Post by Nirajan Kafle, team member of the Śivadharma Project since June 2019
My work primarily focuses on the study of the Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda in its historical context. The Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda, ‘the dialogue between Umā and Maheśvara’, is part of a textual cluster of Śaiva texts written in Sanskrit under anonymous authorship. The Śivadharma texts comprise eight or nine books that are transmitted in a single codex in Nepal. The Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda is the first text in the sequence of the Śivadharma texts that does not only focus on Śaiva teachings but also includes explicit Vaiṣṇava theology in it. For example, its final chapter (22) topicalizes the ten avatāras of Viṣṇu.
During my study of the Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda, I will establish its relation to the Uttarottarasaṃvāda ‘the ultimate dialogue’, which is one of the ‘Śivadharma texts’ that was transmitted right after the Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda. In this connection I will study and compare the Umāmāheśvarasaṃvāda of the Mahābhārata to establish historical the connection between these texts. Finally, during my research in the Śivadharma project, I will try to answer some of the fundamental questions such as 1. Why were these texts composed and for whom? What kind of religious and social milieu do these texts reflect? How do these texts contribute to our understanding of South Asian religious practices during early mediaeval period?