The third workshop in the series The Archaeology of Bhakti will take place at the centre of the EFEO in Pondicherry from the 3^rd to 14^th August 2015. We are glad to announce that Claudine Bautze-Picron (CNRS, UMR 7528 Mondes iranien et indien) and Leslie Orr (Concordia University) have graciously accepted to be our guests of honour for this year’s scholarly gathering, which, unlike the previous two, will consist in a workshop only, since we plan to spend most of our time in the field. The next workshop-cum-conference will take place in 2017.

This year’s theme is “The Bhakti of Minor Dynasties.” In our working definition, this refers to all sorts of smaller dynasties that never rose to an “imperial” status, but mainly remained subordinated to more powerful kings. In the pre-medieval and medieval Tamil country, such were the Muttaraiyars, the Irukkuvēḷs, the Paḻuvēṭṭaraiyars or the Bāṇas, who for most of their history acknowledged the authority of the Pallavas, the Cōḻas or the Pāṇḍyas. Our objective is to work on theoretical issues, such as the definition of “Minor Dynasties”, by exploring in situ the architectural, iconographical and epigraphical remains that are associated with minor dynasties of Tamil Nadu and by comparing these with the corpora of the major dynasties. See provisional programme below.