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 eight-
year 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 Indo-
European 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 re-
introduced 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
85 birthday and to wish him many years of happy retirement. I hopeth
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