First Skandapurāṇa Project fieldwork trip
The Skandapurāṇa Project considers fieldwork to be essential to the study of purāṇic religious topography and the understanding of the socio-political milieu in which the Skandapurāṇa was composed and disseminated.
The first fieldwork trip took place in January 2012 and led us to visit several places related to the Skandapurāṇa’s presentation of a distinctly Śaiva topography, including Hardwar, Kanakhala, Rishikesh, Kalinjar and Mundeshvari, as well as other important centres of early Śaiva activity in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Results of these visits have been integrated in the second part of Hans Bakker’s monograph The World of the Skandapurāṇa (Leiden: Brill, 2014) and in Elizabeth Cecil’s article ‘Seeking the ‘Lord with a Club’: Locating Lakulīśa in the Early History of Pāśupata Śaivism (sixth to ninth century CE)’ (South Asian Studies 30.2 [2014], 142-158). Two inscriptions found at Kalinjar hill were treated by Peter Bisschop in his article ‘Two Pre-Chandella Inscriptions from Kālañjara’ (Indo-Iranian Journal 56 [2013], 279-294).