderabad.
6 February 2023
Olli-Pekka Littunen took part in the Śivadharma reading seminar at the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Pondicherry, from 6-10 February, followed by another week of research in the EFEO’s library.
3 February 2023
Elizabeth Cecil carried out archival research at the newly opened Asian Art Museum in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin.
20 January 2023
Elizabeth Cecil published a contribution to the Routledge Handbook of Hindu Temples entitled ‘Building Belonging: Temple Communities in South and Southeast Asia’. A panel discussion on the handbook has been held on 9 February 2023 at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
17 January 2023
The reading sessions of the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa have resumed.
1 January 2023
Elizabeth Cecil (Assistant Professor at Florida State University and main research collaborator in the project) is in residence in Leiden to work on her book project Natural Wonders: Indigenous Ecologies and the Building of Hinduism in Early Southeast Asia.
15 December 2022
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘From Orality to Writing: The Palimpsest of the Purāṇas’ at the conference `Anchoring the Writing in Invention of Writing in Ancient Societies: A Global Comparative Approach’, Leiden University.
29 November 2022
Peter Bisschop presented a paper ‘Scriptures in Dialogue: Narrating the Divine Other in the Purāṇas and related literature’ at the colloquium ‘Regards sur l’autre, regard de l’autre’, l’École Pratique des Hautes Étude in Paris.
21 November 2022
Dominic Goodall (EFEO Paris/Pondicherry) visited Leiden University and guided a reading session on Śaiva Siddhānta sources on the tulāpuruṣadāna (‘gift of the man on the balance’).
10, 17, 24 November 2022
Members of the team met with Martina Palladino (IIAS Leiden) for readings of chapter 117 of the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa, which is concerned with the origins of the Sūrya-worshiping Magas and Bhojakas. The readings will be continued in January 2023.
10 October 2022
Start of the weekly readings of Olli-Pekka Littunen’s draft edition of the Matsyapurāṇa’s Vārāṇasīmāhātmya as included in a 12th-century Vārāṇasīmāhātmyasaṃgraha manuscript. The team meets each Monday for this.
1, 8, 10 October 2022
Members of the team met for readings of a draft edition prepared by Kexin Zheng of the description of the tulāpuruṣadāna (‘gift of the man on the balance’) in Caṇḍeśvara’s hitherto unpublished Dānaratnākara. The text starts with a lengthy quotation of the Matsyapurāṇa and forms part of the PhD research of Kexin Zheng at Leiden University.
5-9 September 2022
The PURANA team met to discuss drafts of the critical edition and synopsis of chapter 116 of the Skandapurāṇa, prepared by Sanne Dokter-Mersch and Peter Bisschop. We were also joined online by our research collaborator Yuko Yokochi (Kyoto University). The text of Skandapurāṇa 116, which forms the start of the Vāmana myth, will be included in volume VI of the critical edition.
1 September 2022
The project has officially started with the appointment of Sanne Dokter-Mersch as a postdoc and Olli-Pekka Littunen as a PhD student. Sanne Dokter-Mersch will study the composition and intertextuality of the Bhaviṣyapurāṇa and contribute to the critical edition of the Skandapurāṇa. Olli-Pekka Littunen will research the historical process of the sanctification of Vārāṇasī on the basis of various Sanskrit Vārāṇasīmāhātmyas included in different Purāṇas.
