On October 13th and 14th, L’Orientale University in Naples hosted the conference “Śaiva-Buddhist Encounters in Early Medieval East India”
The two-day conference well fitted into the scheme of the SAHA Project. It welcomed art historians and archeologists, a curatorial associate, and Indologists working on various aspects of East India, which mainly includes the regions of Bihar, Bengal and Orissa.
Two keynote speeches (Claudine Bautze-Picron and Birendranath Prasad) opened the floor on both days as a frame for the theme of the conference. While prof. Bautze-Picron explored the incorporation of images and styles from the Hindu pantheon in late Buddhist iconography, prof. Prasad examined the Buddhist response to the Śaiva surge in the Bihar region, attempting to trace an evolution pattern of Śaiva-Buddhist interactions.
We are grateful to have hosted such event at L’Orientale University, as this will give us the chance to open new horizons of research in the realm of material and textual cultures in early modern East India.
The event was organized by dr. Lucas den Boer (L’Orientale University) as part of the South Asian History and Archeology Project (SAHA), which is run at the same institution by Florinda De Simini and is funded by the Italian Ministry of Research.
You can find more details about the talks in the Book of Abstracts.
Moreover, on Saturday the participants went on a guided tour to Pompeii, a perfect ending for our “archeological” week.
