142077 PS Sensous Religion - Religions of South Asia and the five senses (2020S)

This course explores South Asian religions through the body, the senses, and aesthetics. Drawing on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, and concentrating on embodied practices such meditation, chanting, eating, sex, asceticism, ritual, possession, and performance, we will examine experiences of the sacred in India, past and present. How has sensory culture--the sound of mantras, the smell of incense, the touch of a guru's embrace--shaped lives, practices, and doctrines? What place does the gratification (or denial) of the senses have in South Asian traditions? Drawing on premodern texts as various as law codes, erotic handbooks, and medical treatises; and integrating a range of new media from ethnographic films to graphic novels, we will plunge into to the rich sense-worlds of religions in South Asia.