インディアン・アスラムの私の映画 I found myself this AM watching this film I made back in 2014. It's a visual ethnographic accompaniment to my PhD dissertation where I spent 15 months at Shanti Mandir. 私はアシュラムに15ヶ月住んでいた.

#yoga #yogascapesinjapan #ヨガ ＃ヨーガ

I try and put out a rant on a Friday afternoon. I don't get to it every week. But here is the latest one. It's all about the yoga guru, Nithyananda, who is on the run (again), hiding from the court, which wants to ask him tough questions about raping someone. But, today, his organisation put out a promotional video inviting young, "chaste" women to come and stay with him in the ashram. The timing of this struck a nerve with me, and so I spent this afternoon writing this article, instead of doing the work I'd planned. 

ヨーガスケープ会議のご案内

このたび、ヨーガについて多角的に検討する「ヨーガスケープ会議」を、2018年11月2日（金）・3日（土）の両日、京都の同志社大学、国際教育インスティチュート（ILA) にて開催する運びとなりました。

テーマ、場所、発表要旨の提出、登録などに関するすべての情報は下記ページに掲載されておりますので、よろしければご覧ください。
https://www.yogascapesinjapan.com/yogascapes-conference.html
様々な分野から広く発表者を募りますので、御研究の成果を発表してくださいますようお願い申し上げます。
ご質問などございましたら、主催者のPatrick McCartney にお問い合わせください（psdmccartney@gmail.com)。  


最後まで読んでいただきありがとうございました。


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Yogascapes Conference

The Yogascapes Conference will be held from 2 to 3 November at the Liberal Arts Institute (ILA), Doshisha University, Kyoto.

It is an interdisciplinary conference that gathers scholars from various fields, such as: linguistics, literature, anthropology and history.

All information on themes, location, presentation submission, registration, etc., can be found at https://www.yogascapesinjapan.com/yogascapes-conference.html 

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer Dr. Patrick McCartney (psdmccartney@gmail.com)

Please note: Opportunities for submission are still open.

Thank you for your interest in the conference.

So, apparently the number of Sanskrit speakers is on the increase. The 2001 Census reports 14,134 speakers, while the 2011 Census reports 24,821. This is quite miraculous... The last figure from Table C is, for me, the most interesting. Below are the gender splits and states with the most speakers of Sanskrit. Getting the information related to districts and tehsils within states is quite tricky, it seems. However, we should be skeptical, at least, of these claims, as there is as much politics informing this result than an objective, ideological-free reporting of collected data. Also, this data is gathered through self reporting. Which makes it quite difficult to know just how much Sanskrit someone can speak. And, remember, this is also meant to be someone's 'mother tongue' as well. 

TOTAL      MALE        FEMALE         STATE
3802        1984           1818                MAHARASTHRA
3388         1845          1543                BIHAR
3062         1697           1365                UTTAR PRADESH
2375          1239           1136              RAJASTHAN 
1871          988              883                MADHYA PRADESH 
1218          698             520                  KARNATAKA

Below, is a short book review of Sheldon Pollock's book, A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics. This is an impressive book that covers the 1500+ years of the development of aesthetic theories of perception in South Asia's extensive literary and performative tradition. If the article is not available for viewing in this post, please click below. Then, you'll need to scroll down to ARTICLE 8.

I've added a new page on the website to store the words I've coined. Click below to see them.