DHARMA Project Worskhop in Pondicherry (January 2023): Report

Most of the participants of the Pondicherry DHARMA workshop beside Bahour lake on 2nd February 2023

The workshop took the form of conference-papers in the mornings, and Sanskrit reading sessions (principally of inscriptions) in the afternoons. But early on Thursday morning we made an outing to the Mūlanātha temple in Bahour (vākūr), a Śaiva temple bearing tenth-century inscriptions of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇa III, and also the findspot of the Bahour plates of the reign of Nṛpatuṅgadeva. There we were able to examine the iconography and inscriptions on the temple walls, to observe an abhiṣeka of the liṅga, and to spend a few moments beside the lake, swollen and misty from the morning rain.