Jagannath Revisited

Jagannath Revisited PDF Author: Hermann Kulke
Publisher: Manohar Publishers and Distributors
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
In June 1997, A Group Of German And Indian Scholars Assembled At A Conference In Heidelberg Held On The Topic Of `Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion And The State In Orissa`. The Articles Published In This Book Represent Papers Presented At This Conference. They Include Contributions From Social Anthropology, History, Indology, Religious Studies, Archaeology And Political Science, Discussing Topics As Divere As Religious Practices Amongorissan Adivasis, The Renewal Of The Body Of Jagannath, The History Of Mahima Dharma Sect, The Ritual Politics Of A Dhenkanal Village, And The Rebellious Attitude Of The Jungle King. Even Where Jagannath Is Re-Investigated, It Is His Worship By Subaltern Groups Rather Than The Scriptural, Orthodox View That Is The Present Focus Of Study.

Jagannath Revisited

Jagannath Revisited PDF Author: Hermann Kulke
Publisher: Manohar Publishers and Distributors
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
In June 1997, A Group Of German And Indian Scholars Assembled At A Conference In Heidelberg Held On The Topic Of `Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion And The State In Orissa`. The Articles Published In This Book Represent Papers Presented At This Conference. They Include Contributions From Social Anthropology, History, Indology, Religious Studies, Archaeology And Political Science, Discussing Topics As Divere As Religious Practices Amongorissan Adivasis, The Renewal Of The Body Of Jagannath, The History Of Mahima Dharma Sect, The Ritual Politics Of A Dhenkanal Village, And The Rebellious Attitude Of The Jungle King. Even Where Jagannath Is Re-Investigated, It Is His Worship By Subaltern Groups Rather Than The Scriptural, Orthodox View That Is The Present Focus Of Study.

Bonding with the Lord

Bonding with the Lord PDF Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9389611903
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Few other Hindu gods guide a regional consciousness, pervade walks of everyday life and define a collective psyche the way Lord Jagannath does in Odisha and its contiguous areas. Jagannath is metonymic of Odisha and the Odia way of life, arguably much more than any other god for a particular geography or its peoples. While not derecognising the historical and the spiritual aspects of Jagannath, Bonding with the Lord attempts to look at the deployment of Jagannath in contemporary cultural practices involving the sensorium in the widest sense. The project of a cultural Jagannath not only materialises him in people's everyday practices but also democratises scholarship on him. The expansion of the scope of research on Jagannath to cultural expressions in a more encompassing way rather than confining to 'elitist' religious/literary sources makes him an everyday presence and significantly enhances his sphere of influence. Jagannath's 'tribal' origin, his association with Buddhism and Jainism and his avatari status make him an all-encompassing, multilayered symbol and a treasure trove for multiple interpretations.

Religious Celebrations [2 volumes]

Religious Celebrations [2 volumes] PDF Author: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598842064
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1077

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Book Description
This two-volume work presents a comprehensive survey of all the ways people celebrate religious life around the globe. Religious Celebrations is an alphabetically organized encyclopedia that covers more than 800 celebratory occasions from all of the world's major religious communities as well as many of the minor faith traditions. The encyclopedia provides a complete reference tool for examining the myriad ways people worldwide celebrate their religious lives across religious boundaries, providing information on numerous celebratory activities never before covered in a reference work. Offering the most comprehensive coverage of religious holidays ever assembled, this two-volume book covers festivals, commemorations, holidays, and annual religious gatherings all over the world, with special attention paid to the celebrations in larger countries. Entries written by distinguished researchers and specialists on different religious communities capture the unique intensity of each event, be it fasting or feasting, frenzied activity or the universal cessation of work, a huge gathering of the faithful en masse or a small family-centered event. The work spotlights celebrations that currently exist without overlooking now-abandoned celebrations that still impact the modern world.

Performance and Culture

Performance and Culture PDF Author: Archana Verma
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443828327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
This book deals with various aspects of performance in India; especially that related to dance and dance-drama. Rather than being a description of the various dance forms of India, it attempts to discuss the social equations and cultural ideas that a performance attempts to portray. In this sense, a performance is a narrative. At the same time, performances also deal with well-known narratives from the religious traditions of India, often redefining and recounting them in the process of performance. A study of these aspects is important to understand the kind of equations that define these discourses on the performance narratives. Chapter I shows the different forms of dances that are described in the iconographic canons and also the famous dance treatise the Natyashastra, correlating them with the sculptures of dance available in the temples. Here, the temples of south India datable to 6th- 13th centuries have been studied for this purpose. Attempt is made to study the gender equations that are expounded through these dance images and texts, as also the correlation between the audience and the performance and how these ideas are intertwined with the religious images. Chapter II deals with four Sanskrit burlesque plays written in the ancient period, which reverse social equations and classical dramatic representations through the genre of satire. Almost every elite-class person, generally idealized in the classical Sanskrit plays, is lampooned here. Issues of audience perception and the reception of this kind of reversed images of the ideal figures of the society are discussed in this chapter. Chapter III deals with the aesthetics of eroticism that form the basis of many Indian classical dances, how they are intertwined with the notion of devotionalism in Hinduism and how they are negotiated in the Indian classical dances in our contemporary period. A case study is done here of Odissi, the classical dance from the eastern state of Orissa, which draws extensively from the temple sculptures of dance. Chapter IV shows that sacred narrative in India is not always a means of glorifying the divine. Rather, sometimes it is also used to satirize the established notions of religiosity and of divinity. This forms the basis of this very interesting semi-classical dance-drama form called Ottan Thullal from the southern state of Kerala. Kathakali, the classical dance-drama and Mohiniattam, the classical dance from Kerala have dominated the scene so much that this form of dance-drama has been overshadowed and it is little known to the world outside Kerala, even in India. There is not much scholarship on Ottan Thullal. This chapter deals with this form and the manner in which it uses the idiom of satire to narrate the religious legends. Chapter V is a study of the Mithila narratives from the eastern region of Mithila in Bihar to understand the ways in which gender equations in the Mithila society influence the making of these narratives. There is a discussion of the nature of “folk narratives” in this chapter. Chapter VI takes some folk forms of performance and visual narratives from different states of India to show how social equations such as power hierarchy, gender and caste dimensions are negotiated. All these use the traditional religious space to work out these equations. Chapter VII on one hand is a comparative study of two Hindi films made in 1960s, based on the lives of two women dancers from ancient India. One of them is a historical figure and the other is a figure. On the other hand, this is an attempt o show how the narratives of these women dancers are remodeled in literary as well as the cinematic medium, every time these narratives are retold. Effort is made to show how the cultural memory of the ancient history of India that the modern narrators of these stories have been received as a process of acculturation, which influences this recasting of narratives in literature as well as in film. It is also shown that this process of narration through cultural memory is not a new phenomenon, since it occurred even in the ancient period when narrative was being remodeled to present in a new form before the audience.

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh PDF Author: Linda Colley
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030753944X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
In this remarkable reconstruction of an eighteenth-century woman's extraordinary and turbulent life, historian Linda Colley not only tells the story of Elizabeth Marsh, one of the most distinctive travelers of her time, but also opens a window onto a radically transforming world.Marsh was conceived in Jamaica, lived in London, Gibraltar, and Menorca, visited the Cape of Africa and Rio de Janeiro, explored eastern and southern India, and was held captive at the court of the sultan of Morocco. She was involved in land speculation in Florida and in international smuggling, and was caught up in three different slave systems. She was also a part of far larger histories. Marsh's lifetime saw new connections being forged across nations, continents, and oceans by war, empire, trade, navies, slavery, and print, and these developments shaped and distorted her own progress and the lives of those close to her. Colley brilliantly weaves together the personal and the epic in this compelling story of a woman in world history.

Subaltern Sovereigns

Subaltern Sovereigns PDF Author: Peter Berger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110458837
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems - both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices

The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices PDF Author: Philip J. Boyes
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789254795
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 633

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Book Description
Writing is not just a set of systems for transcribing language and communicating meaning, but an important element of human practice, deeply embedded in the cultures where it is present and fundamentally interconnected with all other aspects of human life. The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices explores these relationships in a number of different cultural contexts and from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeological, anthropological and linguistic. It offers new ways of approaching the study of writing and integrating it into wider debates and discussions about culture, history and archaeology.

The Emergence of Modern Hinduism

The Emergence of Modern Hinduism PDF Author: Richard S. Weiss
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520307054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Emergence of Modern Hinduism argues for the importance of regional, vernacular innovation in processes of Hindu modernization. Scholars usually trace the emergence of modern Hinduism to cosmopolitan reform movements, producing accounts that overemphasize the centrality of elite religion and the influence of Western ideas and models. In this study, the author considers religious change on the margins of colonialism by looking at an important local figure, the Tamil Shaiva poet and mystic Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Weiss narrates a history of Hindu modernization that demonstrates the transformative role of Hindu ideas, models, and institutions, making this text essential for scholarly audiences of South Asian history, religious studies, Hindu studies, and South Asian studies. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

Godroads

Godroads PDF Author: Peter Berger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108851312
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Dynamics of conversion and religious change more generally are extremely complex, yet it is crucial for contemporary societies to understand them. This volume contributes to this understanding by focussing on the processes and modalities of conversion within, between and across various religious traditions (Hinduism, Islamic Reformism, Christianity, indigenous religions) from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history and theology. While the book deals with Indian case studies, the introduction, preface (by Piers Vitebsky) and afterword (by Aparecida Vilaça) also offer a comparative perspective linking the Indian situation to contexts of conversion in other parts of the world. The introduction not only provides an overview of important research on conversion in India, it also intends to advance the general theoretical reflection on conversion, considers analytical tools for further research and discusses the work of important theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Joel Robbins and Marshall Sahlins who are not generally referred to in debates on conversion in India.

The Mortal God

The Mortal God PDF Author: Milinda Banerjee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316996387
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
The Mortal God is a study in intellectual history which uncovers how actors in colonial India imagined various figures of human, divine, and messianic rulers to battle over the nature and locus of sovereignty. It studies British and Indian political-intellectual elites as well as South Asian peasant activists, giving particular attention to Bengal, including the associated princely states of Cooch Behar and Tripura. Global intellectual history approaches are deployed to place India within wider trajectories of royal nationhood that unfolded across contemporaneous Europe and Asia. The book intervenes within theoretical debates about sovereignty and political theology, and offers novel arguments about decolonizing and subalternizing sovereignty.