Raj Balkram (2:41)

Our pleasure. You have to tell us about the backstory. How did this come into being? This new Media.

Peter Bishop (2:49)

I can give it a try. There's a long story and there's a short story, I guess, or relatively short story. The longer story is that I think this also accounts for Elizabeth Cecil, but also for myself. We've been engaged in the study of Puranas in one way or another already for a long time. And then with Puranas, you typically think about text. This is the way Puranic studies has often been defined. But through our conversations, we've been thinking more about taking the notion of Purana seriously, really thinking with the term. And yeah, in that light, the other side of it, we can talk in more detail, but the other side of it is that in the end we ended up setting up a journal. So there's also the question of why did we set up a journal and why did we set it up the way we did? So maybe, Liz, you want to say something more about that?

Elizabeth Cecil (3:47)

Sure. I don't remember the exact moment that we decided, oh, having an open access journal would be the best way to go about doing this, but at some point, I guess we must have had that realization. But I think in part it comes from a desire that we've had to have a broader conversation about what Purana is and what it does outside of the genre, of course, of literary production with which many of us are familiar, and to bring in other kind of ways of knowing and other kind of perspectives on how the past, the primordial past, continues to be active and really effectively powerful in the contemporary period. So I think one of the other things we're trying to do with this journal is take the conversations that we've been having about Purana and think about them in our contemporary context. Right. Think about Purana as something that is also active and important in the modern world. And it seemed that having a journal that was not the kind of traditional research articles only kind of journal might be a good way to go about that, to bring in other voices, people who might not normally consider themselves to be part of Puranic studies per se, but who, from our perspective, are looking at Purana, the activation of the. Of the past as a kind of cultural practice. And so I think we were trying to kind of find new ways to kind of open up that conversation.

Raj Balkram (5:21)

Yeah, I find that so, so powerful. I mean, you know, on the podcast on this channel, we've covered literally hundreds of works in various subfields. This happens to be a subfield that I research in that I think about a fair bit. And I find, I mean, the minute that I read it, I could not read this. But emailing you both and saying this is really phenomenal because in many ways it's scholarship on the piranha and there's a meta level of reenacting in a certain sense, or at least embodying, studying probably how the Puranas have always functioned, which in a certain sense, looking at materials and sort of saying, well, eliding the sort of ancient times, which is what is ever relevant. And so many of the studies here do that. I would love for you to say a bit about what you two say in the being the editors of the journal of its inaugural volume. What you say in terms of Purana as a way of world making, I think is really fascinating. So maybe you can talk a little about that and it'll give the listeners a sense of your vision of the journal moving forward.

Peter Bishop (6:23)

Sure, I can give it a start, maybe. So for a start, I think, yeah, I mentioned already, of course, most of us think about Puranas, and then I'm saying Puranas in plural, as individual texts. Right. And that remains also, of course, the starting point. But then, yeah, the way we approach is rather as a cultural practice, as something that is actively engaged in by the participants of Puranic world making, as we call it. And the term world making we've taken from the American philosopher Nelson Goodman, who uses it or develops this concept to account for multiple ways of looking at the world. So if you look at his a classic study on world making, then it's about artists have a particular experience or way of experiencing the world, whereas scientists have another one. And how do you account for these multiple perspectives? So in this same way also, we try to look at this notion of Purana and Purana's world making from the perspective of different agents in the process and thereby also different media. Because the journal not only has the term Purana, of course, but also media. So what are the different media involved? And then that's of course, not just text, but also material objects, visual culture and the like.

Elizabeth Cecil (7:53)

And I think I would add to that and say that, you know, as Peter just mentioned, we're thinking about Purana as a kind of cultural practice. And in doing so, we're also very attentive to Purana's unique temporality. So one of the things that James Fitzgerald said in this kind of classic essay about Purana is that it's harkening to a primordial past. And one of the things that characterizes the primordial is its ability to still be current, to still be powerful, to still kind of charge the present and also to think about the future as well. So one of the things that we're trying to do is not just think about Purana as a way of conceiving of the past, but a way of conceiving of the past that is still active in the present, that people are still actively trying to participate in, and something that's also envisioning or imagining what the future will look like. So it's this kind of cyclical unfolding, it's this really dynamic process. And that's what makes it something that continues to be important in thinking about kind of contemporary culture, politics, artistic production, et cetera. And I think Goodman was an interesting way and a useful way for us to kind of situate our perspective on Purana as practice, using philosophical concepts that are familiar to people working across fields. So it's also a way of kind of untethering our conversations about Purana from a specifically kind of indological or South Asian studies base and kind of opening that conversation up to others in the humanities as well.

Raj Balkram (9:38)

Yeah, I think that's as insightful as it is relevant because, you know, in a sense, when we have these, you know, in the history of Hinduism, these relatively recent texts calling themselves Purana or ancient, these sort of tales of old, you know, there's this purposeful elision of temporality invoking, you know, sort of a primordial past that's always present and it's the idea it's just ever present once upon a time. And I think that's brilliant because my sense is that's always how the Puranas have functioned. And there are those who are doing work now that are reinterpreting tradition, especially through narrative. But of course, as you show in your work through various other elements of culture, which at the same time repackage for a particular socio historical context as they want to invoke this through line or this synergy with timeless truth type things. So I think it's utterly fascinating. Very interesting as well. I mean, there's a massive methodological innovation here, I think. I see. But also you also have this opening up and cross pollination of subfields. So I think both of these are tectonic shifts. I mean, do you want to say a little bit about maybe some of the tools in the traditional toolbox that people have looked at piranhas with and then maybe ways in which this opens that up or maybe even say a bit about the benefit or the impetus of bringing in other subfields?

Peter Bishop (11:04)

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy To start with it. I mean, for me, it's not something new in a way, of course, more, indeed, the way we have now conceptualized is that certainly sort of a breakthrough. But the way I've, at least, if I think about myself, and I started off as a textual scholar, you know, studying the Skandha Purana and doing a critical edition. So that involves philological. Yeah, typically a philological mode of thinking. But then right from the start, for me, it was clear that this was not a text that just existed somewhere in space or in some undefined time, but in a real historical context. So that means you have to study the places which are referred to. That means you have to engage with archaeological reports, you have to engage with material reality. You have to engage with the various communities who might have been involved in that. So as with, I think, any type of text, if we look at Purana's text, then you cannot do that isolated. In the end, these texts are not there for themselves. They're part of a cultural process. And that means you cannot bracket out all those various fields. And so in this way, we're trying to, indeed, bring all these fields into conversation centered around the notion of Purana as a cultural practice.

Elizabeth Cecil (12:29)

And I think, to add to that, we're also thinking about how, of course, Purana is a kind of a temporal orientation, and we've talked about that a little bit already. But one of the things that we're kind of taking seriously and that I think you also see in the contributions to the issue is the importance of Purana as a kind of spatial practice and also as a material practice. Right. And I think we all know that, you know, Puranas are extremely important for thinking about pilgrimage and spatial orientation and the construction of sacred geographies and empowered places. So that is something that the issue takes seriously, that Purana is a spatial practice. We use the work of Tulsi Srinivas, Her Cow in the Elevator. And I think that's such a wonderful example, the way she talks about how people in the kind of urban expanse of Bangalore still remember alternative geographies. They still kind of live with those kinds of older layers of the city, and those are just as much present in their memory and practice as is the modern urban environment of the city. So for us, that is an example of kind of Purana as spatial practice. And, of course, the material is really important. And, you know, Peter came to the study of Purana primarily as a textual scholar, and I think I may have as well. But I've also, you know, been Always been very interested in material culture and the materiality of these. These narratives and the materiality of these kind of understandings of the past. And again, that's something that the Purana media framework really allows us to highlight, that these are not just stories that are transmitted in texts or orally, but they are. They're part of kind of vast material infrastructures that people have lived in, you know, for generations. And we use the Descent of the Ganga story as an illustrative example of this, right? That the Descent of the Ganga is this kind of cosmological event, this cosmological motif, but that same narrative, that same event is recreated through material culture through these kind of massive carved installations across south and Southeast Asia. So also thinking about how the material practice of Purana allows it to be something that is not just specific to South Asia, but becomes part of this really dynamic diasporic practice all the way, you know, across. Across monsoon Asia. So good, so good, so good.

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Elizabeth Cecil (16:22)

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Raj Balkram (16:26)

Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty savings vary underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Yeah, that's a really fascinating point that for those listening when we're talking about world making, certainly there is world making as we think of L, our favorite textual work, whatever that looks like. Or a show that we watch. But the world making is so inextricable from sort of world making in the actual world and the ways in which product understandings map onto and interlace actual physical phenomena. And you mentioned in passing that all of the contributors take seriously this dimension. And maybe that's a great segue. Do you want to talk a little bit, maybe a word or two, about some of the contributions?

Elizabeth Cecil (17:17)

Sure, I can say something about them. So one of the things that it's kind of important for your listeners, for our interlocutors to know, is that the journal publishes traditional peer reviewed research articles. That's something, of course, that we take very seriously. But we also have other, other forms. So we have photo essays, not in this issue, but in future issues we'll have curatorial interviews. We also have an artist statement in our current issue. So our research articles in this issue, there are three of them. And they all approach Purana with a kind of material culture lens. Through a material culture lens, I would say. So we have Jim Mallinson working on the representation of aesthetics and specifically the use of the club in representations of asceticism and thinking about that kind of material form and that iconic feature as a way to think about lineage traditions and how lineage traditions align themselves over time. We also have an article about Persian Purana translations by Ayelet Kotler, which also uses illuminated or illustrated manuscripts as kind of a core set of primary sources for her analysis, looking at how authors kind of represent themselves as part of Puranic transmission. And then our third research article. Sorry, Peter, now I'm blanking on the third one.

Peter Bishop (18:54)

No problem, I can chime in. So that is Gaurika Mehta, and she takes us to the modern world and also to the diaspora, because that's about the title is Journey the Dark Water Histories, Oceanic Origins and Marang Deities of the Indo Caribbean Madrasi Diaspora. So she talks about how gods and goddesses who originally have their home base rooted in the south of India, how they travel across the Indo Caribbean diaspora and as such travel through also the waters that migrants had to take. So that's really our most, I would say, contemporary study. So these are the three articles indeed. And then we have another free photo essays.

Elizabeth Cecil (19:49)

And so the photo essays are by Arya Detien and Avni Chauch, and they are looking both at kind of the representation of Puranic practice through material heritage. So Avni looking at relic manuscripts in the Bodleian Library that are important for the Vaishnava community. And then Arya Adityan is looking at representations of kind of human animal hybrid figures, which of course are a hallmark of Puranic texts like the Skandha Purana or others that talk about the kind of human animal hybrid avataras of deities. And Adityan is also looking at those in relationship to the ritual performance of Bhoota Kola in South Karnataka. So again, kind of two different perspectives that are both kind of rooted in the study of historical sources and the idea of Purana as a practice that's oriented towards the past, but with these really kind of current, timely reinterpretations or manifestations that kind of bring it right up into the present.

Raj Balkram (21:00)

Fascinating. A great many of our colleagues in various fields listen to the podcast as well. So one question that comes to mind might be who might seek to contribute? What sorts of contributions might the journal be looking for?

Peter Bishop (21:14)

Before we do so, I think I would like to mention one more article that we've left out, and that's as such, also partly answering your question, because it's a type of contributor that you might not immediately think of, because a large article is by an artist, Sembulli Up Tol, who has a Khmer background and has settled in the Netherlands because of the Khmer Rouge. Her parents moved to the Netherlands. And then as a young girl, she had to sort of engage with that past that was completely obscured to her. And in her artistic work, she engages with that. And she produces fantastic type of art, which is also you can see.

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Peter Bishop (22:08)

The journal itself, one of them serves as the COVID of our journal, and it engages with all kinds of Puranic motifs, but then they are used for an individual's engagement with her own past. So that's something I would also like to add as such, and that indeed we are not just looking in terms of contributions only for the typical academic scholars, but also for other groups who may have some relation to this. And thereby we want to indeed open it up as a scope for putting Purana as a central cultural practice for multiple communities.

Elizabeth Cecil (22:50)

And I would just add that there's such a kind of beautiful resonance between Gaurika Mehta's article and also Sam's artist statement, because in both of these, from very different perspectives, you can see how Purana is kind of operating through a variety of media, whether it's SAAM's really multimedia installations which incorporate sound, visual performance, they compel the audience to interact with them. And Gaurika talking about these rituals that take place in New York, in Brooklyn, as part of these diverse communities, that it's really about Communities working to also process, in this case really traumatic events, you know, events of loss of, you know, of real violence in the case of Sam's family. And that Purana as practice is also very, very helpful to them in kind of accessing a sense of like ancestral practice or ancestral voices, and that those kind of help people to orient themselves, you know, in the contempor library in the here and now. And so you see that powerfully in both of those articles.

Raj Balkram (24:05)

Fascinating. So, having successfully launched inaugural volume of this innovative project and sort of having the bird's eye view, being co editors of this project, was there anything about this process that, you know, I don't have any particular answer in mind, but was there anything about this that really. Was there something that stood out for you or something surprised you or, you know, was there something that perhaps you're thinking shift or change or was colored in some way by this? I have no particular answer in mind. I'm just curious because this obviously is a fascinating perspective that you have on these papers.

Elizabeth Cecil (24:41)

Well, it's really given me a huge respect for people who work in the digital humanities, which is of course, you know, something that is so important and so popular. And it's, you know, one thing to have the idea of doing an open access journal like this. And I think both Peter and I were then confronted with the reality of actual really making this happen. And it's extremely challenging. And in that we were really supported by FSU's Open Journal Publishing. So the library here at Florida State University has partly sponsored this project. So it's jointly through FSU and the ERC who sponsors the Piranha Project. But they've been kind of immensely helpful, taking us through every step. And so it's really been kind of amazing learning experience and also far more challenging than I initially thought it would be.

Peter Bishop (25:35)

Yeah, I must say I was not so surprised. I think also we discussed about this and I mean, that is of course, yeah, indeed, we've taken up quite a job by trying out a new journal and yeah, all the various steps involved in that and especially in the modern times. And yeah, of course one of the things that we were also motivated by was the opportunity of publishing in open access. Yeah, that was for us, a major reason also to embark on this.

Raj Balkram (26:08)

Yeah, I think given its caliber and given its, what to say, innovative dimension, perhaps, I see no reason why this journal should not succeed. And which is doubly more why I would love to have you on this podcast because people should know about this. And I mean so much comes out, so much is done and we're not always aware. And so, I mean, folks knowing about it and also knowing that just a click away from accessing it, that's huge. So oftentimes, a handful of maybe dozens of podcasts over the years has been about open access issues and the changing, you know, the changes that are required for us to have access to these books. And that's huge. I mean, that's a game changer. It'll have much more traction being open access, provided, of course, people know about it and it's new. So let's get the word out. I see no reason why it shouldn't succeed, and I'm happy to do the work and to help it. Look, it's fascinating and important work, and.

Elizabeth Cecil (27:03)

Maybe we can also say that or let people know that our second issue is already planned. It's forthcoming. It'll be out next fall on Heritage. So we'll have, again, a set of research articles and we'll have a set of interviews with museum curators in Nepal, in the US And Europe, who are all working with kind of practices of repatriation. So are all involved in various ways in repatriating objects that were located in museum collections as a result of colonial practice. So I think that'll be really interesting to hear those people talk about their kind of curatorial practice and dialogue. And then for the third issue, we're currently accepting submissions. So the website is open, the submission portal is open. We encourage people who are interested to please submit their work. And, you know, the current issue, we have a lot of images, but of course, we have the potential and the capacity to support other kinds of media as well. We can do audio, we can do short films. So we really kind of have the scope to do a lot of exciting work. And we're excited to see what kinds of submissions we get for the third issue.

Peter Bishop (28:16)

Yeah, I think it's also. I mean, that's an important point. Of course, we've developed this new journal and with some ideas, but we are also curious to see where this will take us. So this is really a new type of journal that has a lot of potential to go in different directions also in terms of the types of media that will be part of it.

Raj Balkram (28:43)

Yeah, I mean, it really is fascinating on so many levels, certainly within the niche of honest studies, but also even sort of the big picture kind of podcast host cap that I wear with respect to the multimedia dimension, the interdisciplinary dimension, the open access dimension. It's so incredibly timely. And while I'm sure You may have a vision of where you might like to see the journal to go on. That probably may be my last question. It seems that part of that vision will be the unexpected co creation of who shows up and what they may want to do. But maybe you could share, at least at this point, where might you like to see this go?

Peter Bishop (29:21)

Well, for a start, I think as we begin also that we would like Purana to be taken seriously as a cultural practice. And that means also that we take it and we take it away from just a study of text from the past, and we take it right into the present, and then from there, indeed, we would ideally like to have people coming from very different disciplines to come together and work with this concept. And then that's not also for us to decide sort of where that will take us. That should be really a sort of creative environment where through interaction, new ideas, new types of studies can take place.

Elizabeth Cecil (30:14)

Yeah, I agree with Peter. I think what's so exciting about this right now is kind of not knowing where it will go. I think we both have a lot of ideas, but we're very open to dialogue, dialogue with the scholarly community, dialogue with artists, with practitioners, with people working in fields kind of outside, outside of the humanities, or outside of kind of formal academia as well. So to use this journal as a forum to kind of promote new kinds of knowledge. And I think one of the things that's so exciting about the first issue is that you kind of can already see that generating. You can see it happening, especially, you know, through Sam's work and Gaurika's and dialogue, in which you can really see Purana being used to kind of negotiate or make sense of change over time. And that kind of scholarly work that brings us right up to the present and shows the continued relevance and timeliness of these practices that we're looking at. And while neither Peter and I have the ability to do that kind of work, because I think we're both kind of historians very much rooted in a particular temporal context, we're really energized by it. And we want to kind of use Purana Media as a forum for that kind of really interdisciplinary kind of work.

Raj Balkram (31:38)

Yeah, fascinating. Is there anything else about the. Either the journal in particular or the Purana project in general that you want to touch on before we close for today?

Peter Bishop (31:49)

I feel like for the journal, we've covered most of it, I would, I mean, I would like everybody to go to the website and also to inform us if something maybe doesn't work for them or which they would like to see different or maybe give us advice on making sure that it also reaches the audience that we would like it to reach. But for the rest, I think we've covered most of the journal for now.

Elizabeth Cecil (32:20)

Yeah, I think that makes sense that this is also a work in progress. It's the first issue, but I know there are things that as editors we need to work on. And so we're definitely open to and encouraging of feedback from the community. So we'd love to hear from people who are using it and if any potential contributors have questions or want to talk about anything with us. Yeah. That they would be in touch with us as well.

Raj Balkram (32:46)

Yeah. I mean, obviously the lover of Purana in me and the specialist in me is very much interested in this. But take that aside. Even if this was some other niche, some other subfield, there's so much to love about this initiative. Rolling with the times. We live in a times where, you know, academic production, it's important, rigor is important, but isolationism has been one of our downfalls hitherto in so many ways. And to. That's the very impetus of the podcast without sacrificing rigor, to invite more people into the conversation, to make known what we're doing, to even speak with thinkers and artists and creatives across the. Across the disciplinary divides, across sort of the ivory tower, beyond the ivory tower divide. And I think, I think it's a phenomenal on all those counts and open access to boots. So my sense is that it will be a very successful initiative because you will attract who knows who to contribute. And for those listening, do not be shy about clicking that link in the podcast notes, having access to this innovative work entirely free of charge. And if you have comments, if you're even remotely considering contributing, please get in touch. Okay, thank you very much for appearing on the podcast today.

Elizabeth Cecil (34:06)

Thanks so much, Raj. This is really nice.

Peter Bishop (34:08)

Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Raj.

Raj Balkram (34:10)

For those listening, we have been speaking about this brand new initiative, Purana Media Past, Present, Future. It's an annual peer reviewed open access journal focused on modes of cultural production compassed by the term all things ancient. The link is in the podcast notes. Keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the ways in which the ancient is always present. Bye for now.

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