Author: Günther-Dietz Sontheimer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Book Description
The Collection Brings Together The German Indologist G’nther Sontheimer`S Articles Spanning Two Decades. The Articles Show How His Thoughts On Khandoba Developed, The Great Breadth Of His Understanding Of The Cult And The Traditions Of Castes And Tribes For Whom Khandoba Is An Important God. He Makes Use Of A Wide Variety Of Source Materials Like Oral Epics, Songs, Statements And Local Literature. Sontheimer Understood The Khandoba Cult To Be A `Mirror Of Hinduism`. His Writings On Khandoba Provide An Extra-Ordinarily Rich Glimpse Into That Mirror.
King of Hunters, Warriors, and Shepherds
Author: Günther-Dietz Sontheimer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Book Description
The Collection Brings Together The German Indologist G’nther Sontheimer`S Articles Spanning Two Decades. The Articles Show How His Thoughts On Khandoba Developed, The Great Breadth Of His Understanding Of The Cult And The Traditions Of Castes And Tribes For Whom Khandoba Is An Important God. He Makes Use Of A Wide Variety Of Source Materials Like Oral Epics, Songs, Statements And Local Literature. Sontheimer Understood The Khandoba Cult To Be A `Mirror Of Hinduism`. His Writings On Khandoba Provide An Extra-Ordinarily Rich Glimpse Into That Mirror.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Book Description
The Collection Brings Together The German Indologist G’nther Sontheimer`S Articles Spanning Two Decades. The Articles Show How His Thoughts On Khandoba Developed, The Great Breadth Of His Understanding Of The Cult And The Traditions Of Castes And Tribes For Whom Khandoba Is An Important God. He Makes Use Of A Wide Variety Of Source Materials Like Oral Epics, Songs, Statements And Local Literature. Sontheimer Understood The Khandoba Cult To Be A `Mirror Of Hinduism`. His Writings On Khandoba Provide An Extra-Ordinarily Rich Glimpse Into That Mirror.
Say to the Sun, "Don't Rise," and to the Moon, "Don't Set"
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019935765X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 633
Book Description
Pastoralist traditions have long been extraordinarily important to the social, economic, political, and cultural life of western India. The Marathi-language oral literature of the Dhangar shepherds is not only one of the most important elements of the traditional cultural life of its region, but also a treasure of world literature. This volume presents translations of two lively and well-crafted examples of the ovi, a genre typical of the oral literature of Dhangars. The two ovis in the volume narrate the stories of Biroba and Dhuloba, two of these shepherds' most important gods. Each of the ovis tells an elaborate story of the birth of the god-a miraculous and complicated process in both cases-and of the struggles each one goes through in order to find and win his bride. The extensive introduction provides a literary analysis of the ovis and discusses what they reveal about the cosmology, geography, society, and political arrangements of their performers' world, as well as about the performers' views of pastoralists and women.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019935765X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 633
Book Description
Pastoralist traditions have long been extraordinarily important to the social, economic, political, and cultural life of western India. The Marathi-language oral literature of the Dhangar shepherds is not only one of the most important elements of the traditional cultural life of its region, but also a treasure of world literature. This volume presents translations of two lively and well-crafted examples of the ovi, a genre typical of the oral literature of Dhangars. The two ovis in the volume narrate the stories of Biroba and Dhuloba, two of these shepherds' most important gods. Each of the ovis tells an elaborate story of the birth of the god-a miraculous and complicated process in both cases-and of the struggles each one goes through in order to find and win his bride. The extensive introduction provides a literary analysis of the ovis and discusses what they reveal about the cosmology, geography, society, and political arrangements of their performers' world, as well as about the performers' views of pastoralists and women.
Home, Again!
Author: Dr. Ulhas R. Gunjal
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1481749854
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 471
Book Description
Home, Again! narrates the story of a European mother and her Indo-European son, who are struggling to understand who they are, against the backdrop of events in Europe and India. Angela Guttenberg, a twenty-two-year-old Austrian woman, graduates in anthropology from the University of Vienna in 1933. Disenchanted with Europe because of Hitlers rise, as well as her lovers conversion to Nazism, she sails to India for her post-graduate research. And she goes to Jejuri, a temple town in the Deccan famous for the folk culture of the sun-god, Khandoba, as well as for the concentration of the Dhangar Samaj, a nomadic community of shepherds, who are his worshippers. While researching the Dhangar culture, she falls in love with a Dhangar with whom she has a son. When her son, Haldiram Johann Holkar, a self-described mongrel child with a hybrid name, grows up, he goes to England for higher education. There, in the early 1960s, he sees the ugliness of British racism, as well as the glory of British liberalism. Upon his return to India, he begins to see the inadequacies of his people. And driven by his own modern vision for India, he confronts religious extremists on a day of communal tension in the Bombay of 1966only to be killed by them. At the end, Angela Guttenberg-Holkar, now middle-aged at fifty-five, returns to Vienna as she had gone to Indiadisenchanted with political life, struggling with her identity. The story progresses primarily through narratives and dialogues and, occasionally, through exchanges of letters, moving from one landscape to the otherfrom Vienna to Jejuri, then back to Europe, finally back to Indiaas the mother and the son strive to define who they are in a world in which diverse cultures meet to produce complicated identities.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1481749854
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 471
Book Description
Home, Again! narrates the story of a European mother and her Indo-European son, who are struggling to understand who they are, against the backdrop of events in Europe and India. Angela Guttenberg, a twenty-two-year-old Austrian woman, graduates in anthropology from the University of Vienna in 1933. Disenchanted with Europe because of Hitlers rise, as well as her lovers conversion to Nazism, she sails to India for her post-graduate research. And she goes to Jejuri, a temple town in the Deccan famous for the folk culture of the sun-god, Khandoba, as well as for the concentration of the Dhangar Samaj, a nomadic community of shepherds, who are his worshippers. While researching the Dhangar culture, she falls in love with a Dhangar with whom she has a son. When her son, Haldiram Johann Holkar, a self-described mongrel child with a hybrid name, grows up, he goes to England for higher education. There, in the early 1960s, he sees the ugliness of British racism, as well as the glory of British liberalism. Upon his return to India, he begins to see the inadequacies of his people. And driven by his own modern vision for India, he confronts religious extremists on a day of communal tension in the Bombay of 1966only to be killed by them. At the end, Angela Guttenberg-Holkar, now middle-aged at fifty-five, returns to Vienna as she had gone to Indiadisenchanted with political life, struggling with her identity. The story progresses primarily through narratives and dialogues and, occasionally, through exchanges of letters, moving from one landscape to the otherfrom Vienna to Jejuri, then back to Europe, finally back to Indiaas the mother and the son strive to define who they are in a world in which diverse cultures meet to produce complicated identities.
Making Faces
Author: Alka Hingorani
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082483724X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
Taberam Soni, Labh Singh, Amar Singh, and other artists live and work in the hill-villages of the lower Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, India. There they fashion face-images of deities (mohras) out of thin sheets of precious metal. Commissioned by upper-caste patrons, the objects are cultural embodiments of divine and earthly kinship. As the artists make the images, they also cross caste boundaries in a part of India where such differences still determine rules of contact and correspondence, proximity and association. Once a mohra has been completed and consecrated, its maker is not permitted to touch it or enter the temple in which it is housed; yet during its creation the artist is sovereign, treated deferentially as he shares living quarters with the high-caste patrons. Making Faces tells the story of these god-makers, the gods they make, and the communities that participate in the creative process and its accompanying rituals. For the author, the process of learning about Himachal, its art and artists, the people who make their home there, involved pursuing itinerant artists across difficult mountainous terrain with few, if any, means of communication between the thinly populated, high-altitude villages. The harsh geography of the region permits scant travel, and the itinerant artisan forms a critical link to the world outside; villages that commission mohras are often populated by a small number of families. Alka Hingorani evokes this world in rich visual and descriptive detail as she explores the ways in which both object and artisan are received and their identities transformed during a period of artistic endeavor. Making Faces is an original and evocative account, superbly illustrated, of the various phases in the lifecycle of a mohra, at different times a religious icon, an art object, and a repository of material wealth in an otherwise subsistence economy. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of anthropology, material culture, religion, art history, and South Asian studies.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082483724X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
Taberam Soni, Labh Singh, Amar Singh, and other artists live and work in the hill-villages of the lower Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, India. There they fashion face-images of deities (mohras) out of thin sheets of precious metal. Commissioned by upper-caste patrons, the objects are cultural embodiments of divine and earthly kinship. As the artists make the images, they also cross caste boundaries in a part of India where such differences still determine rules of contact and correspondence, proximity and association. Once a mohra has been completed and consecrated, its maker is not permitted to touch it or enter the temple in which it is housed; yet during its creation the artist is sovereign, treated deferentially as he shares living quarters with the high-caste patrons. Making Faces tells the story of these god-makers, the gods they make, and the communities that participate in the creative process and its accompanying rituals. For the author, the process of learning about Himachal, its art and artists, the people who make their home there, involved pursuing itinerant artists across difficult mountainous terrain with few, if any, means of communication between the thinly populated, high-altitude villages. The harsh geography of the region permits scant travel, and the itinerant artisan forms a critical link to the world outside; villages that commission mohras are often populated by a small number of families. Alka Hingorani evokes this world in rich visual and descriptive detail as she explores the ways in which both object and artisan are received and their identities transformed during a period of artistic endeavor. Making Faces is an original and evocative account, superbly illustrated, of the various phases in the lifecycle of a mohra, at different times a religious icon, an art object, and a repository of material wealth in an otherwise subsistence economy. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of anthropology, material culture, religion, art history, and South Asian studies.
Jejuri
Author: Arun Kolatkar
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590171639
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 92
Book Description
A sequence of stunningly simple but haunting poems, Jejuri is one of the great books of modern India. Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590171639
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 92
Book Description
A sequence of stunningly simple but haunting poems, Jejuri is one of the great books of modern India. Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.
In the Time of Trees and Sorrows
Author: Ann Grodzins Gold
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822328209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
A collaborative ethnography that collects ordinary persons' recollections of everyday life, politics, and the environment in Rajasthan from when the state was a kingdom and since independence.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822328209
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
A collaborative ethnography that collects ordinary persons' recollections of everyday life, politics, and the environment in Rajasthan from when the state was a kingdom and since independence.
Maharashtra
Author: Kumar Suresh Singh
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
ISBN: 9788179911006
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 2362
Book Description
Ethnological study.
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
ISBN: 9788179911006
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 2362
Book Description
Ethnological study.
Gods, Heroes and their Story Tellers
Author: V. Hari Saravanan
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 9384391492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 837
Book Description
We can hear Urumula Naganna’s drum roll during the rendition of the Sri Akammagaru Kaviya. An oral tradition which is as old as the hills is captured in the book Gods, Heroes and their Storytellers. Do you know the story of how the Madiga community came to inherit the right to skin cattle carcass and produce leather articles? How are contemporary Folk Oral Literatures connected to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? There are many such stories and tradition bearers who doggedly go on in spite of the onslaught of the digital media. The author here has tried his best in keeping these traditions alive by not only telling the stories but also by living with the story tellers themselves. The rich details give us a window to a world which is not only very far away for our everyday mundane existence but also makes us retrospect on what we are missing out. Each of the tradition bearers are different and so are their stories and the region to which they belong. These are not merely stories but a way of life for these oral narrators who are fast disappearing in today’s consumerist landscape. The need of the hour is to keep alive these traditions and the tradition bearers.
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 9384391492
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 837
Book Description
We can hear Urumula Naganna’s drum roll during the rendition of the Sri Akammagaru Kaviya. An oral tradition which is as old as the hills is captured in the book Gods, Heroes and their Storytellers. Do you know the story of how the Madiga community came to inherit the right to skin cattle carcass and produce leather articles? How are contemporary Folk Oral Literatures connected to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata? There are many such stories and tradition bearers who doggedly go on in spite of the onslaught of the digital media. The author here has tried his best in keeping these traditions alive by not only telling the stories but also by living with the story tellers themselves. The rich details give us a window to a world which is not only very far away for our everyday mundane existence but also makes us retrospect on what we are missing out. Each of the tradition bearers are different and so are their stories and the region to which they belong. These are not merely stories but a way of life for these oral narrators who are fast disappearing in today’s consumerist landscape. The need of the hour is to keep alive these traditions and the tradition bearers.
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint
Author: Smriti Srinivas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000604063
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint’s influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation transcends routine scholarly discussions about sainthood, cultures of worship, religious objects, Hinduism and Islam. Shirdi Sai Baba’s presence conveys inspiration and healing energies and he accepted the entreaties of people of all castes and creeds, offering an alternative to communal ideologies of his time – and the present. Considerations of Shirdi Sai Baba’s milieux of devotional praxis situate and localize debates about the meaning of nation and religion, past and present, urbanization, and class identity in transitions from colonial to postcolonial/global South Asia. The book expands the boundaries of the study of Shirdi Sai Baba and makes important contributions to South Asia Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Global Studies, Urban Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Inter-Asian Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Cultural Geography.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000604063
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora. Essays consider the saint’s influence on everyday life and how visual, narrative, textual, sensorial, performative, political, social, and spatial practices interpenetrate to produce multiple terrains of devotion. Contributions by twelve scholars of several academic disciplines explore eruptions and circulations of sacred materials, spatialities of devotional practices, visual and digital imaginaries, transcultural narrativizations, and material affects and effects of Sai Baba. The presentation transcends routine scholarly discussions about sainthood, cultures of worship, religious objects, Hinduism and Islam. Shirdi Sai Baba’s presence conveys inspiration and healing energies and he accepted the entreaties of people of all castes and creeds, offering an alternative to communal ideologies of his time – and the present. Considerations of Shirdi Sai Baba’s milieux of devotional praxis situate and localize debates about the meaning of nation and religion, past and present, urbanization, and class identity in transitions from colonial to postcolonial/global South Asia. The book expands the boundaries of the study of Shirdi Sai Baba and makes important contributions to South Asia Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Global Studies, Urban Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Inter-Asian Studies, Visual and Media Studies, and Cultural Geography.
Transaction and Hierarchy
Author: Harald Tambs-Lyche
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351393960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283
Book Description
In this volume, the author challenges a number of widely held cultural stereotypes about India. Caste is not as old as Indian civilization itself, and current changes are no more radical than in the past, for caste has evolved throughout its history. It is not a colonial invention, nor does it result from weak state control. There is no single form of Indian kingship, and power relations, fundamental as they are for understanding Indian society. Nor do Indian villages conform to a single type, and caste is as much urban as rural. Only in a regional ‘local’ perspective can we view it as a ‘system’. Caste does offer space for the individual, though in a particular Indian mould, and Hinduism does not provide for an integration of castes through ritual. In short, social organization varies widely in India, and cannot provide the key to the specificity of caste. This must be sought in the way society is imagined, the models of society current in Indian thought. Of course as mentioned above, there is no single model: Brahmins, kings, and merchants among others have all produced alternative models with themselves at the centre, vying for hegemony, while facing contesting models held by subalterns. Still, a hierarchical mode of thought is hegemonic and largely explains why Indians see their social stratification differently from people in the West. The volume will be indispensable for scholars of South Asian Sociology and Culture.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351393960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283
Book Description
In this volume, the author challenges a number of widely held cultural stereotypes about India. Caste is not as old as Indian civilization itself, and current changes are no more radical than in the past, for caste has evolved throughout its history. It is not a colonial invention, nor does it result from weak state control. There is no single form of Indian kingship, and power relations, fundamental as they are for understanding Indian society. Nor do Indian villages conform to a single type, and caste is as much urban as rural. Only in a regional ‘local’ perspective can we view it as a ‘system’. Caste does offer space for the individual, though in a particular Indian mould, and Hinduism does not provide for an integration of castes through ritual. In short, social organization varies widely in India, and cannot provide the key to the specificity of caste. This must be sought in the way society is imagined, the models of society current in Indian thought. Of course as mentioned above, there is no single model: Brahmins, kings, and merchants among others have all produced alternative models with themselves at the centre, vying for hegemony, while facing contesting models held by subalterns. Still, a hierarchical mode of thought is hegemonic and largely explains why Indians see their social stratification differently from people in the West. The volume will be indispensable for scholars of South Asian Sociology and Culture.