Kamakhya, a Socio-cultural Study

Kamakhya, a Socio-cultural Study PDF Author: Nihar Ranjan Mishra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This Is A Comprehensive Work On The Kamakhya Temple Complex In Assam: The Complex Processes Of The Deity S Sanskritization And The Temple S Role In Integrating The People Of This Region With The Mainland. It Makes A Detailed Study Of The Temple Rituals, Festivals And Personnel And Socio-Cultural Life And Includes An Account On Spread Of Saktism In The Region.

Kamakhya, a Socio-cultural Study

Kamakhya, a Socio-cultural Study PDF Author: Nihar Ranjan Mishra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Is A Comprehensive Work On The Kamakhya Temple Complex In Assam: The Complex Processes Of The Deity S Sanskritization And The Temple S Role In Integrating The People Of This Region With The Mainland. It Makes A Detailed Study Of The Temple Rituals, Festivals And Personnel And Socio-Cultural Life And Includes An Account On Spread Of Saktism In The Region.

Irreverence and the Sacred

Irreverence and the Sacred PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: Paperbackshop UK Import
ISBN: 0190911964
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Irreverence and the Sacred brings together some of the most cutting edge, interdisciplinary, and international scholars working today in order to debate key issues in the critical and comparative study of religion. The project is inspired in large part by the work of Bruce Lincoln, whose influential and wide-ranging scholarship has consistently posed challenging, provocative, and often-irreverent questions that have really pushed the boundaries of the field of religious studies in important, sometimes controversial ways. Retracing the history of the discipline of religious studies, Lincoln argues that the field has tended to champion a "validating, feel-good" approach to religion, rather than posing more critical questions about religious claims to authority and their role in history, politics, and social change. A critical approach to the history of religions, he suggests, would focus on the human, temporal, and material aspects of phenomena that are claimed to have a superhuman, eternal, or transcendent status. This volume takes up Lincoln's challenge to "do better," by engaging in critical analyses of four key themes in the study of religion: myth, ritual, gender, and politics. The book also interrogates the "politics of scholarship" itself, critically examining the relations of power and material interests at work in the study as well as the practice of religion. The scholars involved in this project include not only some of the most important figures in the American study of religion--such as Wendy Doniger, Russell McCutcheon, Ivan Strenski, and Lincoln himself--but also European scholars whose work is hugely influential overseas but not as well known in the U.S.--such as Stefan Arvidsson, Claude Calame, Nicolas Meylan, and others.

The Path of Desire

The Path of Desire PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226831124
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
"In the Western popular imagination, there is a singular association between Tantra and sex. But behind sensationalist stories of Tantric lovemaking lies a rich spiritual and textual tradition of which sexual union is only a small, and fiercely debated, part. In The Path of Desire, Hugh B. Urban takes us on an ethnographic journey to Assam, the heartland of Tantric practice in contemporary India, revealing the vibrant, dynamic lived tradition of Hindu Tantra. The Path of Desire expands our definition of kāma, a central concept of Tantra generally translated as "desire," to focus on mundane and worldly desires such as healing and childbearing. This more holistic notion of desire manifests itself in popular folk practice, which Urban categorizes in four forms: institutional Tantra, comprised of gurus, disciples, and esoteric rituals; public Tantra, involving offerings and temple celebrations; folk Tantra, focusing on practices of healing, protection, material wellbeing, and desire fulfillment; and pop Tantra, or how Tantra is portrayed in popular media such as paperbacks, comic books, and movies. The result is a nuanced understanding of Tantra as a diverse lived tradition"--

The Power of Tantra

The Power of Tantra PDF Author: Hugh B. Urban
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857715860
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
In the West, the varied body of texts and traditions known as Tantra for more than two centuries has had the capacity to scandalize and shock. For European colonizers, Orientalist scholars and Christian missionaries of the Victorian era, Tantra was generally seen as the most degenerate and depraved example of the worst tendencies of the so-called 'Indian mind': a pathological mixture of sensuality and religion that prompted the decline of modern Hinduism. Yet for most contemporary New Age and popular writers, Tantra is celebrated as a much-needed affirmation of physical pleasure and sex: indeed as a 'cult of ecstasy' to counter the perceived hypocritical prudery of many Westerners. In recent years, Tantra has become the focus of a still larger cultural and political debate. In the eyes of many Hindus, much of the western literature on Tantra represents a form of neo-colonialism, which continues to portray India as an exotic, erotic, hyper-sexualized Orient. Which, then, is the 'real' Tantra? Focusing on one of the oldest and most important Tantric traditions, based in Assam, northeast India, Hugh B Urban shows that Tantra is less about optimal sexual pleasure than about harnessing the divine power of the goddess that flows alike through the cosmos, the human body and political society. In a fresh and vital contribution to the field, the author suggests that the 'real' meaning of Tantra lies in helping us rethink not just the history of Indian religions, but also our own modern obsessions with power, sex and the invidious legacies of cultural imperialism.

Re-imagining South Asian Religions

Re-imagining South Asian Religions PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004242376
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences. Moving away from canonical texts, established authorities, and received historiography, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological perspectives including philosophy, history, hermeneutics, migration and diaspora studies, ethnography, performance studies, lived religion approaches, and aesthetics. Reflecting a balance of theory and substantive content, the papers in this volume call into question key critical terms, challenge established frames of reference, and offer innovative and alternative interpretations of South Asian ways of knowing and being.

Black Magic, Witchcraft and Occultism

Black Magic, Witchcraft and Occultism PDF Author: Sajal Nag
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000905268
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Black magic, occult practices and witchcraft still evoke huge curiosity, interest and amazement in the minds of people. Although witchcraft in Europe has been a widely studied phenomenon, black magic and occult are not yet a popular theme of academic research, even though India is known as a land of magic, tantra and occult. The Indian State of Assam was historically feared as the land of Kamrup-Kamakhya, black magic, witchcraft and occultic practices. It was where different Tantric cults as well as other occult practices thrived. The Khasi Hills are known for the practice of snake vampire worship. The village of Mayong is the village, where magic and occult is still practiced as a living tradition. This book is one of the rarest collections where such practices are researched, recorded and academically analyzed. It is one of those collections where studies of all three practices of Black Magic, Witchcraft and Occult are comibned into one single book.

Pilgrimage and Politics in Colonial Bengal

Pilgrimage and Politics in Colonial Bengal PDF Author: Imma Ramos
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351840010
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Reviving Sati's corpse: Mother India tours and Hindutva in the twenty-first century -- Bibliography -- Index

A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion

A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Mikel Burley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350098337
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book is a unique introduction to studying the philosophy of religion, drawing on a wide range of cultures and literary sources in an approach that is both methodologically innovative and expansive in its cross-cultural and multi-religious scope. Employing his expertise in interdisciplinary and Wittgenstein-influenced methods, Mikel Burley draws on works of ethnography and narrative fiction, including Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, to critically engage with existing approaches to the philosophy of religion and advocate a radical, pluralist approach. Breaking away from the standard fixation on a narrow construal of theism, topics discussed include conceptions of compassion in Buddhist ethics, cannibalism in mortuary rituals, divine possession and animal sacrifice in Hindu Goddess worship and animism in indigenous traditions. Original and engaging, Burley's synthesis of philosophical, anthropological and literary elements expands and diversifies the philosophy of religion, providing an essential introduction for anyone interested in studying the radical plurality of forms that religion takes in human life.

Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman

Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman PDF Author: Carola Lorea
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004324712
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book explores historical and cultural aspects of modern and contemporary Bengal through the performance-centred study of a particular repertoire: the songs of the saint-composer Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), who is particularly revered among Baul and Fakir singers. The author shows how songs, if examined as 'sacred scriptures', represent multi-dimensional texts for the study of South Asian religions. Revealing how previous studies about Bauls mirror the history of folkloristics in Bengal, this book presents sacred songs as a precious symbolic capital for a marginalized community of dislocated and unorthodox Hindus, who consider the practice of singing in itself an integral part of the path towards self-realization.

The Origins of the World's Mythologies

The Origins of the World's Mythologies PDF Author: E.J. Michael Witzel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199913323
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this "Out of Africa" mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, Witzel suggests that these common myths--recounted by the communities of the "African Eve"--are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions. Witzel's book is an intellectual hand grenade that will doubtless generate considerable excitement--and consternation--in the scholarly community. Indeed, everyone interested in mythology will want to grapple with Witzel's extraordinary hypothesis about the spirituality of our common ancestors, and to understand what it tells us about our modern cultures and the way they are linked at the deepest level.