Saivism And the Tantric Traditions- Essays in Honour of Alexis G.J.S. Sanderson

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This volume results from a symposium held at the University of Toronto in honour of Alexis GJS. Sanderson. The symposium was convened in March 2015 in anticipation of his retirement as the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at All Souls College, Oxford University. The event was conceived by Srilata Raman, who worked tirelessly and resourcefully to make it a success. In this she was aided by Shaman Hatley, co-convener of the symposium, and a number of graduate students, especially Kalpesh Bhatt, Tamara Cohen, Larissa Fardelos, Nika Kuchuk, and Eric Steinschneider, to whom we offer our sincere thanks. It was immensely satisfying to have so many of Professor Sanderson's former doctoral students assemble from across the world for the occasion, students whose graduate studies at Oxford spanned more than three decades of Alexis Sanderson's teaching career. The volume is based mainly on papers presented in the symposium, with additional contributions by several of his former pupils who had not been able to present their work at that time (Parul Dave-Mukherji, Csaba Dezso, Csaba Kiss, Ryugen Tanemura, and Anthony Tribe), as well as by Diwakar Acharya, his successor to the Spalding Professorship. We would also like to extend our thanks and recognition to those who enriched the symposium with excellent papers, but who for various reasons could not include these in the present volume: Hans Bakker, Gudrun Buhnemann, Shingo Einoo, Alexander von Rospatt, and Somadeva Vasudeva.

We would like to acknowledge the sponsors who made the symposium possible: All Souls College, Oxford University; the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto; the Department of Religion of the University of Toronto, and its Chair, John Kloppenborg; Brill Publishers; and Srilata Raman, who con- tributed quietly and generously from her own research funds. We would also like to thank University College of the University of Toronto, and John Mar- shall, its Vice Principal, for making available the lovely Croft Chapter House, in which the symposium was held.

The contributors to the volume and the publisher have endured a long wait for this volume to come to fruition, and we would like to thank them for their patience and cheerful support. Special thanks are due also to Anusha Sudindra Rao, who proofread the volume carefully on short notice, and to Liwen Liu, who prepared the index.

Academic study of Asia's tantric traditions has blossomed in recent decades. Once dismissed as marginal, or unworthy of serious attention, we now under stand the Saiva, Buddhist, Vaisnava, and Jaina tantric traditions as integral to the religious and cultural landscapes of medieval South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. This shift, which is reshaping the historiography of medieval India, is in no small measure due to the magisterial contributions of Alexis G.J.S. Sanderson, Fellow of All Souls College and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at Oxford University, from 1992-2015, and now Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College. The present book is a collection of essays in his hon- our, written by specialists of the various fields he has influenced from around the world, most of whom were his students at Oxford.