Seeds of Mantra

This workshop supports a major output of the MANTRAMS project, a book called Seeds of Mantra.

Seeds of Mantra is a compendium of mantras and sourcebook of mantric lore. The volume provides an overview and case studies of mantras and mantra cultures in Asia from 1500 BCE to early modernity, highlighting a selection of key mantras. Edited by Finnian Moore Gerety and Andrea Acri, the multi-author volume incorporates the contributions of more than two dozen leading scholars of mantras.

• The volume begins with an introduction by editors Gerety and Acri covering the basics of mantra cultures, history, theory, and practice. This introduces “mantra” as a category and expounds on the taxonomy of tradition-specific ritual utterances.
• The bulk of the book consists of biographies of several dozen key mantras drawn from Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, and Sikhism. Each five-to-ten-thousand-word biography provides the text of the mantra(s) in the original language with annotated translation; images in manuscripts or iconography; history in texts, rituals, traditions, and regions; and a case study in the form of a translation of a primary text excerpt.
• Seeds of Mantra will make a substantial contribution to the study of mantras based on primary sources and cutting-edge scholarship, without being overly encyclopaedic. It will be a rigorous but accessible book of interest to scholars and practitioners alike.