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"More comparable to Levi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques than any other work of anthropology I know; but, in fact, the book I was most reminded of was not an anthropological work at all, but E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. . . a complex world complexly perceived and brilliantly recorded. . . . It is really a wonderful book."--Wendy Doniger, author of The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology
Madhu Natisar Nath is a Rajasthani farmer with no formal schooling. He is also a singer, a musician, and a storyteller. At the center of A Carnival of Parting are Madhu Nath's oral performances of two linked tales about the legendary Indian kings, Bharthari of Ujjain and Gopi Chand of Bengal. Both characters, while still in their prime, leave thrones and families to be initiated as yogis - a process rich in adventure and melodrama, one that offers unique insights into popular Hinduism's view of world renunciation. Ann Grodzins Gold presents these living oral epic traditions as flowing narratives, transmitting to Western readers the interactive dimensions, the moods, and the pleasures of a village bard's performance. Three introductory chapters and an interpretive afterword, together with an appendix on the bard's language by David Magier, supply A Carnival of Parting with a richly detailed ethnographic, historical, and cultural backdrop. Gold gives a frank and engaging portrayal of the bard Madhu Nath and her work with him. She examines the Nath caste and their oral epic traditions as an important stream within North Indian Hinduism, showing how Madhu Nath's versions of Bharthari's and Gopi Chand's well-known tales surface as distinctive moments within complex legendary and historical currents. While embellished with miraculous displays of magical powers and evocative of profound spiritual dedication, the tales translated here are most profoundly concerned, Gold argues, with human rather than divine realities. In a compelling afterword, she highlights the thematic emphases on politics, love, and death. Although both narratives frequently invoke as ultimate authority the causal black hole of fate, they in no way acquiesce to fatalism. Madhu Nath's vital colloquial telling of Bharthari's and Gopi Chand's stories depicts renunciation as inevitable and interpersonal attachments as doomed, yet celebrates human existence as a "carnival of parting."
The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the "purity" of the Brahman priest and the "temporal power" of the dominant caste or the king.
"This book offers a new theoretical framework for exploring contemporary pilgrimage, exploring examples ranging from the Hajj to the Camino, and arguing that pilgrimage activity should be understood not solely as going to, staying at, and leaving a sacred place, but also as occurring in apparently mundane or domestic times, places, and practices"--
The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Outlining and defining the new concept of Destination Conscience, the authors provide an inter-disciplinary approach through a variety of case studies and definitive examples.
This innovative introductory textbook explores the central practices and beliefs of Hinduism through contemporary, everyday practice. Introduces and contextualizes the rituals, festivals and everyday lived experiences of Hinduism in text and images Includes data from the author’s own extensive ethnographic fieldwork in central India (Chhattisgarh), the Deccan Plateau (Hyderabad), and South India (Tirupati) Features coverage of Hindu diasporas, including a study of the Hindu community in Atlanta, Georgia Each chapter includes case study examples of specific topics related to the practice of Hinduism framed by introductory and contextual material
This is a volume about the life and power of ritual objects in their religious ritual settings. In this Special Issue, we see a wide range of contributions on material culture and ritual practices across religions. By focusing on the dynamic interrelations between objects, ritual, and belief, it explores how religion happens through symbolic materiality. The ritual objects presented in this volume include: masks worn in the Dogon dance; antique ecclesiastical silver objects carried around in festive processions and shown in shrines in the southern Andes; funerary photographs and films functioning as mnemonic objects for grieving children; a dented rock surface perceived to be the god’s footprint in the archaic place of pilgrimage, Gaya (India); a recovered manual of rituals (from Xiapu county) for Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, juxtaposed to a Manichaean painting from southern China; sacred stories and related sacred stones in the Alor–Pantar archipelago, Indonesia; lotus symbolism, indicating immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia; lavishly illustrated variations of portrayals of Ravana, a Sinhalese god-king-demon; figurines made of cow dung sculptured by rural women in Rajasthan (India); and mythical artifacts called ‘Apples of Eden’ in a well-known interactive game series.