Next IKS lecture at IIT Gandhinagar will decode the practice of sacred mapping in pre-colonial Indian literature

Gandhinagar: As a part of the lecture series under the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) elective course, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) is going to hold a lecture, ‘Sacred mapping and Meaning-making in pre-colonial Indian literature’. Research scholar Ms Arya Adityan will deliver this talk on March 17, 2022, from 5:05 to 6 pm (IST).

Ms Arya Adityan is an alumna of IITGN’s MA program in Society and Culture. She is currently pursuing her PhD in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. Her research focuses on religious and cultural traditions of South Asia, specialising in Hinduism, sacred space and landscape, performance, rituals, and cultural expression in the contemporary landscape of South India.

A cartographer’s map reveals the latitudinal and longitudinal attributes of a region. These mathematically rendered maps convey a layout of the physical world with its quadrants and borders. Within the Indian context, local and trans-local regional networks, like pilgrimages, speak multiple stories and communicate another worldview. The convergence of such stories and geographies is also a method of world-building. The lecture by Ms Adityan will survey a few pre-colonial, pan-Indian and regional works of literature to understand this practice of sacred mapping.

This is the sixth edition of the Introduction to Indian Knowledge Systems elective course, IKS 2022, which is being held online on the theme ‘Precolonial India’s Treasure House of Literatures’. The course is open to students and anyone interested in India’s knowledge systems and cultural heritage. They can join the course for free by registering online at: http://iks.iitgn.ac.in/. All lectures will be live-streamed on IITGN’s YouTube channel. The course’s website will carry regular announcements and updates on the speakers and lectures.