Religions, Volume 11, Issue 3

The item response theory (IRT), or latent trace theory, is based on a set of mathematical models to complement the qualitative analysis of the items in a given questionnaire. This study analyzes the items of the Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ) i...

Recent research into source materials for haṭhayoga (Birch, Mallinson, Szántó) has revealed that the physical techniques and esoteric anatomy traditionally associated with Śaiva practitioners likely found a genesis within Vajrayāna Budd...

This paper examines the bronze Buddha mold that was excavated from the western pagoda of Hwaŏm temple 華嚴寺. The research centers on the mold’s date of production, its function, and the reason it was enshrined in the Hwaŏmsa pagoda. The pagoda it...

In October and November of 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, approximately 3500 Sikh men were killed in Delhi, India. Many of the survivors—Sikh widows and their kin—were relocated there...

This essay will explore the challenges presented by transgressive rituals, particularly the secret and wisdom-consort consecrations found in the Mahāyoga and Yoginī tantras. In particular, it examines how Atiśa Dīpaṅkara Śrījñāna aided in the...

Mid-twentieth century witnessed a renewal of the interest in the problem of evil, presented by Mackie et al. in the form of the logical argument from evil. However, this argument was proven ineffective in securing victory over theism. A more successf...

Guided by the hopeful possibilities of birth, breath and beginning that Hannah Arendt and Luce Irigaray variously articulate, this paper examines the lullaby as an expressive form that emerges (in a variety of contexts as distinct as medieval Christe...

This article centers around the Anavatapta Lake. In East Asian pictorialization of worldview, Maps of Mt. Sumeru, which depict the mountain at the core of the world, are often paired with Maps of India, in which the Anavatapta Lake occupies a signifi...

American science fiction stories, such as U.S. historical narratives, often give central place to white, Western male subjects as noble explorers, benevolent colonizers, and border-guarding patriots. This constructed subjectivity renders colonized or...

The complex interconnections between religious beliefs and fashion in clothing have been increasingly recognised by researchers, already since the ‘new veiling’ phenomenon spread across the Muslim world in the 1970s (El-Guindi 1981, 1999;...