The IJTS in Print and Kindle
After 19 years of online issues of the International Journal of Tantric Studies (IJTS), I am happy to announce that we are starting publication of the journal via print on demand, and Kindle. The new formats will be available for purchase via Amazon soon: we will initially re-publish the first issue of the IJTS, and then proceed to make all past issues available in both paper and Kindle formats.
I want to thank here all the editors who throughout the years contributed to make this journal a valued contribution to the academic community: first of all our Managing Editor, Michael Witzel, and our Technical Editor, Ludovico Magnocavallo; and Roberto Donatoni (who left his body in March 2012), Minoru Hara, David N. Lorenzen, Max Nihom, Benjamin Prejado, Michael Rabe (who left his body in March 2012, too), Debabrata Sensharma, Karel van Kooij. I also want to thank our contributors: Dominique Boubouleix, Cathy Cantwell, Alessandro Cisilin, John R. Dupuche, Peter Flügel, John Robert Gardner, Terence M. Hays, Monika Horstmann, Ludovico Magnocavallo, Paolo Magnone, Derick Miller, Gianluca Pastori, Michael Rabe, Stuart R. Sarbacker, Debabrata Sensharma, Hugh B. Urban, Piero Verni, Michael Witzel.
The first paper in this issue is “The Emergence of the Nāthyogī Order in the Light of Vernacular Sources”, by Monika Horstmann (a.k.a. Monika Boehm-Tettelbach). Mainly on the basis of Sanskrit sources, the consolidation of the Nāthyogīs’ tradition into the Nāth sampradāya, a religious order that came to express its identity also by a distinct set of sectarian marks, has been tentatively dated around the eighteenth century. Vernacular sources allow for pushing back to at least the beginning of the sixteenth century the emergence of those marks, as well as the existence of branches of what from some point in history would constitute the Nāth sampradāya.
Prof. Horstmann retired as Head of the Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University (Germany). Her research focuses on early modern north Indian literatures and religious movements and on the interface between religion and politics. Her most recent publications include the books Der Zusammenhang der Welt (2009), Jaipur 1778: The Making of a King (2013), and a volume she co-edited with Heidi R. M. Pauwels, Indian Satire in the Period of First Modernity (2012).
The second paper in this issue is “India Elections 2014: The End of «Caste and Politics»?” by Alessandro Cisilin. This paper analyzes the correlation between caste and voting behavior. Cisilin attempts to demonstrate that, like in most democracies, basic material aspects such as poverty and inequality, and not the continuing intellectual discourse on castes are the deciding factor in India’s political process.
Dr. Cisilin is currently a journalist working for the Italian radio news agency Area. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). He has written scientific articles for Cambridge University Press, L'Harmattan, Franco Angeli, Feltrinelli. He collaborates to newspapers such as Il Fatto Quotidiano and the monthly Galatea European Magazine. He recently published the paper “Deconstructing Social Media in India” in the Journal of South Asia Women Studies.