Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis studies the development of the Hindu god Skanda-Karttikeya from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE in north India. I argue that during this time period the deity is transformed from a demonic being associated with childhood diseases to a respected divine ge1eral and son to Siva. I begin with a discussion of the earliest written material about the deity found in the two Sanskrit Epics (The Mahabharata and The Ramayana) and other texts. These texts establish Skallda-Kal1tikeya's origins in demonic beings and illustrate his transformation into a martial deity. These texts also demonstrate how Brahminical redactors assimilated this deity into their own traditions. This process; of assimilation takes an inauspicious and unorthodox deity and transforms him into an auspicious and orthodox deity. 1 go on to argue that this transformation did not result in the increased popularity of this deity, but brings about the end of his popular cult in the north of India. Based on ancient coinage, statuary and inscriptions I demonstrate that this deity's popularity was related to his earlier terrible image and a propitiatory cult designed to appease him. Once the dangerous aspect of his image was removed, so was the main source of his popular cult. As opposed to previous scholarship on this deity, I argue that the Brahminization of this deity's cult brings about its end. I also demonstrate, based on this deity's depiction on ancient coinage, statuary and epigraphy, that there were also political forces at work in this process. My research demonstrates that the most important groups in this process were non-Indian. Primarily, I identify the Kusanas as the main political group who transform this deity. This conclusion related to the foreign influence~e 'in the development of this deity lie in stark contrast to previous studies of this deity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".