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.
