Background
Coburn, Thomas Bowen was born on February 8, 1944 in New York City. Son of John Bowen and Ruth Alvord (Barnum) Coburn.
(The Devi-Mahatmya is well-known to both devotees and scho...)
The Devi-Mahatmya is well-known to both devotees and scholars of the Indian Great Goddess. The central task in this study is to explore how an anonymous Sanskrit text articulates a view of ultimate reality as feminine when there is virtually no precedent in the Sanskrit for such a view. To accomplish this task, an appropriate method of scriptural analysis is developed. This involves an examination of Hindu understanding of the Puranas and of the Devi-Mahatmya in particular, along with consideration of several recent scholarly discussions, in India and elsewhere. The study culminates in annotated translations of the text's hymns.
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(Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the ...)
Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the Sanskrit of this fifteen-hundred-year-old text. Drawing on field work and literary evidence, he illuminates the process by which the Devi-Mahatmya has attracted a vast number of commentaries and has become the best known Goddess-text in modern India, deeply embedded in the ritual of Goddess worship (especially in Tantra). Coburn answers the following questions among others: Is this document "scripture?" How is it that this text mediates the presence of the Goddess? What can we make of contemporary emphasis on oral recitation of the text rather than study of its written form? One comes away from Coburn's work with a sense of the historical integrity or wholeness of an extremely important religious development centered on a "text." The interaction between the text and later philosophical and religious developments such as those found in Advaita Vedanta and Tantra is quite illuminating. Relevant here are the issues of the writtenness and orality/aurality of 'scripture, ' and the various ways by which a deposit of holy words such as the Devi-Mahatmya becomes effective, powerful, and inspirational in the lives of those who hold it sacred.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0791404463/?tag=2022091-20
religious studies educator college administrator
Coburn, Thomas Bowen was born on February 8, 1944 in New York City. Son of John Bowen and Ruth Alvord (Barnum) Coburn.
AB magna cum laude, Princeton University, 1965. Master of Theological Studies, Harvard University, 1969. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1977.
Teaching fellow religion, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1965-1966; instructor math and physics, American Community School, Beirut, 1966-1967; house director, Dana Hall School, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1971-1974; teaching fellow, research assistant, Harvard University, 1971-1974; instructor religious studies and classical languages, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1974-1977; assistant professor, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1977-1981; associate professor, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1981-1988; professor, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1988-1990; Charles A. Dana professor, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, since 1990; associate dean academic affairs, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1983-1985; dean academic affairs, vice president university, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, 1985-1986. Visiting scholar Harvard Division School, 1986-1987. Visiting lecturer U. Pittsburgh, 1987;director New York State Indiana College Consortium for Study in India, 1990.
(Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the ...)
(The Devi-Mahatmya is well-known to both devotees and scho...)
Member American Oriental Society, Association for Asian Studies, American Academy Religion (co-chairman of the section committee since 1986).
Married Cynthia Diane Mueller, September 3, 1967 (divorced 1987). Children: Brooke Bowen, Jesse Cutler.