Tantra, ritual performance, and politics in Nepal and Kerala: embodying the goddess-clan
Introduction: Methodology and context -- Introducing the southern case study : Teyyāṭṭam, Northern Malabar, Kerala -- Introducing the northern case study : Navadurgā, Bhaktapur, Nepal -- Dancer-medium communities and ritual kinship -- History and assimilation in Tantric cosmology -- Sacrifice, earth...
| Summary: | Introduction: Methodology and context -- Introducing the southern case study : Teyyāṭṭam, Northern Malabar, Kerala -- Introducing the northern case study : Navadurgā, Bhaktapur, Nepal -- Dancer-medium communities and ritual kinship -- History and assimilation in Tantric cosmology -- Sacrifice, earth cycles, and self-reflexive affect -- Politics, ritual performance, and caste. "In previous studies of South Asian Tantric ritual, scholars tend to focus on one region or context. For the first time, Ritual Performance, Folk Mediumship, and Politics in Nepal and Kerala offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observed in two locales: Navadurgā rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyāṭṭam in North Kerala. In this book, Matthew Martin advances a new theory of ritual, which spotlights the way dancer-mediums embody medieval goddess-clans and ancestor deities, through offerings of food and sacrifice, that synchronize their denizens with the land in spiralling ritual networks. Uniquely interdisciplinary in style, this study synthesizes cultural history, ethnography, and theory to explore the continuities - historical, societal, and political - that characterize these ritual traditions across the subcontinent"-- |
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| Item Description: | Revision of author's PhD dissertation Includes bibliographical references (pages 274-289) and index |
| ISBN: | 9004438998 |