Ranjamrittika Bhowmik

Ranjamrittika is a third year DPhil student in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on a diachronic study of esoteric yoga traditions in north-eastern India, through a common lineage of Buddhism and Hinduism. Her work explores mysticism and language, politics of alternative social imaginaries through religious movements, notions of the subtle body, foregrounding pluralist literature of dissent and its artistic and political implications through performance. In her current research, she analyses language and practice, combining literary criticism with ethnography. As part of this project, she aims to explore the development of Tantric esoteric iconography through complex forms of deities in the Buddhist art collection of Himalayan Art: Nepal and Tibet and Eastern India, focusing on the emotion of “Compassion.”