SAI - News

The new SAI-Postcard-Calendar produced by the student representatives of the SAI are available. They can be purchased on the counter of the library for 6 and 8 € respectively. In addition there will be a special sale of calendars and Chai on Thursday, December 1st from 10.30h in the entrance hall of the SAI. 

PD Dr. Jörg Gengnagel, Interim Professor of the Chair for Cultural and Religious History of South Asia published his new book Visualized Texts. Sacred Spaces, Spatial Texts and the Religious Cartography of Banaras. (Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals 7) last week with Harrassowitz (Wiesbaden).

Prof. Dr. M. Sultan Bhat arrived earlier this month on a Baden-Württemberg scholarship that brings him to Heidelberg for a three month stay. Prof. Bhat is from the Department of Geography & Regional Development, Kashmir University, Srinagar. He will be in the SAI until January 2012. Find further information and contact here.

On Monday, November 14th, Prof. H.S. Shiva Prakash, Counsellor (Culture and Education) und Director of the Tagore Centers at the Indian Embassy, Berlin, visits the SAI. Prof. Shiva Prakash holds a chair at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Besides these he is well known as Translator, Poet and Playwright. On the occasion of his visit Prof. Shiva Prakash will meet the SAI-Board and at 2pm in room 316 will give a lecture on:  'The Role of Bhakti Traditions in the Formation of Pre-Modern Literary Cultures in India'

Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner will give her inaugural lecture on Wednesday, November 9, at 12.00 pm in the Old Auditorium of Heidelberg University. The Professor of Buddhist Studies will speak about Buddhism between India and Tibet.

Under the title "Von Pechas, Pandits, Papageien - die Uebersetzung des Buddhismus zwischen Indien und Tibet", Prof. Kellner will discuss translation and translators in the broader context of the transfer of Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions chiefly from culturally Indian regions to the Tibetan plateau, between the 7th and 13th centuries CE.

Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner holds the Chair of Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg University's Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context". She is also associated member of the South Asia Institute. Having studied Tibetology and Buddhist Studies in Vienna, Austria, she earned a PhD from the University of Hiroshima, Japan, with a dissertation on the history of Buddhist philosophy in India. In her research, she specializes in the history of religion and philosophy with focus on epistemology, the philosophy of consciousness, and logic in India as well as in Tibet.

The inaugural lecture by Prof. Kellner will take place in the Old Auditorium of Heidelberg University on Wednesday, November 9, at 12.00 pm. It will be given in German language.