prof.Karel Werner Ph.D. - The thirty fith spalding symposium on Indian religions

The Thirty-Fifth Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions

In Honour of Professor Karel Werner’s Eighty-Fifth Birthday

March 26-28 2010 Harris Manchester College, the University of Oxford

For this special anniversary the founder of the Symposia, Professor Karel Werner, PhD, FRAS, who holds, in his retirement, an honorary position in the Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, University of London, assumed again after 25 years the task of convening the Symposium. The programme, which is chaired by Professor Werner, promises interesting glimpses into specialised topics of both Hindu and Buddhist traditions with one excursion into Jainism.

Karel Werner in His Own Words I was born in 1925 in Jemnice, an ancient but small town in South Moravia, Czechoslovakia, where I started my primary education. In 1933 my father, a ‘master baker cum confectioner’, had to close his business owing to the world economic crisis and we moved to Znojmo, a somewhat bigger town in South Moravia which was the seat of a selective eightyear high school known as Gymnasium. I started my Gymnasium studies (which included Latin) in 1936, but they were interrupted in the autumn of 1938 by the ‘Munich Agreement’ thrashed out, under Hitler’s threat of war, by Germany, Italy, France and Britain. As a result, the border areas of Czechoslovakia with some German population were incorporated into his Reich. Znojmo, with about 24% of Germans, was included, and we moved to Brno where I continued my studies even after the German occupation of the rest of the country and the outbreak of war (1939) until German restrictive measures meant that my final, so-called ‘maturity examination’, in 1944 could not take place. Instead I was allocated to work in a munitions factory, but by successfully faking a stomach ulcer I was assigned, being also a German speaker, to an office job. Already in my mid-teens I developed interest in philosophy and the study of religions, including those of Asia. Access to the German book market enabled me to buy relevant literature and I started also to learn Sanskrit from a textbook. There was a Czech textbook of Chinese available which I also tackled.

Immediately after the end of the war (May 1945) a refresher course was opened for students who had missed their exams during the war, and having succeeded in passing them after five months, I embarked on a four year course in philosophy and history (ending in the equivalent of an M.A. which was the qualification for the job of a teacher in a gymnasium) in the Masaryk University in Brno. Simultaneously, I carried on with Sanskrit, which was taught there as a part of IndoEuropean Comparative Philology, and privately with Chinese.

Soon, on the basis of home essays, I found myself included in an inner circle of the professor of philosophy with extra tuition. When he was nominated Rector of the University of Olomouc (which was founded in the 1560s, but cut down to a mere Theology College under Habsburg rule), with the task to reestablish it fully, he invited me to move with him.

Indology and Sinology were taught there by professors commuting from Prague and Comparative Philosophy was envisaged as soon as a suitable candidate could be found. I was encouraged to aim for it, but was

meanwhile appointed Assistant Lecturer in Sanskrit and Indian Civilisation (1947-49) and, after gaining my PhD, continued as Lecturer (1949-51), while forced also to teach a course in the history of the Ancient Near East. On top of this I was studying philosophical texts in Classical Chinese.

The communist putsch in February 1948 (masterminded by the Soviet Union) led to purges of staff in ideologically sensitive subjects. In the autumn of 1951 both Indology and Sinology were abolished in Olomouc. As I had not conformed to the Marxist ideology and resisted joining the communist party I was branded a reactionary and refused appointment in Prague University. As a result of publishing abroad I suffered further persecution by the communist regime and after interrogation by the secret police was forced into manual jobs in various fields, which included coal mines, gas works and tram driving (1951-67). During those years ‘in the wilderness’ I managed to found a Yoga Club, geared ostensibly to promoting physical and mental health, and held, under its cover, clandestine seminars on Indian religions and philosophy. I also circulated typescript copies of my translations of works on the subject (which included the Dhammapadam). When the communist grip relaxed to some extent, I was given a post as research officer in Oriental therapy in the Psychiatric Institute, Kromìøíž (1967-68). During the so-called Prague Spring I applied for reinstatement in the University which was refused. Not even under Dub ek’s regime of ‘communism with a human face’ could a non-communist teach ideologically sensitive subjects.

To avoid renewed persecution after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (21.8.1968), I emigrated to England and after a spell as a library assistant in Cambridge University Library and as a supervisor in Sanskrit in Churchill College, I was appointed the Spalding Lecturer in Indian Philosophy & Religion in the School of Oriental Studies, University of Durham (1969-1990). I regarded my specialisation in Indian Studies as having been enforced by circumstances. My desire, after emigration, had been to return to my original plan of engaging in comparative philosophy and I applied for a post in the Department of Philosophy East and West of the University of Hawaii, but there was no vacancy there at the time. So I thought I could start with a minor post and applied for a lectureship in logic advertised by Balliol College in Oxford. It was probably my full CV which prompted a reply that I deserved better than such a junior appointment, although nothing else was offered to me. My disappointment was alleviated when another letter from Oxford alerted me to the vacancy ‘as if tailored for me’ in Durham. Although the

deadline for applications had passed I was still granted an interview maybe there was sympathy for a refugee from the Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia.

There was no chance in Durham to expand into comparative philosophy, but there were compensations. I was free to shape my courses, apart from the obligatory general course in Indian Civilisation, and I based the honours course in Sanskrit on religious and philosophical texts, with an option of the history of Hinduism and Buddhism for joint honours. This proved attractive to students at the time of growth of higher education when many departments of theology and religious studies were creating lectureships in Indian religions. The latter trend was also at the root of the idea to start the annual Symposia, and the rest is history, as they say.

Adult education and extramural activities of university departments were flourishing at the time and soon I found myself giving lectures and long-term seminars on Indian religions in the Durham County Residential College for Adult Education, for Leeds University Adult Education Centre in Middlesborough, and providing a course on ‘Indian Philosophy and Yoga’ for the Durham University Extramural Department in Peterlee which included even Hatha Yoga tuition and ran for five years.

I wonder whether the younger generation of scholars can imagine the invigorating sense of freedom someone like me felt after leaving the claustrophobic confinement under the oppressive regime in a country behind the Iron Curtain. Participation in international conferences, sabbatical leaves in India and Sri Lanka with guest professorships in their universities (the Peradeniya University in Kandy, Karnataka State University in Dharwar; University of Poona and Benares Hindu University, 1975-76) and vacation travel to other Asian countries in which Buddhism had found a footing were previously undreamt of experiences. The pleasant period of twenty-one years in Durham had a less appealing ending, though. Three years before my retirement, measures to save money were being introduced which resulted eventually in the abolishing of the Durham School of Oriental Studies. I was pressured to take early retirement with financial inducements, which I refused, but the intake of undergraduates was stopped and I had only a couple of postgraduates to finish tutoring. However, the free time enabled me to take a few assignments as guest lecturer for Swan Hellenic artistic tours to India, Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia, this time in full luxury in contrast with my earlier individual travels on a shoestring.

My retirement coincided with the collapse of communism in Europe and I was recruited to help in academic work in my native country, first as a correspondent member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Arts (1991-93) and then as a cofounder of the Department of the Study of Religions in the Masaryk University in Brno for which I designed courses on Oriental religions and where I was active as visiting professor (1993-98). Appointment as an honorary professorial research associate in the Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, University of London, greatly facilitated my work in preparing several books on Asian religious traditions in Czech, thus contributing to filling the gap created during communist rule. It has further enabled me to continue my research work, to participate actively (under a Spalding grant) in the 2005 IAHR conference in Tokyo and to make a comeback at the present Symposium.

Introduction

by Anna King I feel privileged and honoured to have followed in the footsteps of Karel Werner as convenor and chair of the Spalding Symposium. Karel, who I first met wearing reindeer antlers at a SOAS Christmas dinner, launched the Symposium in Cambridge in 1975. It has for more than four decades provided for researchers and students of Indian Religions from many disciplines and theoretical perspectives a platform from which to address an intensely knowledgeable, but warmly supportive audience.

My earliest memories of the Spalding Symposium are of the Cherwell Centre, 14-16 Norham Gardens. The Cherwell Centre then was run by sisters of The Society of the Holy Child Jesus, an international community of Catholic women religious.

The sisters offered ‘Christ-centred hospitality in an atmosphere of freedom and peace,’ and I have since discovered that the constitutions of The Society of the Holy Child Jesus are founded on those of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I recall the bemused faces of eminent speakers as they waited while Sisters Wendy, Carolyn or one of the other sisters warned us about the offences of placing a coffee cup on the piano or leaving a window unlocked. Scanning past tariffs I see that guests were asked to supply their own soap and towels unless they came from abroad when there was a small service charge. At that time the Symposium was an informal relaxed conference chaired by Peter (Connolly) with great bonhomie and humour. Saturday afternoon, a time when the UK Association for Buddhist Studies held their annual committee meeting, provided an opportunity for many participants to escape to Blackwell’s. Saturday evening was often spent at the Eagle and Child (Bird and Baby) where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are said to have discussed Lewis' Narnia books and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I remember the general murmur of bibulous agreement that followed Dr Helen Waterhouse’s proclamation that she had discovered the delights of academic life only after being introduced to the delights of conferencing.

The Symposium at that time was a kindly refuge where students could find inspiration and encouragement from established scholars like Ninian Smart, Richard Gombrich, Lance Cousins, Nick Allen, Peggy Morgan and David Smith.

When the Trustees, to everyone’s sorrow, decided to close the Cherwell Centre, I became responsible for finding a suitable venue. It is not easy to find Colleges prepared to host small conferences in Oxford. Eventually we chose Regent’s Park College, a College in the heart of Oxford and, as a Baptist foundation, one very much connected with the study of religions. The Angus Library and Archive holds many volumes and documents which are critical to the understanding of mission in India.

I remember the wonderful food and hospitality, but also the fact that the conference organiser and staff seemed to pack up at 5.00 pm on Fridays and disappear for the weekend leaving in their place one member of staff with a variety of avatara and aprons. She popped up in turn as receptionist, inspired cook, bar tender and housekeeper.

I also remember the problems of getting in and out of the College. We were issued with several plastic keys (a novelty at the time) – one for outside and two for inside. Those who came late to the Conference found the doors firmly closed and no amount of banging could summon help.

I remember Dr Theodore Gabriel from Cheltenham and Gloucester University arriving late one Friday night. Finally his shouts alerted attention. A small group of us stole through the College at 2.00 am trying to locate his room, and startling half-asleep occupants or landing in a broom cupboard. Theodore’s raffish fedora, raincoat, dark glasses and suitcase and Ron Geaves’ Indiana Jones hat threw strange shadows in the twisting passages, recalling the exploits of Inspector Morse and the Pink Panther.

The next evening is equally memorable. Diana Eck, our guest speaker, had very carefully loaded her slides into a Regent’s Park carousel and inserted it into a projector which later we noticed was marked as ‘faulty’ in very small letters. Immediately she began to use the projector the slides cascaded into the air and then collapsed in an unregulated heap.

Diana, who was speaking about the Goddess Ganga, paused momentarily and then, like her subject, flowed on. The Principal himself went out on Sunday morning and bought a new slide projector.

Regent’s Park was seen to be the ideal venue by many competing large American conferences, so we again became homeless. This time we sought refuge in Harris Manchester College which again had strong associations with Religious Studies, being founded in Manchester in 1786

by English Presbyterians. It is one of a long line of dissenting academies established after the Restoration to provide higher education for Nonconformists who were debarred from the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge by religious tests. The College has, as it claims, a wonderful late-Victorian baronial-style Hall and the evening dinners by candlelight were particularly atmospheric. It was there that we reinvented the ancient custom of drinking a toast to the founder. Alex McKay proposed our first toast. In 2009 Dermot had the idea of settling the Symposium in his old College, Merton. Founded in 1264, Merton College offered a setting which accorded well with our overseas visitors’ vision of what an Oxford conference venue should be. However, members of the Committee, mindful of the problems that Merton might pose for the disabled, decided to return to Harris Manchester to honour Professor Karel Werner.

If I look back at some of the programmes of the earlier Symposia I realise how generous we were to our speakers. Speakers were often given an hour and a half to develop their argument, though compared to some conferences the Symposia still allow for extended presentation and debate. The earliest programme I have seen dates from 1990. Some of the speakers I do not know but others remain familiar. The programmes of succeeding Symposia read like a roll call of all the scholars who have worked in the field of Indian Studies since 1978, and it is they who have given the Symposium its particular flavour of friendliness and mild eccentricity. In 1995 for example speakers included Karel Werner, Ninian Smart, Julius Lipner, Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Lynn and John Hinnells. Later speakers include Ursula King, Ian Reader, Geoffrey Samuel, Alexis Sanderson, Elizabeth De Michaelis, Lynn Foulston, Kathleen Taylor, Roger Ballard, Véronique Altglas, Fabrizio M. Ferrari, David Smith, Eleanor Nesbitt, Hiroko Kawanami, Louise Child, Brian Black, Simon Brodbeck, Peter Flügel, Sue Hamilton, Paul Fuller, David Webster, Will Tuladhar-Douglas and Damien Keown.

When Peter (Connolly) tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to be the next Convenor I was excited but hesitant. I wondered what I could bring to the Spalding. The number of conferences was growing larger - many far better funded than ours – and the Symposium was vulnerable to the rising costs of College accommodation. Yet many of us thought that the informal clubbable, pubbable aspect of the Spalding was unique. I decided

that the way forward was to appeal to a younger generation of scholars and go global. I therefore began to invite visiting speakers like Klaus Klostermaier (2000) whose paper on ‘Hinduism, Hindutva and Hindu Dharma’ aroused unusually heated (even polemical) debate from the floor. After Klaus came notable contributors who included Diana Eck, Harvard (2001) Arvind Mandair, Hofstra University, New York (2002), Rachel McDermott, Barnard (2002), Madhu Kishwar (University of Delhi/founding editor of ‘Manushi’) (2004), Alleyn Diesel and Pratap Kumar, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2005), Jeffrey Kripal, Rice University (2006), Christopher Helland, Dalhousie University (2006), Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University, Chicago (2007) and Ruth Vanita, University of Montana (2009). Encouraged by the Spalding Trust we have also made a very deliberate attempt to subsidise scholars from the Indian sub-continent and diaspora.

I introduced new features – some of which were surprisingly controversial. The Symposium programme now continues non-stop throughout Saturday and some delegates remain nostalgic for their excursions to Blackwell’s and the Ashmolean.

We have also reintroduced the tradition of having two or three doctoral students give shorter papers, and in 1998 we instituted the Spalding Symposium Prize, an award of £250 for the best student paper. We are hugely proud of ‘RoSA’ (‘Religions of South Asia’) which is published by Equinox and appears twice yearly. ‘RoSA’ (felicitously named by Professor Richard Gombrich) has grown out of the Spalding Symposium and, while drawing on papers from the annual Symposia, increasingly accepts articles from scholars from across the world.

Selected papers from the 2010 Symposium will be published in a special edition of ‘RoSA’, thus continuing a long established practice. Collected papers include Perspectives on Indian Religion. Papers in Honour of Karel Werner, edited by Peter Connolly (Bibliotheca Indo-Budhica No. 30), Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi 1986; The Yogi and the Mystic.

Studies in Indian and Comparative Mysticism, edited by Karel Werner, Curzon, 1989; Symbols in Art and Religion. The Indian and the Comparative Perspectives, edited by Karel Werner, Curzon, 1990; Love Divine: Studies in Bhakti and Devotional Mysticism, edited by Karel Werner, Curzon, 1993; Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti. Papers from the Annual Spalding Symposium on Indian

Religions, edited by Peter Connolly and Sue Hamilton, Luzac Oriental, 1997.

The latest volume, Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal, has an eccentric and at times painful history. When I became convenor, Chris Aslet pushed towards me a bundle of papers he had collected from previous Symposia. They included an unpublished paper of Ninian Smart. Luzac Oriental had apparently agreed to publish them, but as far as I knew the firm had ceased publishing, and all that remained was a rich archive. I went up to London, searching for clues, and learnt that 46, Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum, had been a bookshop since at least 1890, when the firm of Luzac & Co., founded in Holland by Jean Luzac in the early 18th century, selling and publishing books about the Middle and Far East, moved to London. The present owners gave me a contact number for a Welsh publisher who, they said, had bought the rights to Luzac. The publisher, an admirer of Robert Fiske, was engagingly enthusiastic when I phoned him and asked me to meet him at Waterloo Station. He would be wearing a red rose, carrying The Times and be accompanied by his associate, a very tall (and as it turned out, very hungry) ex-policeman. Feeling like a less than intrepid Harry Potter I met him by platform 7. The story then becomes too bizarre to recount here, but somewhat later the wonderful Janet Joyce of Equinox rescued me and actually published the volume under the title Indian Religions: Renaissance and Renewal (2007).

My experience of convening the Symposium has shown me that Peter’s breezy assurance that it wouldn’t take up much time is a comforting but implausible myth. However, it has proved enormously satisfying, not least because it has enabled me to work with some wonderful colleagues.

When I became convenor Christopher Aslet and I between us ran the Symposium unaided. Chris had been Treasurer for many years. Kind, gentle and unassuming, he was an anchor in a storm. Days before each Symposium I would ring him up (he refused to use email or the internet) with a litany of concerns. Numbers were down. A speaker had withdrawn. Someone had gone off to Nepal. In a slow patient voice Chris would reassure me that all would be well. To anyone (particularly students) in genuine need, Chris was a beneficent and generous treasurer.

After some years we decided that what the Symposium really required was a strong steering committee. Dermot Killingley has been a tireless

colleague. His scholarly and editorial skills have been invaluable in all our work for the Spalding Symposium and for RoSA. Lynn Foulston, despite her many responsibilities as programme leader for Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Wales, Newport, has contributed enormously to the Symposium in her role as Secretary and Reviews Editor of ‘RoSA’. Finally I would like to pay tribute to the newest members of the committee – Catherine Robinson, Mahinda Deegalle and Nick Swann. Nick who has taken on the task of Treasurer has perhaps now the hardest role of all and we are most grateful for his expertise.

In conclusion I would like to congratulate Professor Karel Werner on his 85th birthday and to wish him many years of happy retirement. I hope that the Spalding Symposium will continue to flourish as a testament to his life and work.

Tributes and Memories Peter Harvey recalls: I remember that Karel was very kind and helpful to me as a young scholar, publishing papers I had given at the symposium in books of symposium papers that he edited. He was also very helpful in encouraging Curzon to publish a version of my Ph.D thesis, which came out in 1995 as The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism.

The meetings of the Symposium at the Cherwell Centre always seem to have been when the magnolia bushes were in flower - excellent papers, good discussions, conviviality and a beautiful time of year.

I remember too that Karel said he found Buddhist insight meditation most helpful and deepest when he was being interrogated by the Communist authorities in Czechoslovakia. His views on Communism were later that if people wanted to behave like ants, they might be reborn as ants!

David Smith recalls: I well remember one of the early Symposia on Indian religions that Karel Werner organised in Durham. It was my first introduction to his distinctive contribution to the study of Hinduism and Buddhism: elegant, sharp, discriminating, insightful.

For many years he had a close connection with the Religious Studies Department at Lancaster, often coming over as external examiner at various levels, and often, he says, stopping off for a swim in a lake or river en route from Durham. This combination of physical and intellectual energy is part of the unique contribution he has made over several decades to the teaching and understanding of Eastern religions.

Two or three generations of us have benefited from the highly enjoyable stimulus of the Symposia and I among many others am greatly indebted to the Founder.

Dermot Killingley recalls: Part of Karel Werner’s intention in setting up an annual Symposium on Indian Religions was to bring together scholars who in many cases are isolated in different institutions, while some work on the subject without any institutional support. In my own work in the Department of Religious Studies, Newcastle University, I was fortunate in having Karel as a colleague just sixteen miles to the south in Durham. Like me, he was the only Indologist in his university, although at that time there were Arabic and Chinese studies there as well, and a museum of Indian art.

His post, supported by the Spalding Trust, had a tradition of teaching behind it, and the library was well stocked, from rare nineteenth-century editions of Sanskrit and Bengali texts to recent studies, from India and Western countries, which Karel had persuaded the librarian to acquire.

There were also continuous runs of leading journals of Indian and Asian studies. In making my own book recommendations to Newcastle University library, I avoided duplicating the Durham stock, except for what was needed for undergraduates, so that the two neighbouring libraries could complement each other. His interests in yoga and mysticism to some extent complemented mine in Sanskrit texts and their modern reinterpretation. Peter Harvey’s work on Buddhism in Sunderland Poly, later Sunderland University, completed a roughly equilateral triangle of South Asian studies on the Tyne and Wear, achieved without the dubious benefit of strategic planning.

I missed the first Spalding Symposium, in Cambridge in 1975, but attended the second in London, the third in Durham, and the fourth in Mansfield College, Oxford, just across the road from Harris Manchester, the venue for the 35th Symposium. Having the Symposia in different places each year meant that it was convenient for different people each time—for me in the case of Durham—but inconvenient for others. London is accessible from most parts of the country, but accommodation there tends to be cramped as well as expensive. It was easier for most people, and especially for the organisers, when we were able to meet each spring at the Cherwell Centre among the gardens of North Oxford. Being in a converted pair of Victorian houses, with steps up to the front door, it was

not well adapted for disabled access, but that did not seem to be a problem, either because we were not required to provide it in those days, or because we were all more mobile. The need to keep going up and down steps or flights of stairs, the do-it-yourself tea bar, and clearing your room on Sunday morning were as much an annual feature of those busy weekends as the cooing of pigeons, the spring blossom, the Saturday afternoon in Blackwell’s or the presence and voice of Karel himself. It was sad news for us when the dwindling order of nuns who ran the place had to close it down.

Since then we have tried several places in Oxford. One of our prime considerations is to keep costs down, especially for people without salaries and those coming from South Asia or other countries. This is complicated by the need to allow local residents, and their guests, to save money by attending without using overnight accommodation, while charging them an appropriate amount for meals and refreshments, and a share of the other costs of the Symposium. As Karel intended, it still runs on a minimum of money and administration, and a maximum of goodwill, and it still welcomes participants other than professional scholars. A distinctive feature of the Symposia is the length of time devoted to the presentation and discussion of each paper: usually over an hour. Another feature is the provision for papers by research students, usually in shorter time slots.

The Spalding Symposium depends on a great variety of work: planning the conferences, finding speakers, keeping a mailing list, sending publicity, finding and booking a venue, getting payments from participants, paying the bills, subsidising visitors from overseas, and applying to the Spalding Trust for grants. This is what goes on through the year between Symposia; but when the Symposium itself meets, there are sessions to chair, details to be arranged with the staff of the venue, and participants to be ushered and checked against lists. That Karel did all this himself for the first ten years, whereas it is now done by a committee, is a measure of his capacity for work, and perhaps also of the readiness of everyone else to leave it all to someone who has shown himself willing and able. Such a person is hard to replace; it took the best part of two years, from his announcement in 1982 of his intention to hand over the work, to find someone to take it over. Technology now makes much of the work quicker, but increased demands on everyone’s time and money, and tighter control of institutional budgets, have made it harder, while the enhanced profile of the study of South Asian religion, which the

Spalding Symposia have helped to promote, means that potential participants have many more conferences from which to choose. It is no longer possible to run the Symposia as casually as when they first began.

Another task which Karel took on was to edit a series of books. Having successfully assigned themes to particular Symposia, starting with mysticism in 1979, he was able to assemble papers from them into books with appropriate titles. Sometimes this involved including papers only marginal to the theme; sometimes papers were added which fitted the theme though they had not been given at the themed Symposium. To ensure the coherence of each book, Karel gave it not only a preface but a common list of abbreviations and a glossary. The first three were published as the Durham Oriental Series, since Karel compiled them in the then School of Oriental Studies in Durham University, and with its support. However, as he explains in the preface to the third of them (Love Divine: Studies in Bhakti and Devotional Mysticism, 1993), the university took his retirement as an opportunity to close his post. In that preface he suggests that the series may continue under the same name, and even hints that this might one day prompt the university to restore Indology.

But it was not to be: the later volumes which grew out of the Symposia have not been published as a series. However, it is unlikely that the continuation of the series would have shamed the university into putting its money where its name was. In 2007, as a result of Anna King’s initiative, and with Karel’s valuable advice and encouragement, the periodical Religions of South Asia (RoSA) was launched, partly but by no means exclusively publishing articles based on papers given at the Symposia.

A Brief History of the Spalding Symposia

Writing the preface to a collection of papers from the Spalding Symposia, Karel Werner related how he came to convene the first Symposium.

While many of us may now recall with some nostalgia the period of expansion in Higher Education that led to new lectureships in Indian religions and thus prompted this initiative, it remains true that those working in this field often do so as sole specialists in multi-disciplinary departments or course teams. For this reason, today as in 1975, there is a need for academics to come together with colleagues from across the country (and farther afield) to share ideas and, importantly, enjoy each other’s company.

The first Symposium was held in Selwyn College, Cambridge, in March 1975 and this and the subsequent nine Symposia were organised by the founder before he handed over the responsibility to an organising committee. Those early years set the tone for later Symposia in a number of ways. After being held in London, Durham, Oxford and Manchester following the inaugural meeting in Cambridge, the Sixth Symposium was held at the Cherwell Centre which was to be the Symposia’s home for many years and is remembered by long-time attendees with considerable affection. The early Symposia also saw an effort to include a balance of papers on Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as papers on Sikhism and Jainism, a practice that still guides the planning of programmes.

Similarly, the concern for balance leading to a mixture of historical and contemporary themes continues to characterise the Symposia. Two particularly valuable features have their origins under the founder’s tenure. These are the invitation of Indian speakers whose presence enriches and recontextualises discussions and the involvement of research students who have the opportunity to present their work in a relaxed, if scholarly, atmosphere.

Looking back, it is clear that we have much for which to thank the founder of the Spalding Symposia. They have a distinctive rationale, position and ethos – providing a space for academic debate about Indian religions, a space cherished even in the world of instant electronic communication, sufficiently general in scope to permit of fruitful connections between specialised research on different aspects of Indian

religions and with a diverse range of participants who enjoy its convivial spirit.

This is our opportunity to pay tribute to Karel Werner in honour of whose eighty-fifth birthday the Thirty-Fifth Spalding Symposium is held.

Thank you and happy birthday!

Catherine Robinson (on behalf of the Organising Committee)

The Spalding Symposia

The Spalding Symposium is the premier forum for regular scholarly interchange on Indological research, with special reference to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, in the United Kingdom. It encourages participation and contributions not only from senior scholars, but equally importantly, from younger researchers (including doctoral candidates) who can test their ideas with their peers and seniors, and so advance their careers and subject areas. Presentations at the Symposium have also resulted in a stream of publications during the period of the Symposium's existence, in book and article form, which has immeasurably enriched the domain of Indological research not only in the UK but also internationally. As such the Spalding Symposium has become an indispensable forum and tool for Indological studies.

We are all profoundly indebted to Professor Karel Werner for his initiative and vision in founding the Spalding Symposium. Long may it continue its invaluable work.

Julius Lipner Trustee, Spalding Trusts