Consecration Rituals in South Asia

Consecration Rituals in South Asia PDF Author: István Keul
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004337180
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book

Book Description
The essays in the volume Consecration Rituals in South Asia address the ritual procedures that accompany the installation of temple images in Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain contexts, in various traditions and historical periods.

Consecration Rituals in South Asia

Consecration Rituals in South Asia PDF Author: István Keul
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004337180
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book

Book Description
The essays in the volume Consecration Rituals in South Asia address the ritual procedures that accompany the installation of temple images in Shaiva, Vaishnava, Buddhist and Jain contexts, in various traditions and historical periods.

Words and Deeds

Words and Deeds PDF Author: Jörg Gengnagel
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447051521
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
Words and Deeds is a collection of articles on rituals in South Asia with a special focus on their texts and context. The volume presupposes that a comprehensive definition of "ritual" does not exist. Instead, the papers in it avoid essentialist definitions, allowing for a possible polythetic definition of the concept to emerge. Papers in this volume include those on Initiation, Pre-Natal Rites, Religious Processions, Royal Consecration, Rituals which mark the commencement of ritual, Rituals of devotion and Vedic sacrifice as well as contributions which address the broader theoretical issues of engaging in the study of ritual texts and ritual practice, both from the etic and the emic perspective. These studies show that any study of the relationship between the text and the context of rituals must also allow for the possibility that different categories of performers can and do subjectively constitute the relationship between their ritual knowledge and ritual practice, between text and context in differing and nuanced ways.

Dealing with Deities

Dealing with Deities PDF Author: Selva J. Raj
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791482006
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing on original field research, Dealing with Deities explores the practice of taking ritual vows in the lives of ordinary religious practitioners in South Asia. The cornerstone of lay religious activity, vow rituals are adopted by Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs who wish to commit themselves to ritually enacted relationships with sacred figures in order to gain earthly boons and spiritual merit. The contributors to this volume offer a fascinating look at the varieties and complexities of vows and also focus on a unique characteristic of this vow-taking culture, that of resorting to deities and shrines of other religions in defiance of institutional directives and religious boundaries. Richly illustrated, the book explores the creativity of South Asian devotees and their deeply felt convictions that what they require, they can achieve faithfully—and independently—by dealing directly with deities.

From Material to Deity

From Material to Deity PDF Author: Shingo Einoo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
This Collection Of Essays Based On The Study Of Vedic And Post-Vedic Texts, By Japanese Scholars Deals With The Subject Of Pratisha Ritual The Most Important Ritual In Hinduism Through Which An Image Changes From Material To A Deity.

Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India

Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India PDF Author: Anna Slaczka
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047420896
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book

Book Description
This book is a thorough study, based on both the textual and archaeological data, of the three important temple consecration rituals of the Hindu tradition.

Sacred Matters

Sacred Matters PDF Author: Tracy Pintchman
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438459432
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
Explores how objects shape the worlds of religious participants across a range of South Asian traditions. Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality’s complex role within the “materially suspicious” contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.

The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia

The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia PDF Author: Donald K. Swearer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791424599
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
This is a synthesis and interpretation of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. No other book matches its depth and breadth or its balance of scholarly interpretation and readable personal portrayal.

Power, Presence and Space

Power, Presence and Space PDF Author: Taylor & Francis Group
Publisher: Routledge Chapman & Hall
ISBN: 9780367133962
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
Patterns of ritual power, presence, and space are fundamentally connected to, and mirror, the societal and political power structures in which they are enacted. This book explores these connections in South Asia from the early Common Era until the present day. The essays in the volume examine a wide range of themes, including a genealogy of ideas concerning Vedic rituals in European thought; Buddhist donative rituals of Gandhara and Andhra Pradesh in the early Common Era; land endowments, festivals, and temple establishments in medieval Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; Mughal court rituals of the Mughal Empire; and contemporary ritual complexes on the Nilgiri Plateau. This volume argues for the need to redress a historical neglect in identifying and theorising ritual and religion in material contexts within archaeology. Further, it challenges existing theoretical and methodological forms of documentation to propose new ways of understanding rituals in history. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, religion, archaeology, and historical geography.

Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia

Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia PDF Author: István Keul
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000331490
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores religion in various spatial constellations in South Asian cities, including religious centres such as Varanasi, Madurai and Nanded, and cities not readily associated with religion, such as Mumbai and Delhi. Contributors from different disciplines discuss a large variety of urban spaces: physical and imagined, institutional and residential, built and landscaped, virtual and mediatised, historical and contemporary. In doing so, the book addresses a wide range of issues concerning the role of religion in the dynamic interplay of factors which characterise complex urban social spaces. Chapters incorporate varying degrees and forms of the religious/spiritual, ranging from invisible and incorporeal to material and explicit, embedded in and expressed as spatial politics, works of fiction, mission, pilgrimage, festivals and everyday life. Topics examined include conflictual situations involving places of worship in Delhi, inclusive religious practices in Kanpur, American Protestant mission in Madurai, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday in Lahore, gardens as imaginative spaces, the politics of religion in Varanasi and many others. Illustrating and analysing ways and forms in which religion persists in South Asian urban contexts, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of cultural studies, the study of religions, urban studies and South Asian studies.

Ritual Innovation

Ritual Innovation PDF Author: Brian K. Pennington
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438469039
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America,the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual’s inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. “The breadth of coverage in Ritual Innovation is extraordinary and refreshing in terms of the types of contemporary ritual practices and practitioners receiving attention, not to mention the geographic spread across South Asia. This book makes a significant contribution to the scholarly literature on South Asian religions and contemporary Hinduism.” — Karline McLain, author of The Afterlife of Sai Baba: Competing Visions of a Global Saint