Date/Time
Date(s) - 20 Oct 2014
5:15 PM - 5:15 PM
Location
Class of 1978 Pavilion, Special Collections Center
Category(ies) No Categories
Monday, 20 October
Penn Workshop in the History of Material Texts
Benjamin Fleming (UPenn)
“Form vs Function: Aesthetics, Ritual, and Religion in South Asian Manuscript Traditions.”
5:15pm in the Class of 1978 Pavilion in the Kislak Center on the 6th Floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.
Benjamin writes:
“One of the most intriguing dynamics across different religious traditions
in South Asia is the persistent continuity in the physical form, material,
and format of manuscript traditions. With the exception of some late
examples, influenced by the Western codex, South Asian manuscripts are
usually comprised of very long, thin, and loose folios, originally derived
from trees—primarily dried palm or banana tree leaves, but later imitated
with regionally-made papers, introduced by Islamic cultures around the
tenth century. Each region of South Asia developed its own variations,
suited to available materials and regional scripts, each typically evolving
through interaction and in symbiosis with different material forms. This
presentation explores how genre and religion also helped to shape the
development of different forms of texts and different approaches to
constructing them. Drawing on results from my recent edited volume,
Material Culture in Asian Religions: Text, Image, Object (Routledge 2014),
as well as observations from my work in Bangladesh on the Rāmamālā Library
Project, co-sponsored by British Library Endangered Archive Programme and
Penn’s Schoenberg Institute for Manuscripts Studies, and my work with Indic
manuscripts here at Penn, I will explore how different South Asian
religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and their different
articulations of memory, ritual, and aesthetics, helped to shape the
development and formation of manuscript traditions in South Asia.”
*Benjamin J. Fleming is presently Cataloger of Indic Manuscripts at the
Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds
a BFA, BA, and MA from the University of Regina and a PhD from McMaster
University. Most recently, he won an Endangered Archives Pilot Project
grant from the British Library (2013-2014) and is overseeing a project to
undertake the itemization and digitization of a manuscript library in
Comilla, Bangladesh.Dr. Fleming’s research focuses on ritual, myth, and
iconography in medieval South Asia, with a particular concern for
traditions about pilgrimage and sacred geography. His dissertation, “Cult
of the Jyotirliṅgas and the History of Śaivite Worship” (2007),
investigated the relationship between ritual, storytelling, and pilgrimage
in Śaivism. He has presented papers on Puranas and on inscriptional
materials at the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion,
American Oriental Society, and Canadian Society for the Study of Religion,
as well as at the Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Oriental Club of
Philadelphia, Penn Humanities Forum, and Religious Studies Colloquium at
the University of Pennsylvania. He has been awarded grants and fellowships
from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, the Social Sciences and
Humanities Council of Canada, and the British Library. He held a Mellon
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently
a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies. *
All are welcome! Those who do not hold University of Pennsylvania ID cards
should bring another form of photo identification in order to enter the
library building.