Böcker av David Shulman

Spoken by eighty million people, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil, emphasizing how its speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history.

This is the first book of the New Ecology of Expressive Modes in Early-Modern South India (NEEM Series), edited by David Shulman.Introspection and Insight explores the literature, music, and graphic arts of south India between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and focuses on their theoretical and philosophical foundations as well as the distinctive features that reveal a newly emergent concept of the individual self and novel models of the mind. This is contextualized as part of a wider civilizational shift throughout the southern regions of India, involving radical changes in taste and sensibility-signifying moments of major cultural innovation. Of these, music was, perhaps, the most eloquent vehicle for personal introspection at this time.

India's folklore and classical literature abound with stories of parents who sacrifice their children. In The Hungry God, David Shulman examines one set of such tales - Hindu texts that bear similarities to the biblical aqedah, the account of Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac. In all the stories that Shulman explores, the sacrifice proceeds from a divine command and has no utilitarian explanation or rationale. Both the biblical and Indian aqedah texts are central to their cultures: later texts resume the narrative, rework its premises, and develop its paradigmatic character so that it comes to function as a "root metaphor" for its civilization. Shulman traces this history by unraveling the cumulative and sometimes conflicting meanings of the Hindu aqedah texts. Three Hindu tales figure most prominently in The Hungry God. First, there is the South Indian story of Ciruttontar (Siriyala), who kills and cooks his son to feast the god Siva. Shulman traces the development of this story through the medieval Telugu sources, which are often openly hostile to both the god and his murderous devotee. He then turns to the story of Sunahsepa, nearly slaughtered by his cruel father. Shulman studies this most famous Indian tale of child sacrifice in both its ancient Vedic form and in later epic and mythological versions. The third tale is that of Suka, who learns yoga from his father and then - to his father's infinite grief - disappears into the Absolute. Throughout, Shulman is sensitive to the tones and overtones of each text. In his final chapter he contrasts the Hindu tales of child sacrifice and their counterparts in Hebrew and Greek. At the heart of The Hungry God lies a series of fundamentalquestions: Why does God make such horrific demands on those he loves? Why do his followers obey? Is the meeting between human beings and their God inherently pregnant with ultimate pain?

Kūṭiyāṭṭam, the only surviving live Sanskrit theatre in the world, was defined by UNESCO as 'a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity'. Full performances-almost always a single act taken from a multi-act Sanskrit play-range from 12 to 150 hours (in daily or nightly segments of several hours each) and display an aesthetic brilliance and dizzying complexity that are almost beyond description. Each such act constitutes an artistic whole with its own conceptual and thematic unity. The Rite of Seeing reflects the work of the Hebrew University Kūṭiyāṭṭam team and of our colleagues from Tübingen, Paris, Groningen, and elsewhere, over many years of annual pilgrimages to Kerala to watch and study this art in action. It offers interpretations of seven classical performances in the light of the actors' traditional handbooks (Āṭṭaprakāram), the Sanskrit base text, and the artists' oral commentary that emerged naturally in the course of many days of attentive viewing. The essays are accompanied by links to extended performance moments, so that readers can see with their own eyes something of what we have seen in Mūḻikkuḷam and Kiḷḷimaṅgalam. Interpretative essays of this kind, although plentiful in studies of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Chekhov, have never been attempted for Kūṭiyāṭṭam. The book is thus meant to introduce Kūṭiyāṭṭam to new audiences and to offer pathways for beginning to explore the riches of this unique and still vital tradition.

This book offers a groundbreaking cultural biography of Srinatha, arguably the most creative figure in the thousand-year history of Telugu literature. Their study, which includes extensive translations of Srinatha's major works, shows the poet's place in a great classical tradition in a moment of profound cultural transformation.

"There are always clients to please, rules to subvert, difficult tasks to perform, work to shirk, and upward mobility to seek.... Most people with work experience have encountered at least some version of exaggerated resumes, exploitative bosses...

From one of the leading figures in the Israeli peace movement comes a very personal handbook to keeping the fight going. When you're in a struggle that you lose day after day, but that you know has to be waged, how do you keep going? The lessons are drawn from Israel, but they're applicable for activists universally.

For decades, we've been shocked by images of violent clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The author takes the reader into the heart of the conflict. He, then, attempts to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong - and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might be brought back.

From the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the imagination came to be recognized in South Indian culture as the defining feature of human beings. Shulman elucidates the distinctiveness of South Indian theories of the imagination and shows how they differ radically from Western notions of reality and models of the mind.

A diary describing the experience of the author in Andhra Pradesh. It reflects on daily events - from explorations of crumbling temples to battles with ineradicable bugs to joyous dinners with friends. It also considers the ancient poetry and myths that remain such an inextricable part of life in contemporary India.