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A Pantheon Rediscovered | South Asian Studies | Yale University

Friday, April 18

4:30pm • Keynote Lecture Yale University Art Gallery • 1111 Chapel Street

Naman Ahuja • Jawaharlal Nehru University“A Pantheon Rediscovered: Changing Perceptions of Early Historic India?”

6:00pm • Reception
Mayer Lobby • Yale University Art Gallery

Saturday, April 19, 2008

8:45am • Welcome

9:00am • Section I • Early Indian Terracottas: The Case of Bengal Chair: Romila Thapar, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Gautam Sengupta, West Bengal State Archaeological Survey, “Early-historic Terracottas from West Bengal: A Geographical Perspective”

Enamul Haque, National Museum, Dhaka, “Terracottas from Bangla Desh”

Sima Roy Chowdhury, “Terracotta Art of Panna: An Isolated Phenomenon or a Changing Artistic Tradition?”

11:00am • Section I • Early Indian Terracottas: the Art Historical Context Chair: John Guy, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sonya Quintanilla, San Diego Museum of Art, “Intersections of Parallel Traditions: Select Commonalities in Early Indian stone and Terracotta Sculpture”

Shailendra Bhandare, Ashmolean Museum, “Drawing Parallels, Extending Scopes: Interdisicplinary Obervations on Icons and Coins with respect to ‘Sunga’ Terracottas”

Pia Brancaccio, Drexel University, “Satavahana Terracottas between Tradition and Innovation: An Exploration of Sources and Transmission of Models”

1:30pm • Section I • Early Indian Terracottas: Epigraphy and Scientific Analysis Chair: Vidya Dehejia

Harry Falk, Freie Universitat Berlin, “Pseudo-Script and So-Called Mixed Script from South Asia”

Pieter Meyers, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Testing the Terracottas”

3:00pm • Section II • Early Urban Culture Chair: Stanley Insler, Yale University

Shonaleeka Kaul, Yale University, “Culture of Desire: Erotics and the City in Early Sanskrit Texts?”

Robert Brown, University of California at Los Angeles, “Showing it All: Nudity in Early Indian Art”

Robert Goldman, University of California, “Carried Away: Abduction, Rape and Marriage in Early Indian Literature and Society”

8:00pm • Concert
(open to the public)

Sunday, April 20, 2008

9:30am • Section III • Early Indian Iconography and Ritual Chair: Amy Poster, Brooklyn Museum

Arlo Griffiths, Universiteit Leiden, “Female Headdresses in the Atharva Veda”

Sally Goldman, University of California at Berkeley, “The Goddess in the Grove: The Demonic Cult of Nikumbhila”

Doris Srinivasan, State University of New York, “Childbirth, Childhood, and the Magico-Religious World of Transformations”

11:30am • Section III • Early Indian Iconography and Ritual
Chair: Stephen Huyler

Kurt Behrendt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Ramnath Misra, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Popular in a Sacred Universe: Formation of Iconographic Types in Bharhut Panels”

Osmund Bopearachchi,
“Earliest Depictions of Hindi Deities on Coins from Gandhara: New Numismatic Evidence”

1:30pm • Section III • Early Indian Iconography and Ritual Chair: Kurt Behrendt, Metropolitan Museum

Frantz Grenet, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, “Iranian Gods in Hindu Garb: The Zoroastrian pantheon of the Sogdians, 6th-8th c. A.D.”

Gregory Schopen, University of California at Los Angeles, “Early Buddhist Gods”

3:00pm • Closing CommentsNaman Ahuja, Jawaharlal Nehru University • Romila Thapar, Jawaharlal Nehru University • Vidya Dehejia,

For more information, please contact phyllis.granoff@yale.edu or barbara.papacoda@yale.edu

Sponsored by the South Asian Studies Council, the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund, and the Neil Kreitman Foundation.

*image of Terracotta Goddess “Tamluk Yakshi” from the Ashmolean Museum of Arts & Archaeology. Reprinted with permission.