"Haunted by Compassion - Vedanta Desika's Daya Sataka"

by Dr. David Shulman, Professor, Indian Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Venue: The Museum Theatre, Pantheon Road, Egmore.

Prakriti Foundation remembers Dennis Hudson with love and affection. He was not just our chief mentor but also a very dear friend. We had first connected with him when we invited him to present a paper at our "Andal Today" conference in 2001. He could not travel that year in the wake of 9/11 and sent his paper. Then in March 2002 he came to India and gave us a talk on "Dating of the Bhagavatha Purana". We were smitten ever since and have had an incredibly fulfilling learning time with him whenever he came to Chennai. In 2002 December we organized a trip to Vaikunta Perumal temple with Dennis Hudson as a guide without realizing it was Vaikunta Ekadasi day. However, Dennis navigated our group of over seventy five in the mob of over thousands with the finesse of a captain which in all walks of life he was. His generosity of spirit and openness to share was a hallmark in the world of academia.

Dennis Hudson's research focused on the Tamil-speaking peoples of South Asia, with special attention to the eighth-ninth century period of Alvars and Nayanars in the context of temples and expansion into Southeast Asia and the 18th-19th century interaction between Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. He did a detailed study of the Vaikuntha Perumal Temple in Kanchipuram and applied its Bhagavata code to other Vaishnava temples in India and Southeast Asia. He sought to understand the history of the Bhagavata cult and its diffusion, as manifest in written texts and in built texts of temples and sculptures.

We lost Dennis in December of last year. He finished working on the final draft of the book on Vaikunta Perumal temple a few days before his passing away. We are in the process of publishing it. Prakriti Foundation will host an annual lecture in Dennis Hudson's memory. David Shulman, who was deeply regarded by Dennis for his scholarship and for his personal qualities, has graciously consented to give the first memorial lecture.

David Shulman was born in Waterloo, USA and did a BA in Islamic History, Arabic language and literature; history; African history from Hebrew University , Israel. His Ph.D. dissertation was on The Mythology of the Tamil Saiva Talapuranam in Tamil literature from the University of London. His research interests are History of religion in South India , Poetry and poetics in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit, Tamil Islam, Dravidian linguistics, Carnatic music and Dhrupad. David Shulman is bilingual in English and Hebrew. He also works in Indian languages Tamil, Sanskrit, and Telugu and has reading proficiency in Russian, French, German, Arabic, Persian, and Greek. He has received the annual prize of the Royal Asiatic Society, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The MacArthur Fellowship and The Rothschild Prize.

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