Pronoy Chakraborty

Pronoy Chakraborty

Home: UC Berkeley
Host: University of Vienna

Topic: caryā (ritual conduct) songs attributed to the Tantric Buddhist mahāsiddhas

Pronoy is a PhD candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at University of California, Berkeley. His research on caryā (ritual conduct) songs attributed to the Tantric Buddhist mahāsiddhas (i.e. great perfected masters) combines philology, art history, and anthropology to address questions of authorship, performance, oral dissemination, textual transmission, and exegesis of the songs. In his dissertation, I will be focusing on the imagery of the rivers mentioned in the caryā songs for visualization of the channels of the inner body, carrying the vital winds and the sexual fluids. Thereby, I will explore issues of ecology and networks of communities related to the mahāsiddha lineages, centred around Eastern India and Bangladesh.

At the University of Vienna, I want to work with Professors Nina Mirnig (an expert of Sanskrit epigraphy, Tantric literature, and material culture, with a particular interest in Śaiva funerary rituals) and Dr. Julian Schott (a scholar of tantric Buddhism focusing on Middle-Indic siddha literature especially the dohās of Kṛṣṇācārya). Further, the Western Himalayan and Himalayan Archives, Vienna— with research initiatives combining Nepalese philological and art-historical materials— will be an invaluable resource for my project.