This book explores historical and cultural aspects of modern and contemporary Bengal through the performance-centred study of a particular repertoire: the songs of the saint-composer Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), who is particularly revered among Baul and Fakir singers. The author shows how songs, if examined as 'sacred scriptures', represent multi-dimensional texts for the study of South Asian religions. Revealing how previous studies about Bauls mirror the history of folkloristics in Bengal, this book presents sacred songs as a precious symbolic capital for a marginalized community of dislocated...

The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It contains contributions from scholars from various areas of Iranian and comparative studies, among which are the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition with its wide network of influences in late antique Mesopotamia, notably among the Jewish milieu; classical Persian literature in its manifold genres; medieval Persian history; oral history; folklore and more. The essays in this collection embrace both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, both verbal and visual media, as well as various language communities...

Exercices d'histoire des religions is a collection of the most important articles published by Philippe Borgeaud during his career as the professor of history of religions at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). These nineteen studies showcase the many reflections of the Swiss scholar of religion on the categories and tools used to describe and compare such evanescent concepts as "religions," "myths" and "rituals," and his methodology for a critical and comparative study of ancient and modern religions. Through them, readers will gain a clear understanding of the importance such an...

In Heraclitus and Thales Conceptual Scheme: A Historical Study Aryeh Finkelberg offers an alternative to the traditional teleological interpretation of early Greek thought. Instead of explaining it as targeted at later results, viz. philosophy, as this thought was first conceptualized by Aristotle and has been regarded ever since, the author seeks to determine its intended meaning by restoring it to its historical context as evinced, inter alia, by epigraphic and papyrological evidence, in particular the Gold Leaves, the Olbian bone plates, and the Derveni papyrus. This approach, together...