09-11'04 | P.C. Bisschop

The location of sanctuaries in old Indian religious texts

The Skandapurana is an anonymous work in the tradition of Shaivism, an important religious movement in India. It was written in Sanksrit, around the sixth century AD. Peter Bisschop’s PhD thesis contains two separate editions of a chapter from the Skandapurana, one based on Nepalese palm-leaf manuscripts and the other on two later traditions, which contain more information and have not been published before. A central item in the texts is a list of holy places in Shaivism. Bisschop determined how the different traditions relate to each other, for example from a historical perspective. Both versions turn out to contain additional material compared to the original version of the Skandapurana. In addition, the two later versions were thoroughly rewritten, with a more elaborate mythology. Bisschop also managed to identify a large number of the most important Shaivite sanctuaries. /GG

Peter Bisschop (Zuidwolde, 1973) studied philosophy at the University of Groningen and conducted his PhD research at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. His research is part of the NWO project on the Skandapurana.

Date and time

Thursday 9 September 2004, 2.45 p.m.

PhD student

P.C. Bisschop

PhD thesis

(hard-cover commercial edition: Egbert Forsten, series GOS, ISBN 978 90 6980 150 6, sales price EUR 125)

Early Śaivism and the Skandapurăna: sects and centres

Supervisors

Prof. H.T. Bakker and Prof. H. Isaacson