ERC Synergy MANTRAMS Project

Meet Real-time meetings by Google. Using your browser, share your video, desktop, and presentations with teammates and customers.

📌 Date: 10 December 2025
Time: 03:00–05:00 p.m. IST (10.30am-12.30pm CET)
Venue: Vedic Research Centre, Sree Chandra Hall, Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam, Thrissur
Online: meet.google.com/kmo-mzdf-tnp

ℹ️ For further information please click the QR Codes displayed in the poster image

Rather than treating manuscripts as self-sufficient sources, the talk foregrounds the embodied, somatic, and lived dimensions of knowledge, asking what it means to “decode” texts that belong to a fundamentally practice-based system.

Meet Real-time meetings by Google. Using your browser, share your video, desktop, and presentations with teammates and customers.

🌀 The upcoming lecture turns to the tradition of kaḷarippayaṟṟŭ, examining the complex relationship between text and practice.

Titled Reflections on Decoding the Texts of Malabar Kaḷarippayaṟṟŭ, it is the second lecture of the DiPiKA Lecture Series on Manuscript Cultures, organised in collaboration with Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam; Vedic Research Centre, Thrissur; and EFEO, Pondicherry.

🗓️ UPCOMING EVENT: We are excited to share with you information regarding an upcoming talk by Dr. Lucy May Constantini, MANTRAMS Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Vienna.

This workshop is funded by the ERC Synergy Project MANTRAMS – Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia

ℹ️ For further information please click the QR Code displayed in the poster image

👥 Workshop Convenors

Prof Carola Lorea | University of Tübingen
Dr Mukul Menon | University of Tübingen
Dr Devyani Bhosale | University of Tübingen

🔊 This workshop aims to explore the understudied intersections between sonic efficacy and sound practices, with particular attention to the role of mantras in processes of sonic soteriology and place-making in Southern Asia.

🌀 This call for papers invites perspectives derived from immersive ethnography, sound studies, sensory anthropology, embodied research practice and historical methods to study efficacious sounds in relation to music, body, place and ritual in global southern Asia.

🗓️ CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 1 MARCH 2026

We are excited to share with you the Call for Papers for the workshop ‘Sonic Efficacy: Mantras, Music, and Placemaking in Global Southern Asia’ to take place at the National University of Singapore (03-04 September 2026).

In so doing, it acknowledged the inseparable interconnectedness with, and profound impacts that territorial deity cosmologies have had on, Tantrism—both Śaiva and Buddhist.

📷 Photos:
1. Conference Poster
2. Presentation by SAS Sarma

These are intertwined in textual and non-textual traditions, as well as written and oral manifestations of mantras and supernatural efficacious practices (‘magic’, and management of such entities) by ritual specialists—whether exponents of Indic, Sinitic, or animistic religions.

Framed as a collaboration between ERC MANTRATANTRAM and ERC MANTRAMS, it approached territorial deities and/as Nāgas in a comparative fashion as markers of a phenomenon that can be regarded as an integral feature of the Tantra-influenced cultures of Monsoon Asia.

📌On 19th and 20th September, a conference took place at Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford (UK), titled Nāgas and Territorial Deity Cosmologies in Monsoon Asia: Tantras, Mantras, and Worldly Rituals in Comparative Perspective.

As we near the end of the year, we at MANTRAMS would like to share some of the events from the past months.

📷 Photo Credits:
1. Self-portrait
2. Giriraj, Krishna in the form of a mountain rock (photo by Prema Goet)
3. Fieldwork at Radhakunda, with Nitai Das (photo by Ferdia G)

(cont'd.) and the relationship between the aniconic materiality of mantras and the somatic experiences provided by embodied practices amongst the practitioners of rāgānugā bhakti at the greater area of Vrindavana in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Goet’s thesis focuses on the translocality of sacred spaces within the lived and imagined Gaudiya Vaishnavism cartography

📌His doctoral research at University of Vienna combines multi-disciplinary methodologies from across various fields.

He has produced and published films and books on material culture and performative rituals ranging from popular to ascetic practices in Vaishnava communities, Shaiva and Shakta tantras, folk religion, Newar Buddhism, Himalayan animism and more.

He holds a B.A., in Sanskrit and South Asian Studies and an M.A., in Philosophy and Religion from The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – University of London. Goet possesses a wide range of theoretical and practical expertise in ethnographic fieldwork in South Asia.

He is an ethno-indologist, artist and multi-disciplinary researcher whose main interest lies in ritual and visual studies, intellectual history, cultures and languages of South Asia.

🧾Prema Goet is a doctoral researcher for MANTRAMS Task Force 3 at the Institute of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies — University of Vienna and a research fellow for The Śākta Traditions Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, in the UK.

Additionally, by focusing on the marginalized voices of Dalit women, her research will also explore how sound, silence, and listening reclaim agency within male-dominated public soundscapes.

📷 Photo Credits:
Image 2- Painting by P. B. Madakwar, showing Dr. Ambedkar, the Buddha, and Deekshabhoomi.

It further investigates the interplay between the "religious" and "secular" in neo-Buddhist Dalit practices and explores how these auditory forms reshape urban spaces into sites of belonging and resistance.

Devyani’s research aims to understand how these sonic practices shape and transform both physical and social landscapes creating social agency and reasserting identities.

She will do so by revisiting physical spaces of cultural significance in the annual Dalit calanders such as Chaityabhumi in Mumbai, Deekshabhumi in Nagpur, and Mahad to name a few, and explore the intersection of religious sounds and spaces for Dalit Buddhists.

📌Devyani’s research for MANTRAMS focuses on the role of sonic elements—such as mantras, chanting, greetings, and slogans—in the assertion of Dalit identity, visibility, and resistance in urban spaces of Western India.

Her master's thesis explored the impact of anti-caste ideological discourse on the creation of popular prints and iconographies. Additionally, she has explored themes in South Asian art history and visual culture, with a particular focus on Dalit Neo-Buddhist popular practices in Maharashtra.

She also holds a second master's in Social Work in Dalit and Tribal Studies and Action from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.