NIAS Literary Arts and Heritage Forum Presents

Hindu Deities & Sanskrit in Japan

Talk and Film Screening

by

Benoy K Behl

Adjunct Professor, NIAS

Tuesday, 24^th Nov 2020, 4.30 pm

Chairperson

Sharada Srinivasan, Professor, School of Humanities, NIAS

Click here to join the meeting

About the Lecture and Screening : The talk and film screening bring to light little known facets of artistic and cultural connections between India and Japan.  In an unprecedented effort, working with the help of fifty chief priests of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan, the speaker and film maker documented rarely-photographed deities and practices. Apart from identifying numerous deities of Hindu affiliations which are still worshipped in temples across Japan, fascinating linkages were observed such as the prevalence of the ‘homa’ or ‘havan’ in innumerable temples with chanting in Sanskrit.  The research was supported by a Fellowship of the Japan Foundation. The film ‘Indian Deities Worshipped in Japan’ was supported by the Ministry of External Affairs.

About the Speaker: Benoy Behl, art historian, photographer, film maker and author has undertaken pathbreaking documentation of the cultural heritage and monuments of Asia, particularly with respect to Indian connections, with over 53,000 photographs, a hundred documentaries and exhibitions in over 70 countries.  His series on Paintings of India and Sculptures of India of over 50 episodes have been screened on national television.  His pioneering documentation of the Ajanta murals, was reported in 2008 in National Geographic and is also a part of the Artic World Archive.