GREL Ph.D. student Westin Harris has received the prestigious Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies, to support research for his dissertation, Visualizing Virūpa: Buddhist and Nāth Vignettes of the First Haṭhayogī. The interdisciplinary doctoral project analyzes the life stories of the influential medieval siddha named Virūpa or Virūpākṣa. In it, Westin analyzes a wide array of hagiographies, site histories, and liturgies, dating from the 12-19th centuries, in Tibetan and Sanskrit, to argue that Virupa’s life stories reveal persistent Indo-Tibetan connections between tantric Buddhism and Nāthism, unsettling abiding misconceptions about the directionality of trans-Himalayan Buddhist exchange, while also challenging the “death of Buddhism in India” theory. The project also clarifies the role of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism in the development of haṭhayoga(s), and, as such, is a timely contribution to Buddhist, Religious, South Asian, and Yoga Studies.

The Ho fellowship supports 10 months of dissertation research from September 2021 through July 2022. Westin will spend that time in Nepal and India working on archival and art historical research for his dissertation.