DISSERTAÇÃO DE MESTRADO MELO, Mário Henrique Resende. O significado histórico religioso da venerável ordem terceira de Nossa Senhora do Monte do Carmo de Sabará nas minas oitocentistas: práticas religiosas e representações. 2011. 100 folhas. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.

This article argues that in early Mīmāṃsā the view was current that there are objects in the world corresponding to all words of the Sanskrit language. Evidence to that effect is primarily found in passages from Bhartṛhari’s works, and in some classical Nyāya texts. Interestingly, Śabara’s classical work on Mīmāṃsā has abandoned this position, apparently for an entirely non-philosophical reason: the distaste felt for the newly arising group of Brahmanical temple-priests.

Since time immemorial, Lord Jagannātha has been regarded as the principal deity of Odisha. The land of Odisha (former Kaliṅga) was a meeting place of the Hindus, Buddhists and Jainas. The Buddhists, Jainas, Vaiṣṇavas, the worshippers of Gaṇpati and others came to Purī and found the presence of their own lord in Jagannātha. However, of all religious creeds, Buddhism played an important role in the socio-cultural history of Odisha. During the period of emperor Aśoka, the Śabaras (a tribal people) of (...) Odisha were converted to Buddhism. Buddhist pillars were built in Purī, and Buddhist symbols were carved into it. Later on, the Śabaras started worshipping the Triratna as the three principal deities of the Jagannātha temple. In course of time, the three deities of the temple, viz. Jagannātha, Baḷabhadra and Subhadrā, have been accepted by the people of Odisha as the symbols of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, respectively. As stated by Donaldson (Iconography of the Buddhist sculpture of Orissa, Abhinav Publications, Buldana, 2001), the eighteenth century Buddhist works such as “Jñānasidhi” and “Prajñodaya-Viniścaya-Siddhi,” the Buddha was named as Lord Jagannātha. By the twelfth century A.D., there had already developed a new culture in Odisha with Jagannātha as the center and the Lord came to be conceived as Ādi Buddha and Buddha as the ninth incarnation of Viṣṇu-Jagannātha. The place of Purī has been regarded as a place of Tāntric worship and Jagannātha as the Lord of the Tāntric cult. The Gundichā temple (where the Lord resided for 10 days during the Car festival) has been regarded as a Buddha Vihāra. The Buddhist principle of nonviolence and universal brotherhood found its best expression in the Jagannātha cult. (shrink)

This article is an attempt at understanding the use that Abhinavagupta, the Kashmiri Śaiva philosopher and scholar of poetics, makes of a few concepts and theories stemming from the tradition of Vedic ritual exegesis. Its starting point is the detailed analysis of a key passage in Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the “aphorism on rasa” of the Nāṭyaśāstra, where the learned commentator draws an analogy between the operation of the non-prescriptive portions of the Veda in the ritual and the “generalisation” taking place, (...) according to him, in the appreciation of a work of art. Arguing against the tendency of modern historiography to explain this analogy exclusively in terms of Kumārila’s theory of effectuation in its two modalities, the article endeavours to show how Abhinavagupta relies on a variety of other textual sources he knew extensively and presumably first-hand. Some of them belong to the great Mīmāṃsaka tradition ; others, to different trends of medieval Brahmanism claiming exegetical heritage, as in the case of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī The nature of Abhinavagupta’s debt to Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka and his concept of bhāvanā is also reconsidered in light of these new findings. This investigation finally leads to identify, in the Abhinavabhāratī, an original theory of scriptural narratives and their efficacy, irreducible to any of its exegetical sources. According to this theory, mythological passages of the Veda directly prompt action, through the same capacity of abstraction or “de-temporalisation” that is at work in our appraisal of literature and theatre. (shrink)