The Animal Question in South Asia

a Post-Modern Pañcatantra

Authors

  • Fabrizio M. Ferrari University of Chester Author
  • Thomas Dähnhardt University of Venice Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.5

Keywords:

Religion and Nature, animals, south asia, Pañcatantra

Author Biographies

  • Fabrizio M. Ferrari, University of Chester

    Fabrizio M. Ferrari was educated in Indology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and received his PhD from SOAS in 2005 for a study on popular Hinduism in West Bengal. He taught South Asian Religions and Religious Studies at SOAS and now, as a senior lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Chester, specialises in the study of popular Hinduism and folklore. He has published articles and book chapters on disease goddesses and healing rituals. His first book is on the Bauls of Bengal (Oltre il confine, dove la terra è rossa. Canti d’amore e d’estasi dei bāul del Bengala, Ariele, 2001), while his new work discusses the gājan festival of Bengal (Guilty Males and Proud Females. Negotiating Genders in a Bengali Festival, Seagull, 2010). He wrote the first monograph in English on the Italian anthropologist and historian of religion Ernesto de Martino (Ernesto de Martino on Religion. The Crisis and the Presence, Equinox, 2012) and has edited the volume on Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia: Disease, Possession and Healing (Routledge, 2011). His research is mainly directed towards the study of religious folklore in the frame of Marxist anthropology. His forthcoming book is Religion and Medicine in Hindu Folklore. The Goddess Śītalā and Ritual Healing in North India (Continuum, forthcoming 2014).

  • Thomas Dähnhardt, University of Venice

    Thomas Dähnhardt was educated in modern Indian languages (Hindi and Urdu) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and received his Ph.D. from the Department for Religious Studies at SOAS (University of London) in 1999 for a comparative study on the doctrines and methods taught by a Hindu offspring of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in nineteenth and early twentieth century Northern India. After working as a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OXCIS) he is currently teaching Hindi and Urdu literature in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Venice University (Italy). His chief areas of interest include the Indo-Islamic culture and the different phenomena of cross-cultural identity resulting from the numerous points of contact between Islam and Hinduism, especially in the field of Sufism, bhakti and devotional literature. He is the author of Change and Continuity in Indian Sufism: A Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Branch in the Hindu Environment (New Delhi: DK Publishing, 2002) and of several articles and book chapters on South Asian Sufism and Islamic literature (in Hindi and Urdu).

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Published

2013-10-08

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1-3 (2013)

Section

Guest Editorial

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

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How to Cite

Ferrari, F. M., & Dähnhardt, T. (2013). The Animal Question in South Asia: a Post-Modern Pañcatantra. Religions of South Asia, 7(1-3), 5-11. https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.5