Room 101, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
Bhāskararāya was an eighteenth-century scholar-practitioner of Tantra, who remains quite influential amongst practitioners of Śrīvidyā Tantra to the present day. There was real breadth to Bhāskararāya’s work, and he wrote not only in Tantra, but also in the field of Mīmāṃsā. Bhāskararāya was working at the cutting edge of both disciplines, and was also interested in thinking across disciplinary boundaries in interesting and creative ways. This talk will explore ways to think about Bhāskararāya’s oeuvre that allow us to capture his intellectual project in its fullness.
Tarinee Awasthi is an Assistant Professor of History at FLAME University, Pune. She received a PhD in Asian literature, religion, and culture from Cornell University, New York. and has completed a master’s degree in Modern History from JNU, New Delhi. Tarinee holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi. During her PhD, Tarinee combined the history of late Sanskrit intellectual culture with post-colonial theory in productive ways. Her research interests include Mimamsa, Vedanta, Rama narratives, postcolonial theory, colonial modernity, bhakti and religion. She has a sustained interest in Buddhist epistemology.
Awasthi has also brought her research to a broader audience. She was the writer and researcher for The Illustrated Ramayana, 2020 (Dorling Kindersley, Penguin Random House). She contributed translations from Sanskrit for Shakti: An Exploration of the Divine Feminine, 2022 (Dorling Kindersley, Penguin Random House).
