MANTRAMS - Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia

Over 4 million people in Europe, including Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh minorities, and Yoga practitioners, use mantras—sacred utterances, formulas, or syllables—for ritual, prayer, contemplation, and wellness. Despite their widespread use and the term's integration into modern European languages, mantras have rarely been studied comprehensively.

The MANTRAMS Project, funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant, addresses this gap with a six-year initiative and a budget of €9,651,263. This project will produce an unprecedented global history and anthropology of mantras, leveraging the expertise of leading scholars on Southern Asia, where mantras have been used for over 3,000 years. It will examine how mantras have been transmitted through spaces, media, and religious communities, including diasporic networks, new religious movements, yoga, and the internet.

Using an interdisciplinary approach that includes Indology, anthropology, sound studies, media studies, art history, and the history of religions, the project will create comprehensive sonic, visual, and digital textual archives. These archives will document the transcultural and multisensory dimensions of mantras, culminating in a museum exhibition and a wide range of academic deliverables.

Our project has been developed in dialogue with communities of scholars and practitioners from Asia. Grounded in ethical international collaborations, our research emphasizes respect for local communities, traditional lineages and custodians of cultural heritage. 

We embrace a diversity of perspectives and approaches. This means that we do not regard any single viewpoint as universally legitimate or inherently more scientifically valid than others. MANTRAMS team members critically reflect upon their own positions in relation to the topic that they study. This openness and self-reflexivity allows the project to benefit from a multiplicity of approaches, including insiders’ perspectives, scholar-practitioners, heritage learners, and practice-led research.

Key Features

  • Interdisciplinary Approach: Integrates diverse methodologies to explore mantras from multiple perspectives.
  • Three Cross-Cutting Themes:
    • Mantras as Media: Investigating the multimediality of mantras and their role in mediation.
    • Synaesthetic and Multisensory Engagement: Examining sensory, embodied and perceptual dimensions of mantras.
    • Relationality and Power: Analyzing the social and political implications of mantras.