This thesis compiles views on music and dance scattered throughout the Pāli Canon and its commentaries. It starts with negative views, widely considered the most characteristic, and lists the...Show moreThis thesis compiles views on music and dance scattered throughout the Pāli Canon and its commentaries. It starts with negative views, widely considered the most characteristic, and lists the spiritual, emotional and even social reasons given in the early texts for the avoidance of musical art forms. The rest of the work addresses less known, wholesome uses of music: ‘devotional’ compositions, apparently as old as the oldest strata of the Pāli Canon (according to the texts themselves, many eons older), and a handful of episodes where advanced practitioners are led to Nirvana by the lyrics of peasant songs. The last chapter is dedicated to two meditational states that seem to involve perceptions of beauty, the ‘beautiful-liberation’ (subha-vimokkha) and the samādhi of divine sounds of the Mahāli Sutta. The conclusion argues that a more balanced image of the early Buddhist approach to art is needed to make sense of modern Buddhism and its embrace of a perhaps not so foreign ‘Romantic’ aestheticism.Show less
This thesis describes in a broad manner India's current bilateral and multilateral collaborations with Central Asian countries on the topics of Energy, Trade and Security Cooperation. Subsequently...Show moreThis thesis describes in a broad manner India's current bilateral and multilateral collaborations with Central Asian countries on the topics of Energy, Trade and Security Cooperation. Subsequently it analyses the reasons and factors that underlie the current situation of India's strategic position in Central Asia, which requires taking into account the (political) actions of other regional actors like Russia and China. Through a re-appreciation of Morgenthau's theory on International Relations, this thesis will argue why India's minor strategic position has both historical and contemporary political reasons.Show less
