As the Pāṇḍava brothers move through the forest in the third book of the Mahābhārata, they hear stories of fantastic transformations and journeys: a band of gods all masked as the same prince, dice that become thieving birds, a sage turned into a hunted deer, a woman who traverses Yama’s realm. These tales recast and elucidate the condit…[Read more]

Syllabus for a level 2 course on Health, Healing and Religion: Comparative Views. To be taught online Fall 2020.
Please contact me if you want more details of the online content (there are 4 short videos per module, plus other resources)

Syllabus for a level 2 course on Health, Healing and Religion: Comparative Views. To be taught online Fall 2020.
Please contact me if you want more details of the online content (there are 4 short videos per module, plus other resources)

Interview with Martha Hennessy, the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, on her life, her anti-nuclear and peace activism, and ongoing trial as part of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

Can the Indian manuscript and manuscript library be art? In what follows, I reflect on this question by examining a set of photographs I created for an art project called Manuscriptistan. I explain what it has meant for me to aestheticise Indian manuscript libraries and manuscripts, and I offer some insights about why it is important for scholars…[Read more]

Review of a collection of papers on variation in historical writing systems. The review focuses particularly on chapters on Linear B, Anatolian alphabets, and Hittite cuneiform.

This is an Urdu translation of the work “Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law and Non-Muslims”

In this paper, a new method for multiple sequence alignment in historical linguistics is presented. The algorithm is based on the traditional framework of progressive multiple sequence alignment (cf. Durbin et al. 2002:143-149) whose shortcomings are further enhanced by (1) a sound class representation of phonetic sequences (cf. Dolgopolsky 1986,…[Read more]

Through an experiment on a Western Kho-Bwa linguistic dataset, Timotheus A. Bodt and Johann-Mattis List provide evidence for the regularity of sound change.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein shows us how to use the Hebrew language as a model for understanding the differences between similar words

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein shows us how to use the Hebrew language as a model for understanding the differences between similar words

I was intrigued by the title of this book. Finally, I thought, the Western academia has come to terms with the incorporeality of the individual soul as presented in Indian philosophy. Richard Swinburne’s introduction dispelled my delusions. He proposes that individuals are not bodies but are souls and implies that these souls have properties and t…[Read more]

Zusammenfassung – Prä-Astronautik oder Paläo-SETI präsentiert sich als grenzwissenschafliche Forschung über außerirdische Einflussnahme auf die menschliche Entwicklung. Sie beansprucht für sich, Anomalien in der Geschichte besser zu erklären als die einschlägigen Wissenschafen wie z. B. die Archäologie oder Indologie. Die Schrifen Erich von Dä…[Read more]

Ancient astronaut speculation (also called paleo-SETI), often labeled pseudoscience or modern myth, still awaits in-depth research. Focusing on Erich von Däniken and reconstructing his views on god and cosmology from scattered statements throughout his books, this article analyzes his attitudes toward science and religion as well as his concepts…[Read more]

Inhaltsverzeichnis, Einleitung und Literaturverzeichnis meiner Dissertation // table of contents, introduction and literature sections of my PhD.
https://www.lit-verlag.de/publikationen/psychologie/71842/g-ouml-tter-astronauten

Description of Paleo-SETI (ancient astronaut/ ancient alien narratives and theories) as a field of anomalistic inquiry, providing short summaries of its history, basic assumptions, methods, and problems

Throughout this book, Hernández Sandoval emphasizes the schism between the leadership of different Catholic parishes that supported conservative, anti-communist, and even military governments, and the missionaries who worked directly among the citizenry and who defied prevailing structural and political restraints and at times participated…[Read more]

Mount Putuo, the Chinese Potalaka, is located in the Zhoushan archipelago not far off the coast from Ningbo. The abode of Avalokiteğvara/Guanyin was not only a popular pilgrimage site, but also played a strategic role for the naval control of the archipelago, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In late imperial China, a number of military…[Read more]