Dividing OM, Shaping Mantra Systems
Finnian Gerety | University of Oxford
Keynote lecture of the EurAsia Summer Academy Vienna Summer School on the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia: "Mantras Between Language, Ritual, and Materiality"
Seminarraum 1 des Institutes für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde | Zoom
Universitätscampus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.7, 1090 Wien
Finnian Gerety | University of Oxford
Keynote lecture of the EurAsia Summer Academy Vienna Summer School on the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia: "Mantras Between Language, Ritual, and Materiality"
Universitätscampus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.7, 1090 Wien
Beschreibung
The division of the sacred syllable "om" into the three sounds, a, u, and m is one of the most enduring ideas in mantra culture. Originating in Vedic thought, dividing OM offers a fertile framework for the development of mantra systems in premodern India. This talk shows how successive phases of religious thought adapted this idea to suit their own mantras and contexts, from Vedic recitation to Brahmanical dharma, from Purāṇic devotion to Yogic silence, from Śaiva resonance to Jaina karma. The division of the sacred syllable at once shapes and reflects the traditions which claim it: OM is the bedrock of mantra systems and their essential, most dynamic expression.
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Finnian M. Moore Gerety is Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford and co-Principal Investigator of the research project, MANTRAMS – “Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia,” funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council. He combines the study of Sanskrit texts and the history of religion to investigate how ritual, mantras, yoga, and meditation have shaped Hindu traditions of India from the late Bronze Age up through today. He is the author of This Whole World is OM: Mantra, Yoga, and the the Sacred Syllable in Early India (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), the first-ever monograph on OM, the preeminent sacred syllable of Indian religions. Finn received his PhD in South Asian Studies from Harvard; he has also been a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown.
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Veranstalter
Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde
Kontakt
Judith Starecek
Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde
4277 43501
istb(at)univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Mittwoch, 01. Juli 2026, 13:59
Letzte Änderung am Montag, 06. Juli 2026, 11:39