Dr Bihani Sarkar FHEA
Lecturer in Comparative Non-Western ThoughtProfile
I am a historian of early Indian politics, religions and literature (poetry and drama) between the 2nd and the 15th centuries CE. I work mainly with classical Sanskrit and some Middle Indic (Prakrit) sources. I also draw generously from Bengali, my mother tongue. I have taught and have research interests across Indian philosophy and religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and South Asian Islam. My current research and teaching interests include the Goddess in Indian religion; Sanskrit poetry and drama; classical Indian aesthetics; North Indian classical music; comparative literary theory; gender, transgression and power in early Indian literature and religions; sacred narrative and history; madness, knowledge and kingship.
My publications span the history of the Śākta (goddess-centric) traditions, their metaphysics, their relationship to power, their role in the growth of the state and kingship and, most recently, on Śākta epigraphy. I have also published on histories of classical Indian literary genres, aesthetics, and emotions.
My first book Heroic Shāktism: the cult of Durgā in ancient Indian kingship (OUP 2017) delved into the history of the cult of the Great Goddess just after the end of the Gupta empire, and its interaction with local cults and the constitution of early kingdoms, using scriptural, liturgical, mythological, literary and epigraphical sources (see here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/heroic-shktism-9780197266106?cc=gb&lang=en&).
My second book Classical Sanskrit Tragedy published in 2021 (see here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/classical-sanskrit-tragedy-9781788311113/) is a response to ideas of tragedy. Through a close literary analysis of the tragic middle in five of the celebrated poet Kālidāsa’s works, the book demonstrates the importance of tragic identity for classical Indian poetry and drama in the early centuries of the common era. These depictions from the Indian literary sphere, by their particular function and interest in the phenomenology of grief, challenge and reshape in a wholly new way our received understanding of tragedy.
I am working on my third book which reinterprets several heroines from across classical Sanskrit poetry as bold and enterprising models of courage, arguing for an alternative reading of subjectivity.
Career Details
Before joining Lancaster I was Departmental Lecturer in Sanskrit at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford responsible for the duties of the Boden Professor of Sanskrit. Before that I taught Indian Religions at the University of Leeds and the University of Winchester. Between 2014 and 2017 I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oriental Institute University of Oxford, and between 2012 and 2014 I was Nachwuchsinitiave Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Hamburg, Germany.
I was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in May 2023
I hold a First Class BA (Hons) degree in English Language and Literature from St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. I then studed Sanskrit through an MPhil in Classical Indian Religions at the University of Oxford and continued with a doctorate, both under the supervision of Alexis Sanderson, former Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, All Souls College.
Current Teaching
PHIL100 (Block on Indian Metaphysics)
PPR 249 Religion and Politics in South Asia: the Power of the Past (Michaelmas 2023)
PPR 371 Wild Asian Goddesses: Power and Transgression in South and South East Asia (Lent 2024)
PPR 365 Religion and the State (Michaelmas 2023, two weeks on South Asia)
PhD Supervision Interests
am open to supervising students working on literature and religion, comparative literature, goddess traditions in South and South East Asia, early South Asian poetry and drama, especially classical Sanskrit poetry and aesthetics, literary cultures, politics, and religious history.
Wild Women and Goddesses in Classical Sanskrit Poetry: A Subversive Reading of Early Indian Heroines
01/10/2023 → 31/05/2025
Research
The Devīpurāṇa and the Rise of the Goddess in Indian History: Text, Culture and Female Persona in Ancient India
01/10/2020 → …
Research
Why should you study Global Religions at university?
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Consciousness, Love and the Tragic Middle in the Śakuntalā
Invited talk
Aśoka and Buddhist kingship: an alternative ‘empire’?
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Two-Part Conversation on Vedic Canonical Traditions (Part 1) and the Goddess in South Asia (Part 2)
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Durgā and Kālī: Reflections on a Common Origin
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Lava on Jewelled Floors: counter-metaphors of doing and desiring women in classical Sanskrit poetry’
Invited talk
’But this is inappropriate (na tu sadṛśam idam)’: How improper is the Goddess according to the Caṇḍīśataka
Invited talk
Between cosmology and society: the Sarāhan Praśasti and its ideation of gender
Invited talk
Proving Piety: the history of medieval Śākta devotion in the light of Indian inscriptions’
Invited talk
History of Medieval India from 600 AD
Invited talk
Indo-Greeks, Śakas, Kṣatrapas, Kushans: Conquest or Cultural osmosis in the Indian middle ages?
Invited talk
Taking over Skanda: Religious Appropriation and political transformation in the worship of Durgā (c. 7th century CE)
Invited talk
The Tragic Middle in Kālidāsa
Invited talk
Classical Sanskrit tragedy and the politics of Looking
Invited talk
On Reflection and Lamentation in Kālidāsa: the Rativilāpa and the Ajavilāpa
Invited talk
On Broken Idylls and Mourning in classical Sanskrit Poetry and Drama
Invited talk
On heroic Śāktism and the cult of the Goddess in classical India (c. 4th–7th centuries CE)
Invited talk
Heroic Shāktism: the cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship
Invited talk
Traveling Tantrics and Belligerent Brahmins: the Śivarājyābhiṣekakalpataru and Śivāji's Tantric consecration
Invited talk
Conceptions of the salon in mediaeval Indian literary theory,
Invited talk
Toward a History of the Navarātra
Invited talk
She Inspires National Culture Champion 2022
Prize (including medals and awards)
Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Election to learned society
FHEA
Prize (including medals and awards)
- Ethics Values and Policy Initiative