Brian Collins
Ohio University, Classics and World Religions, Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy
Brian Collins is the Drs. Ram and Sushila Gawande Chair in Indian Religion and Philosophy and the chair of the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at Ohio University. He is the author of The Head Beneath the Altar: Hindu Mythology and the Critique of Sacrifice (Michigan State University Press, 2014) and The Other Rāma: Matricide and Varṇicide in the Mythology of Paraśurāma (SUNY Press, 2020) and the co-editor of Bollywood Horrors: Religion, Violence, and Cinematic Fears in India (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). Collins is also the author of Robert Eisler and the Magic of the Combinatory Mind: The Forgotten Life of a 20th-Century Austrian Polymath (Palgrave, 2021) and the creator and host of A Very Square Peg: A Podcast About Polymath Robert Eisler (New Books Network, 2020). He is currently working on a wide-ranging comparative project tentatively titled “Religion Is a Ghost Story: The Haunting and Human Sacrifice Complex and the Pre-Religious Substrate.” Along with Introduction to the Study of Religion, he teaches classes on Hinduism, Buddhism, yoga, the Sanskrit epics, comparative mythology, and the occult and the paranormal in religions.
Phone: 773-507-9278
Address: Dept of Classics and Religious Studies
Ellis 234
1 Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
Phone: 773-507-9278
Address: Dept of Classics and Religious Studies
Ellis 234
1 Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
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Books by Brian Collins
The Other Rāma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma (“Rāma with the Axe”), an avatára of Viṣṇu best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Kṣatriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as “genocide” by modern scholars. Compared to Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, the other human forms of Viṣṇu, Paraśurāma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Paraśurāma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reṇukā, is worshipped in the form of a severed head throughout South India.
Using the tools of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis, Brian Collins identifies three major motifs in the mythology of Paraśurāma: his hybrid status as a Brahmin warrior, his act of matricide, and his bloody one-man war to cleanse the earth of Kṣatriyas. Collins considers a wide variety of representations of the myth, from its origins in the Mahābhārata to contemporary debates online. He also examines Paraśurāma alongside the Wandering Jew of European legend and Psycho’s matricidal serial killer Norman Bates. He examines why mythmakers once elevated this transgressive and antisocial figure to the level of an avatāra and why he still holds such fascination for a world that continues to grapple with mass killings and violence against women.
“Collins provides a lively and delightfully written study of the Paraśurāma myth, an exploration filtered through psychoanalytical theory. For readers interested in this particular tradition of analysis and other types of comparison, this book will be a welcomed inquiry into the possible meanings of this perennial Indian mythic figure.” — Christian Novetzke, author of Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India
Introduction...Brian Collins, Aditi Sen, and Ellen Goldberg 1
Part 1: Material Cultures and Prehistories of Horror in South Asia
1. Monsters, Masala, and Materiality: Close Encounters with Hindi Horror Movie Ephemera...Brian Collins
2. Vampire Man Varma: The Untold Story of the “Hindu Mystic” Who Decolonized Dracula...Brian Collins
Part 2: Cinematic Horror, Iconography, and Aesthetics
3. Divine Horror and the Avenging Goddess in Bollywood...Kathleen Erndl
4. Horrifying and Sinister Tāntriks...Hugh B. Urban
5. Do You Want to Know the Raaz?: Sāvitri, Satyavān, and the Other Woman ...Aditi Sen
Part 3: Cultural Horror
6. Cultural Horror in Dev: Man is the Cruelest Animal...Ellen Goldberg
7. Bandit Queen, Rape-Revenge, and Cultural Horror...Morgan Oddie
8. Mardaani: The Secular Horror of Child Trafficking and the Modern
Masculine Woman...Beth Watkins
Book Reviews by Brian Collins
The Other Rāma presents a systematic analysis of the myth cycle of Paraśurāma (“Rāma with the Axe”), an avatára of Viṣṇu best known for decapitating his own mother and annihilating twenty-one generations of the Kṣatriya warrior caste in an extermination campaign frequently referred to as “genocide” by modern scholars. Compared to Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, the other human forms of Viṣṇu, Paraśurāma has a much darker reputation, with few temples devoted to him and scant worshippers. He has also attracted far less scholarly attention. But dozens of important castes and clans across the subcontinent claim Paraśurāma as the originator of their bloodline, and his mother, Reṇukā, is worshipped in the form of a severed head throughout South India.
Using the tools of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis, Brian Collins identifies three major motifs in the mythology of Paraśurāma: his hybrid status as a Brahmin warrior, his act of matricide, and his bloody one-man war to cleanse the earth of Kṣatriyas. Collins considers a wide variety of representations of the myth, from its origins in the Mahābhārata to contemporary debates online. He also examines Paraśurāma alongside the Wandering Jew of European legend and Psycho’s matricidal serial killer Norman Bates. He examines why mythmakers once elevated this transgressive and antisocial figure to the level of an avatāra and why he still holds such fascination for a world that continues to grapple with mass killings and violence against women.
“Collins provides a lively and delightfully written study of the Paraśurāma myth, an exploration filtered through psychoanalytical theory. For readers interested in this particular tradition of analysis and other types of comparison, this book will be a welcomed inquiry into the possible meanings of this perennial Indian mythic figure.” — Christian Novetzke, author of Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India
Introduction...Brian Collins, Aditi Sen, and Ellen Goldberg 1
Part 1: Material Cultures and Prehistories of Horror in South Asia
1. Monsters, Masala, and Materiality: Close Encounters with Hindi Horror Movie Ephemera...Brian Collins
2. Vampire Man Varma: The Untold Story of the “Hindu Mystic” Who Decolonized Dracula...Brian Collins
Part 2: Cinematic Horror, Iconography, and Aesthetics
3. Divine Horror and the Avenging Goddess in Bollywood...Kathleen Erndl
4. Horrifying and Sinister Tāntriks...Hugh B. Urban
5. Do You Want to Know the Raaz?: Sāvitri, Satyavān, and the Other Woman ...Aditi Sen
Part 3: Cultural Horror
6. Cultural Horror in Dev: Man is the Cruelest Animal...Ellen Goldberg
7. Bandit Queen, Rape-Revenge, and Cultural Horror...Morgan Oddie
8. Mardaani: The Secular Horror of Child Trafficking and the Modern
Masculine Woman...Beth Watkins
What does it mean to believe in ghosts? How do people who cast hexes, perform a Black Mass, or hold séances understand their actions and experiences? Do all religious people believe in the supernatural? Do all believers in the supernatural also hold religious convictions? Designed to address these kinds of questions, this course is a survey, from the perspective of religious studies, of beliefs about ghosts, demons, and supernatural phenomena throughout history and around the world. In their readings, films, and lectures, students will look at ghost traditions from North India, Hawaii, and Europe; practices of exorcism in the United States, Sri Lanka, and Tibet; the role of demonology in Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Evangelicalism, and Puritanism; and witchcraft in England, Italy, and Niger. They will also examine the scientific claims of parapsychology, the practice of necromancy, and accounts of people who report being attacked by evil spirits in their sleep. The final grade will be based on participation in class discussions, response papers, a creative group project, and a final research paper.
for the humanities. To that end, he has given us a general plan of action that should find broad agreement: We should go on studying “socially con-
structed” things like religions, aiming toward the production of
humble, “zetetic” knowledge and rejecting the harmful illusion of value-
neutrality by explicitly stating our overarching goal of multi-species flourishing.
ANY AND ALL MISTAKES ARE MINE (Sorry, Miles!)
In this episode, we focus on one of Eisler’s most controversial works, a reconstruction of the 1st century Roman Jewish historian Josephus’ account of the events surrounding the death of Jesus and the ministry of John the Baptist, including a new physical description of Jesus that apparently prompted the Christ to appear to followers in America to prove he did not look like Eisler said he did. Also, Eisler gets into a bitter back-and-forth with Solomon Zeitlin in the pages of the Jewish Quarterly Review and one Christian scholar dedicates an entire book to discrediting the methods of Eisler and other “learned Jews.”
All mistakes are mine alone.
Clink the link below to hear the new episode and click subscribe to get notifications when a new episode comes out next Tuesday.
https://megaphone.link/LIT8051246067
Clink the link below to hear the new episode and click subscribe to get notifications when a new episode comes out next Tuesday.
https://megaphone.link/LIT1837447081
https://www.facebook.com/A-Very-Square-Peg-A-Podcast-About-Robert-Eisler-101887274875401
Paraśurāma (“Rāma with the Axe”) is a divine hero of the Mahābhārata epic who is best known for exterminating the warrior class twenty-one times and decapitating his mother. In all of Hindu mythology, only Paraśurāma is both an avatāra of Viṣṇu and a cirañjīvin (immortal). After his destruction of the warrior class, Paraśurāma offers up the earth that he has conquered in sacrifice, depriving himself of the very ground on which he stands. As a result, he has to create a new land that he can only inhabit because it was not part of the earth when he gave it away. He does this by throwing his axe out into the sea and driving the water back to create a strip of coast. We see IE parallels to this in the Irish myth of Tuirbe Tragmār and the Greek story of Alcmaeon. In this paper, I explore the possible significance of those parallels.