Paula Richman | |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Religious Rhetoric in Maṇimēkalai (1983) |
Academic advisors | Edward C. Dimock |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Religious studies scholar |
Sub-discipline | |
Institutions |
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Paula Richman is an Emerita William H. Danforth Professor of South Asian Religions at Oberlin College. [1] [2] She is an expert in the Tamil language and has edited a series of books about the Ramayana ,including Many Ramayanas,Questioning Ramayana,Ramayana Stories in Modern South India and Performing the Ramayana Tradition. [3]
Richman completed her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College in 1974,an MA at Princeton University and the University of Chicago,followed by a PhD at the University of Chicago and a research affiliation with the Tamil Department at the American College in Madurai,India. [4] She began her study of the Ramayana and the Tamil language during her education. [3] She studied Tamil for two years in Coimbatore and Madurai. [5]
Richman was faculty at Swarthmore College,Western Washington University,and Colby College before becoming a member of the faculty at Oberlin College in 1985. [4] In 1997,she was named to the Irvin E. Houck professorship in Humanities for a period of five years. [4] During her career,she traveled to conduct lectures,including to India and Copenhagen. [4] [5]
Richman and her co-editor Rustom Bharucha spent eight years developing the book Performing the Ramayana Tradition:Enactments,Interpretations and Arguments,which includes essays,photographs,interviews,and scripts for theatrical productions,and was published in 2021. [6]
Hanuman, also known as Maruti, Bajrangabali, and Anjaneya, is a deity in Hinduism, revered as a divine vanara, and a devoted companion of the deity Rama. Central to the Ramayana, Hanuman is celebrated for his unwavering devotion to Rama and is considered a chiranjivi. He is traditionally believed to be the spiritual offspring of the wind deity Vayu, who is said to have played a significant role in his birth. In Shaiva tradition, he is regarded to be an incarnation of Shiva, while in most of the Vaishnava traditions he is the son and incarnation of Vayu. His tales are recounted not only in the Ramayana but also in the Mahabharata and various Puranas.
Shambuka is a character in some editions of the Ramayana. Some say that the character and his story are an interpolation which is not found in the original Valmiki Ramayana but in a later addition called Uttara Kanda.
George Luzerne Hart, III is Professor Emeritus of Tamil language at the University of California, Berkeley. His work focuses on the classical Tamil literature and on identifying the relationships between the Tamil and Sanskrit literature. In 2015 the Government of India awarded him the title of Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour.
Sita, also known as Siya, Jānaki and Maithili, is a Hindu goddess and the female protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Sita is the consort of Rama, the avatar of god Vishnu, and is regarded as an avatar of goddess Lakshmi. She is the chief goddess of the Ramanandi Sampradaya and is the goddess of beauty and devotion. Sita's birthday is celebrated every year on the occasion of Sita Navami.
Hinduism is one of Sri Lanka's oldest religions, with temples dating back over 2,000 years. As of 2011, Hindus made up 12.6% of the Sri Lankan population. They are almost exclusively Tamils, except for small immigrant communities from India and Pakistan.
Divya Desam or Vaishnava Divya Desams are the 108 Vishnu and Lakshmi temples that are mentioned in the works of the Alvars, the poet-saints of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. By comparison, the Paadal Petra Sthalam are the 276 Shiva temples glorified in the works of the Shaiva Nayanars.
Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature and linguistics. Ramanujan was also a professor of Linguistics at University of Chicago.
Adhyatma Ramayana is a 13th- to 15th-century Sanskrit text that allegorically interprets the story of Hindu epic Ramayana in the Advaita Vedanta framework. It is embedded in the latter portion of Brahmānda Purana, and the author is considered to be Vyasa. The Hindu tradition also attributes the text to the Bhakti movement saint Ramananda.
Adhyatma Ramayanam Kilippattu is the most popular Malayalam version of the Sanskrit Hindu epic Ramayana. It is believed to have been written by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan in the early 17th century, and is considered to be a classic of Malayalam literature and an important text in the history of Malayalam language. It is a retelling of the Sanskrit work Adhyatma Ramayana in Kilippattu format. Ezhuthachan used the Grantha-based Malayalam script to write his Ramayana, although the Vatteluttu writing system was the traditional writing system of Kerala then. Recitation of Adhyatma Ramayanam Kilippattu is very important in Hindu families in Kerala. The month of Karkitakam in the Malayalam calendar is celebrated as the Ramayana recitation month and Ramayana is recited in Hindu houses and temples across Kerala.
The notion of a fifth Veda, that is, of a text which lies outside the four canonical Vedas, but nonetheless has the status of a Veda, is one that has been advanced in a number of post-Vedic Hindu texts, in order to accord a particular text or texts and their doctrines with the timelessness and authority that Hinduism associates with the Vedas. The idea is an ancient one, appearing for the first time in the Upanishads, but has over the centuries since then also been applied to more recent Sanskrit and vernacular texts.
Anantanand Rambachan is a professor of religion at St. Olaf College.
Rama is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric Hindu traditions, he is considered the Supreme Being. Also considered as the ideal man, Rama is the male protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana. His birth is celebrated every year on Rama Navami, which falls on the ninth day of the bright half of the lunar cycle of Chaitra (March–April), the first month in the Hindu calendar.
P. Dawood Shah was a Tamil enthusiast and scholar, activist and a gold medalist from Madurai Tamil Sangam. He also known as "Kamba Ramayana Sahib".
The Nayaks of Gingee (Senji) were Telugu rulers of the Gingee principality of Tamil Nadu between 16th to 18th century CE. The Gingee Nayaks had their origins in the Kamma warrior clans of present-day Andhra Pradesh.
Maṇimēkalai, also spelled Manimekhalai or Manimekalai, is a Tamil Buddhist epic composed by Kulavāṇikaṉ Seethalai Sataṉar probably somewhere between the 2nd century to the 6th century. It is an "anti-love story", a sequel to the "love story" in the earliest Tamil epic Cilappatikaram, with some characters from it and their next generation. The epic consists of 4,861 lines in akaval meter, arranged in 30 cantos.
The Self-Respect Movement is a popular human rights movement originating in South India aimed at achieving social equality for those oppressed by the Indian caste system, advocating for lower castes to develop self-respect. It was reportedly founded by Periyar to head the India against Brahminism movement in Tamil Nadu.
Heinrich von Stietencron was a German Indologist. During his academic career, he was an emeritus professor and the chair of the Indology and Comparative Religion department at the University of Tübingen.
Anne Elizabeth Monius was an American Indologist and religious scholar. She was a professor of South Asian Religions at the Harvard Divinity School, best known for her analyses of literary culture to reconstruct the history of faiths in South India.
Michael Herbert Fisher is emeritus Robert S. Danforth Professor of History at Oberlin College. He has published extensively about the interplay between Europeans and South Asians in South Asia and Europe. His three most widely held books are: The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth Century Journey through India, Migration: A World History, and A Short History of the Mughal Empire.
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is an American anthropologist who specializes in the intersection of religious studies and gender studies. A 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, she has written several gender studies books on Indian culture. She worked as a professor at Emory University until 2021.