Calamities Symposium: Program


Flooding and snakes

This is not a public event, but open to an interested scholarly audience that can contribute to the topic. If you fulfil this criterium and want to participate online or in person, please send us a message.

For the complete program including abstracts, please download this PDF (updated 6 Nov, 2024): Programme-Calamities-and-Countermeasures-Vienna-Nov-2024-UPDATED2.pdf

Day 1: Friday, November 8th
9:00-9:15Welcoming Session
Section 1: Crises in the Epic Literature.
9:15-10:00Giacomo Benedetti: The great 12-years drought and its consequences in Epic and Purāṇic tradition
10:00-10:45Adam Bowles: Varṇasaṃkara and dharmasaṃkara in the Mahābhārata

— Break —
Section 2: Protective Spells in Brahmanism and Buddhism
11:15-12:00Anthony Keller: Diseases and their ritual treatments in the Kauśika-Sūtra
12:00-12:45Francesco Bianchini: Healing the Masses in Premodern South Asia: On the Limitations of Royal Initiatives for Communal Care and the usefulness of Narratives on Magic

— Lunch Break —
14:15-15:00Daisy Sze Yui Cheung: Protecting the state by means of a sūtra: the ritual use of the Suvarṇaprabhāsottamasūtra against calamities
15:00-15:45Patrick Zeitlhuber: Plagues and their Appeasement in Buddhist Literature – A Survey of Texts from Three Different Early Schools

— Break —
Section 3: Communal Medicine Against Diverse Plagues
16:15–17:00Matthew Robertson: The Divine Element in Early Ayurvedic Epidemiology
17:00–17:45Dominik Wujastyk: Surviving Snakes, Rats, Scorpions and Spiders
— Symposium Dinner —


Day 2: Saturday, November 9th
Section 3: Dealing with Disasters
09:15-10:00Vitus Angermeier: Whatever helps. Modes of reaction towards calamities in the Arthaśāstra
10:00-10:45Liqun Zhou: Divination and Earthquakes in Pre-modern India: The Case of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna

— Break —
11:15-12:00Eugen Ciurtin: The Early South Asian Seismic Risk
12:00-12:45Saarthak Singh & Daniela De Simone: Destruction, desertion, ruin and restoration: Earthquake impact on medieval monuments in central India

— Lunch Break —
Section 4: On the Crossroads of Health and Religion
14:15-15:00Federico Divino: “The World is Ablaze”: Unraveling Buddhist Ascetic conception of Catastrophes and Apocalypse
15:00-15:45Gudrun Melzer: The iconography of disease-eradicating deities in South Asia before the thirteenth century: An overview

— Break —
16:15-17:00Michael Willis: Medical histories and the pandemic of the fourteenth century
17:00-17:45Concluding session: Recap of the symposium, outlook on the proceedings