History of Science in Early South Asia

Divya Kumar-Dumas (University of Maryland)

Metal, Matter, and Meaning: Toward a Textual and Scientific History of the Sumhuram Yakṣī

A bronze female figurine excavated from Sumhuram (modern Oman) and now held at the Smithsonian (NMAA S2013.2.378) has long been recognized as an Indian yakṣī, brought to South Arabia via Indian Ocean trade in the early centuries CE. In previous work, I examined its iconography and fragmentary condition as evidence of image mobility and reuse. This working paper marks a new phase of inquiry: pairing planned scientific analysis and experimental archaeology with early textual references to metalwork.

From the Caraka Saṃhitā’s description of casting techniques to the Agni Purāṇa’s ritual guidelines for disposing worn icons, to Vasubandhu’s Buddhist meditations on molten metal as a seething mass of sentience, I ask how Sanskrit textual ontologies of matter might inform—and be informed by—the scientific study of composition and form. At stake is a more integrated understanding of portable bronze images, moving beyond trade and iconography, toward a cross-disciplinary history of science, perception, and the sacred. 

I invite CHSTM participants to help frame this evolving methodology, especially through suggestions of sources on smelting, melting, making, breaking, or discarding metal objects in the first millennium.

To read: https://isaw.nyu.edu/research/io-figures/sessions/march-4/info

https://www.ifao.egnet.net/recherche/manifestations/ma1491/

Kenneth Zysk (University of Copenhagen)

Palmistry or the system of the bodily lines (Rekhāśāstra) and its spread westward

This paper is divided into two parts: Part one explores palmistry, known as Rekhāśāstra in India, as a system of divination within the broader tradition of Indian marks or physiognomy known as Sāmudrikaśāstra. It highlights two main Indian traditions: an oral Romani tradition and a written Śāstric tradition and focuses primarily on the latter's historical development and visual representations. Part two compares Indian palmistry with its Western counterpart, tracing the transmission of Indian chiromancy into Europe via Arabic and Hebrew translations, and noting the shared evolution of palmistry as both artistic expression and a tool for prognostication. The paper aims to illuminate the ancient origins and interconnected history of palmistry across diverse cultures, emphasizing the hand’s persistent focus of human fascination as an important means of personal identification.

Satyanad Kichenassamy Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, LMR (CNRS, UMR9008) and
GREI (EPHE-PSL and Sorbonne-Université),

Mathematical reasoning as an outgrowth of Vedic ritual.

The earliest text that formulates the theorem on the square of the diagonal of an oblong as a universal statement is Baudhāyana’s Śulvasūtra. This theorem is embedded in a discourse without diagrams [7], that indicates the first extant rigorous derivation of it [4]. The invention of mathematical activity and based on inferences on word-representations reflects closely the relations between language, thought and action in Vedic ritual [6]. Later Indian mathematical inventions were still based on this view, combined with the relatively late introduction of writing. This accounts for the invention of two new forms of representation [5], namely the positional system with zero, and literal algebra. While these developments are best understood against the backdrop of modern Indology, especially at EPHE in Paris [1–3, 6], we will show here on a few texts that do not require familiarity with Indology, how the view that mathematical activity is a process of
inferences on word representations, to be performed by free individuals, was part and parcel of a reflexive analysis of the successes and failures of Vedic ritual.

[1] Filliozat, Pierre-Sylvain, 1990. « Yukti: le quatrième pramāṇa des médecins (Carakasaṃhitā, Sūtrasthāna, XI, 23) ». Journal of the European Āyurvedic Society, 1 (1990), 33-46.
[2] Houben, Jan E.M., 1991. The Pravargya Brāhmaṇa of the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
[3] Houben, Jan E.M., 2000. “The ritual pragmatics of a Vedic hymn: The 'riddle hymn' (Ṛgveda 1.164) and the Pravargya-ritual.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (4) (2000), 499-536.
[4] Kichenassamy, Satyanad, 2023a. « Hétérométrie, cohérence et discours apodictique : la dérivation du théorème du carré de la diagonale chez Baudhāyana », Journal Asiatique, 311 (2), (2023), 267-303
[5] Kichenassamy, Satyanad, 2023b. “New perspectives on the development of the Indian positional system in the light of Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil sources,” Gaṇita Bhāratī, 45 (1) (2023), 1-21.
[6] Kichenassamy, Satyanad, 2025a. « Philologie et épistémologie mathématique en Inde ancienne», Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences historiques et philologiques, 156 (2025), 408-414.
[7] Kichenassamy, Satyanad, 2025b. “Geometry without figures: Mathematics as apodictic discourse in Indian texts,” in Vedic Education and Ancient Indian Astronomy, Parvathy K. P. & Satyabhama N. (eds.), Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 2025, pp. 105-135.

Sonia Wigh (University of Cambridge)

The Lone Pregnant Body: Illustrating Feminine Forms in Manṣūr’s Anatomy

The Tašrīḥ-i Manṣūrī [Manṣūr’s Anatomy] is the first known medical text in the Persianate world containing full-body anatomical images. It was composed in 1386 CE by Manṣūr bin Muḥammad bin Ilyās Shīrāzī of Shiraz (Iran). A standard copy of Manṣūr’s Anatomy contained six illustrations of a skeleton, nerves, muscles, veins and arteries, digestive tract and other vital organs, and a female form with gravid uterus. This paper tracks the visual evolution of the female form in various manuscript copies of the Tašrīḥ, culminating in its lithographic print in Delhi in the 1840’s. By highlighting key moments of transformations, I demonstrate that while there were limited changes in the five illustrations of human (male) anatomy, there was a stark difference in the way the female form was perceived in the manuscript version, from schematic drawings to full-figured female bodies with geographical, nationalistic markings in eighteenth-century India and Qajari Iran.

Initially, the six full-length anatomical drawings in the Tašrīḥ-i Manṣūrī consist of schematic outline of the human body in a squatting position, with their hand on their knees. Some even argue that the sixth image (purportedly added by Ibn Ilyās himself) was actually a gravid uterus superimposed on the pre-existing illustration of the arterial networks. Over the course of two centuries, from feminine markers like hair, the sixth image assumed a more naturalistic, aesthetic human female bodily form. Although one cannot assume a transposition of identical knowledge-making practices across time and space, this paper attempts to follow the evolution in visual language of one image and map onto changing consumption patterns caused by socio-cultural and economic transformations over a course of two centuries in India and Iran.

Christèle Barois (CESAH)

Embryogenesis narratives and the history of ancient Indian medicine

As part of my study of embryogenesis in Epic and Purāṇic literature, I have established a specialized corpus of embryonic development narratives, spanning the period from the first centuries of the Common Era to the first centuries of the second millennium. Generally quite short (at most sixty verses), these embryogenesis narratives represent a specific type of narrative that shares a similar structure and invariably appears in the context of teaching Sāṃkhya philosophy.

Embryology as expounded by classical Indian medicine (āyurveda) constitutes the conceptual framework of reference, since these narratives describe the development of the embryo in accordance with the processes and temporality taught in the “Book of the Body” (śārīrasthāna) of the ancient medical compendia, and share some of their technical terminology with classical Indian medicine (Suneson 1991).

Bibliographical references: 

Barois, C. (2022).    ‘Cette âme tombée dans un corps étranger’. Notes introductives au Bhāgavatapurāṇa III 31. In: Embryon, personne et parenté, Mathieu, Séverine, Enric Porqueres i Gené (eds). Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 54, 39-62.

Suneson, C. (1991). Remarks on some interrelated terms in the ancient Indian embryology. Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Südasiens / Vienna Journal of South Asian Studies, 35, 109–121.

Mannat Johal (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG))

Attributes of continuity: Maintaining a house at Maski (12th-15th centuries CE) 

Abstract: A rammed mud house inhabited between the 12th-14th centuries, and excavated at the archaeological site of Maski (Karnataka), forms the subject of this chapter. The home presents an architecturally-bounded space that evokes the quotidian activities which took place there, the dynamics of domesticity, and the durability of intergenerational dwelling. The house excavated at Maski, with its mud walls and layers of plastered floor surfaces, speaks to the iterative labour of maintaining a space built with fragile materials – acts of maintenance that shaped this deposit and structured the assemblage of artifacts recovered from the surfaces.

While the palimpsest-like stratigraphy of this house provides a strong sense of sequent action, a small but consistent assemblage of ceramic vessels invites reflection on the ways in which continuity, too, defines this deposit. Furthermore, to go against archaeological tendencies to treat stratigraphic units as separate from the artifacts they ‘contain’ is also to question the extent to which architecture marks the boundaries of domesticity. I argue that the small window into domestic space at Maski opens up a broader consideration of ‘household activities’ that necessarily exceed the boundedness of the house.

Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta)

The Compendium of Suśruta in Time and Space: Mapping a Medical Tradition

The newly-launched SSHRC research project "The Compendium of Suśruta in Time and Space: Mapping a Medical Tradition" seeks to explore the textual and doctrinal differences between The Compendium as it existed in 878 CE (the date of our oldest manuscript) and the later vulgate version. The project especially focusses on the work of the medieval commentators in reshaping the work over the centuries.  In this CHSTM session I will survey what we know about the author Candraṭa (fl. ca. 900-1050) and his relationship to the Suśrutasaṃhitā.  We will also look at another piece of information that helps us to think about the date and evolution of the Compendium, namely what we can learn from those passages where the Compendium refers to other, outside authors by using the phrase, "some say that ..."?  

 
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
 
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. 
 

 
Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
 
Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
 
In his commentary on the Līlāvatī—Bhāksara (b.1114) ’s very popular arithmetical text—Śaṅkara Vāriyar (fl. ca. 1540) launches into a spectacular presentation of the values that Mādhava (14th century) can provide to approximate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He then offers an elaborate proof of one of the highlights of the “Kerala School of Mathematics” attributed to the same Mādhava: a rule to approximate the circumference of a circle which is seen as an equivalent of formulas given later by Gotfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and James Gregory (1638-1675) prefigurating the birth of calculus. In this presentation, I will show how Śaṅkara Vāriyar commentary testifies to new ways of thinking about reasonings and proofs in mathematics, offering many contrasts with the practices of earlier authors writing in Sanskrit. More largely I will describe how authors of mathematical texts in Sanskrit had a great variety of practices of mathematical reasonings. Not all of these practices were about “proving” mathematical truths; reasonings could have many different aims— such as showing that a procedure could be used in different mathematical disciplines, or that a formal computation could be explained by providing each step with a meaning. My aim will be to look at how authors carried out “explanations” (vāsanā) or sought to “establish” a procedure (sadh-, upapad-), and how this questions standard historiographies of proof in Sanskrit mathematical literature on the one hand and of the “Kerala school of mathematics” on the other.

*Note Special Date*
 
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
 
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
 
The primary function of works within the alchemical (rasaśāstra) corpus is to provide written technical instructions for iatrochemical processes. These medical interventions require the user to be skilled in botany, metallurgy, and mineral- and gemologies. The specifications themselves are often incomplete, demonstrating that the user must have the practical experience and technical training to complete operations successfully. Though largely focused on the purification of mercury for use in medicinal elixirs to rejuvenate the body and cure disease, rasaśāstra works contain detailed descriptions of plants, substances, and the apparatuses used in alchemical production. The practicalities of rasaśāstra make the works more akin to āyurvedic manuals than religious ones. Alchemy includes the chemical arts of pharmacy and metallurgy, the transmutation of imperfect metals (dhātuvāda), and the search for a universal medicine that is both panacea (sarvārha) and elixir of longevity (rasāyana).
 
However, unlike their āyurvedic counterparts, rasaśāstra works contain specific medico-religious technologies required for the efficacy of their medicines. Where āyurveda points back to the sages, rasaśāstra looks directly toward god. While early works, such as the Rasahṛdayatantra discusses an immortal body, it is longevity, not immortality proper, that is the goal of the alchemist. The perfected body (dehasiddhi) of the alchemical patient is one with long life and free of disease. Once this perfect body is achieved, one can then work toward the attainment of superhuman powers and enter into the transcendent states familiar to tantric and yoga practitioners.
 

*Note Special Date*
 
The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
 
Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), Vandana Lele, and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
 
The Turco-Afghan invasions of northern India in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries destroyed several monastic libraries in North India and ended a long tradition of Buddhist learning in Bihar and Bengal. However, for geographical reasons, Nepal was spared these depredations and many manuscripts were preserved in temples, monasteries, royal libraries and private homes. The Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (1970-2002) and Cataloguing Project (2002-2014) revealed an extraordinary wealth of previously-unknown early Sanskrit manuscript material preserved in Nepal and made it available to modern scholarship through microfilms and digitization in collaboration with the National Archives in Kathmandu. This has led to a renaissance of historical and cultural scholarship in numerous fields such as Buddhism, puranic studies, Śaiva and tantric studies and now the history of medicine.
 

Manuscript Kathmandu KL 699, discovered by the Nepal-German projects, presents a version of The Compendium of Suśruta (Suśrutasaṃhitā) that is physically dated to 878 CE, just a few hundred years after the work was completed. This work is world-famous for the insights it offers into the practice of medicine in ancient Asia, including detailed chapters on diet, lifestyle and surgery. All the printed editions of this famous work are from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and are based on a tiny number of nineteenth-century manuscripts. So KL 699 offers a time-machine that allows us to see what The Compendium of Suśruta looked like a thousand years ago. A Canadian government grant from 2020-2024 enabled a team to study this manuscript and the text it transmits to us today. We are now able to see that the text has changed in major and minor ways over the centuries. This CHSTM session will present a discussion led by project participants exploring our discoveries.

Project members:

• Jan Gerris - Reflections on Suśrutasaṃhitā's chapters on human reproduction.
• Paras Mehta - ... would like to speak about his immense learning on the project: The deep exposure to Newari script, the use of Digital Humanities tools such as Oxygen and Saktumiva, and the translation of an ancient Ayurvedic text.
• Harshal Bhatt - "The text and translation of Vātavyādhinidāna based on the Nepalese version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā."
• Dominik Wujastyk - "Toxic Histories: Translating the oldest Poison Treatise in the World"

• Deepro Chakraborty - "Textual Transmission of the Tantrayuktis: Insights from the Nepalese Version of the Suśrutasaṃhitā

  
   

 
Knowledge, Translation, and Commentary: Perso-Islamic Scholars’ Engagement with Sanskritic Tradition
 
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
 
One of the Persian translations of the Bṛhatsaṃhitā by Varāhmihira (c. 505 - c. 587), known as Tarjuma-yi Kitāb-i Bārāhī, is a rare complete translation from Sanskrit preceding the Mughal era. Commissioned during Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq’s reign (r. 1351–1388) and executed by ʿAzīz Shams-i Bahā Nūrī with assistance from Sanskrit scholars, it reflects the Delhi Sultanate’s interest in celestial and astrological knowledge and sheds light on intellectual exchange in early Persianate South Asia. This study, based on Persian manuscripts in comparison with their Sanskrit sources, reveals that the translator intervened in crafting the translation in a unique manner. These interventions include structural adjustments, the selection and augmentation of content, and the incorporation of commentaries, providing insights into how Perso-Islamic scholars engaged with the Sanskritic tradition of jyotiḥśāstra and the unique characteristics of knowledge transmission across cultures during the Delhi Sultanate period.
 

 
Exploring an Anti-Epidemic Protective Pill Recipe in the 15th Century Tibetan Medical Work, Relics of Countless Oral Instructions by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (1439-1475)
 
Barbara Gerke (University of Vienna)
 
 
During the plague outbreak in Gujarat (1994), the SARS outbreak (2003), and the recent
COVID-19 pandemic, Tibetan physicians in India produced and distributed protective anti-
epidemic pill amulets. One of these is the “9-compound black pill” or Nakpo Gujor (nag po dgu
sbyor). Worn around the neck as a pendant, Nakpo Gujor is deemed to be effective through the
odors and anti-epidemic properties of its nine ingredients, which are ritually consecrated. The
potency of these ingredients is enhanced through their alignment with nine different deities and
their respective mantras. The formula for this pill is found in many Tibetan medical works dating
back to the thirteenth century.

This presentation explores one version of this formula in the work of the Tibetan physician
scholar Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (Zur mkhar mnyam nyid rdo rje; 1439-1475) from Central
Tibet. I found that some privately practicing amchi in India employed this formula during the
recent pandemic. In his Relics of Countless Oral Instructions (Man ngag bye ba ring bsrel pod
chung rab 'byams gsal ba'i sgron me), Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé introduces the nine ingredients of
this protective pill in relation to nine deities, and nine mantras. While attributing the formula to
Nagarjuna—he phoneticizes the formula’s Sanskrit name as kala naba yoga— he also links the
nine ingredients to some of the “wide-spread diseases” (rims nad) discussed in the third section
of the Four Tantras (Rgyud bzhi), the foundational Tibetan treatise dating back to the 13/14 th
centuries.

In analysing Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé’s recipe and interrelated connections to earlier conceptions
of infectious disease categories in the Four Tantras, I argue that in the way he presents and
writes about Nakpo Gujor he establishes a broad therapeutic spectrum for this formula. This not
only includes the three types of potency recognized in Vajrayana Buddhist medical texts (the
potency of substances, mantras, and meditative accomplishments), but also integrates some of
the established “wide-spread disease” categories of the Four Tantras. Thus, Zurkhar Nyamnyi
Dorjé presents Nakpo Gujor as a medico-religious protective formula for all kinds of epidemic
disease. My analysis highlights how a 15 th century anti-epidemic formula weaves together Indian
origins, Tibetan foundational texts, and aromatic substances as carriers of spiritual potencies in
such accessible ways that it was used by amchi practitioners in the 21 st century as a protective
olfactory amulet for COVID-19.
 
Further reading: https://www.medanthrotheory.org/article/view/4996
"Thinking through complex webs of potency: Early Tibetan medical responses to the emerging coronavirus epidemic: Notes from a field visit to Dharamsala, India" by Barbara Gerke

 
Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
 
Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
 
 Over the past 30 years, historians and philosophers of science have argued – over and again – that Science is too big of a category to talk of in a singular, coherent manner. Instead of focusing on “the scientific method” or on what makes a scientist, they have instead drawn attention to “the disunities of the sciences.” Talking of sciences in the plural has, perhaps inadvertently, opened up a space to think more broadly about the hierarchies of knowledge in the premodern and non-European world. So what are sciences for this group? Bring a definition of sciences (or of a particular science) from a narrative account (e.g. a tarikh, prabandha) or a scholastic source (e.g. the introduction to a particular śāstra) for group discussion, or simply come prepared to discuss how you have understood/defined this category in your work.

 
Surgical Instruments of Indian “oculists”

Leo Weiß (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
 
The Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine in Leipzig houses a collection of Indian surgical Instruments that were donated between 1907 and 1913 by the Indologist A.F. Rudolf Hoernle. This presentation deals with a part of this collection that supposedly belonged to “two practicing Indian oculists from Benares” and its provenance.
 
According to the Indian Medical Service doctors writing about these practitioners, they were commonly called suttiah or vaidya and were hereditary practitioners who almost exclusively practiced the couching of cataract. Unfortunately, there seem to be no texts by these practitioners themselves. How the practices and instruments of these oculists relate to classical works of Indian Medicine like the Suśrutasaṃhitā is still an open question that requires further discussion. Some preliminary aspects of the topic will be explored during the presentation and I would greatly welcome further discussion on this subject afterwards.
 
While there are no written sources by these oculists their instruments have been collected both at the KSI as well as in various UK collections. I will therefore try to develop a closer understanding of these so called ‘oculists’ by examining their instruments. It is noteworthy that the instruments contain not only ones that were used for couching, but also for other medical procedures unrelated to ophthalmics. Furthermore, a significant number of Instruments are quite evidently from western manufacture, hinting at a complex entanglement between colonial and indigenous practices of healing.
 
Unfortunately, there are no textual sources written by these oculists, who, according to the colonial discourse about them, were largely illiterate. The primary textual source on these subaltern health practitioners are publications by Indian Medical Service doctors, who viewed them as both unwanted competition as well as a public health hazard.

 
Are the Elements and the Pañcabhūta the Same (Thing)? Epistemic Objects between
Science, Religion, and Philosophy in Colonial North India, c.1920

Dr. Charu Singh (University of Cambridge)

What are things made from? If elements are the foundational matters of fact in global
chemopolitics, what happens to elementary conceptions of life and world when new concepts
challenge existing ontologies? This chapter examines an early twentieth century debate
about the status of the pañcabhūta, also called the pañcatattva, a concept foundational to
Hindu ontology and authority. In British India, these “five Hindu elements” were described
by European orientalists, Sanskrit scholars, emerging Indian scientists and philosophers, and
lay readers. The tattva presented significant difficulties in linguistic, conceptual, and material
translation. While pṛthivī, jal, and vāyu were easily rendered as earth, water, and air, the two
other tattva – tejas and ākāśa – proved less pliable. Is tejas fire or energy? Is ākāśa ether? As
the Sanskrit scholar Chandrashekhar Shastri asked in the Hindi-language popular science
monthly Vigyan in 1920, “are the elements and the pañcabhūta the same (thing)?” In the
subsequent debate, Vigyan’s authors drew on ancient Sanskrit knowledge alongside the
history of European chemistry. They evaluated the tattva in light of phlogiston and caloric,
new theories of chemical structure, and also cited traditional theories on the nature of things
associated with the Vaisheshika, one of the six ‘schools’ of Hindu philosophy. The views of
the legendary seer Kanada, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton were all cannily deployed.
Thinking about elements and tattva as epistemic objects, this chapter brings into view the
complex mediations by which early twentieth century vernacular readers identified these
objects with reference to and through the intercalation of two distinct standards: Vaisheshika
philosophy and European chemical writings.

 
"Show and Tell" 
Presentations and Group Discussion
 
Join us for a special meeting on April 15! We are excited to welcome six scholars who will use an object or an image to introduce themselves and their work. Each mini-presentation of approximately 3 minutes will be followed by an opportunity for discussion. 

One of the primary aims of our working group is to cultivate inclusive community, collaboration, and conversation among people who study science in South Asia (pre-1800) from a range of disciplinary perspectives, so we hope many folks will attend this meeting.
 
Presenters:
 

Leo Weiß (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
 
Lingli Li (EHESS (Paris) and University of Goetingen)
 
Dhammaloka Jambugahapitiye (Department of Classical Languages, University of Peradeniya)
 
Madhusudan Rimal (University of Alberta)
 
Bradley Lewis Scott (Queen Mary University of London)
 
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU)
 
 

After the presentations we will open up some broader questions for discussion. What is our shared object/field of study? What do me mean when we say “science” in this context of “early South Asia”? What are some of the methodological problems that we face across the group? How can we better share resources and collaborate?
 
We would also like to know what kinds of conversations and formats would be most helpful for you in our group for next year.
 
We look forward to seeing you on April 15!

 
Material aspects of some early modern Sri Lankan medical manuscripts
 
Dr. Anna Elizabeth Winterbottom (McGill University)
 
At McGill University, there is a collection of around 125 olas (palm leaf manuscripts), several of which are concerned with medicine, astrology, or veterinary medicine. These manuscripts were collected in the 1920s and 1930s by Casey Wood, an ophthalmological surgeon and keen collector of historical manuscripts. Most date from the Kandyan period (1595-1815). While several of the manuscripts are copies of well-known texts, like the Sinhalese Yogāratnākara, others are compilations of excerpts, prescriptions, and recipes made by physicians for personal use. In this talk, I will consider the material aspects of the texts, including the length of the leaves used for the text, the decoration of their covers, the buttons used to secure the cords, and the illustrations and decorations that many of these texts contain. I will argue that rather than acting solely as vehicles for medical knowledge, the texts were also considered to play an active role in healing through these material elements.

*NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND SCHEDULE CHANGE*
 
Hues of faces and phases: insights on crafting high-tin bronzes in southern India
 
Dr Sharada Srinivasan (National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore, India)
 
 
Generally speaking, as-cast binary copper-tin alloys with over 15% do not seem to have been widely used in antiquity as they get embrittled at higher tin contents due to the increasing presence of the intermetallic delta phase compound. Nevertheless, the use of the unusual and skilled binary bronze alloys of a higher tin content and skillfully manipulating the high temperature intermetallic compounds properties of bronzes are reported from various contexts in Indian antiquity. In particular the specialized use of the hot forged and quenched high tin beta (23%) bronze was used to skillfully make vessels with finds reported by the author from archaeometallurgical studies from numerous peninsular and south Indian megalithic contexts ranking amongst the early such finds known; with continuing traditions particularly in Kerala. Sadly, these days it is largely cymbal making that survives.
 
Another exotic high tin-bronze craft tradition that thrived in Kerala is the making of mirrors exploiting the silvery delta compound of bronze of around 33% to get a good reflective surface. Further insights on more recently excavated finds from sites such as the Iron Age site of Adichanallur are also touched upon in terms of background. Thus, an attempt is made to trace the trajectory of the usage of bronze in the Indian and south Indian context in this illustrated talk, tracing the numerous ‘faces’, ranging from celebrated lost wax statuary bronzes such as of the Chola period to the mirrors, and the ‘phases’, the unique properties of which were skillfully exploited to fashion the intriguing artifacts, not to mention the related historic ‘phases’…

*NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND SCHEDULE CHANGE*
 
Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Pseudepigraphic Writing in Persianate South Asia
 
Dr. Fabrizio Speziale (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris-Marseille)
 
This lecture examines Muslim elephant keepers, and the function of Persian forged texts in South Asian society. It will inquire into forgery as a tool to domesticate technological knowledge translated from Indic sources and to legitimate the status of a guild that has emerged from Muslims’ interaction with the South Asian natural environment and society. It investigates the function of apocryphal writing in the translation context as a stratagem to produce semantic shifts concerning features of both the translated and the translating cultures. In the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāvat-girī (Genealogy of the mahout), a text of uncertain period about the elephant and the elephant keeper, apocryphal writing functions as a device that allows to Islamize professional and technical skills assimilated from the Indian environment. This is accomplished by making them congruent with Muslims’ conception of the origin of technical and scientific professions as practices connected to the early Islamic prophets. Thus, the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-girī creates a legend about the mahout as a profession practiced by Noah’s grandsons. This fictional account also entailed a reflexive meaning in that it operated a significant shift from earlier Muslim negative views on the elephant and provided a new framework for emerging Muslim professional groups involved in the care of this animal.