Die Bhavani von Tuljapur: Religionsgeschichtliche Studie des Kultes einer Gottin der indischen Volksreligion.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo

It is not an easy task to discuss, within the limits of a review, every detail of this complex Ph.D. dissertation, probably one of the last dissertations inspired by the late Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer. The dissertation is complex because the author's research went through different stages, with the result that the final product became very different than, yet not dissociated from, what the dissertation initially was meant to be.

Roland Jansen went to India for the first time in 1987, and stayed there for about twenty months. His primary concern at that time was the Sanskrit mahatmya of Tuljapur, the Turaja Mahatmya, which fie studied and translated with the help of - by now also the late - Pandit Tarkatirtha Laksmansastri Josi. During that stay he became aware of and copied a Marathi text, authored by Dattatreya Madhavarao Kulkarni, the Maharastraci Kulasvamini Arthat Sritulajabhavani (published in 1920, but available in few copies only, even in Maharashtra). Perhaps secondary at that time, but most important for the later development of Jansen's research was the fact that, in between his textual work, he visited Tuljapur to familiarize himself in situ with the geographical surroundings and with various aspects of the Bhavani cult.

After he returned from India in 1989 Jansen set out to prepare a critical edition and a translation of the Turaja Mahatmya, which claims to belong to the Sahyadrikhanda which, in turn, is said to be part of the Skandapurana. (The mahatmya does not appear in the editions of either text.) Yet, he gradually came to the conclusion, first, that this long text was not particularly interesting either in content or in style, and, second, that it had little in common with what happens on the ground in Tuljapur. Even the brahmans there were unaware of the existence of the text, and manuscripts were hard to come by.

Thrice again Jansen visited Tuljapur, this time to consult Marathi sources (e.g., the historical documents contained in the appendix to Kulkarni's work), to observe the Bhavani cult in all its aspects, and to interview Marathi informants. "The planned edition and translation of a Sanskrit text preceded by a brief historical introduction thus became a monograph on the cult of a goddess in which the text plays only a subordinate role and in which the emphasis is on establishing a (still hypothetical but probable) religiohistorical evolution" (p. 5). Yet, the volume also reflects the earlier stages of research...