Westin Harris

My interdisciplinary doctoral project, Visualizing Virupa: Buddhist and Nath Vignettes of the First Hathayogi, analyzes the life stories of the influential medieval siddha, Virupa(ksa). In it, I examine 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 Nathism that unsettle abiding misconceptions about the directionality of trans-Himalayan Buddhist exchange and that challenge the “death of Buddhism in India” theory. My project also clarifies the role of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism in the development of hathayoga, and, as such, is a timely contribution to Buddhist, South Asian, religious, and yoga studies.