Religion Devotion And Medicine In North India

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Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India

Author : Fabrizio M. Ferrari
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781472598714

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Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India by Fabrizio M. Ferrari Pdf

This volume examines notions of health and illness in North Indian devotional culture, with particular attention paid to the worship of the goddess Sitala, the Cold Lady. Consistently portrayed in colonial and postcolonial literature as the ambiguous 'smallpox goddess', Sitala is here discussed as a protector of children and women, a portrayal that emerges from textual sources as well as material culture. The eradication of smallpox did not pose a threat to Sitala and her worship. She continues to be an extremely popular goddess. Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India critically examines the rise and affirmation of the 'smallpox myth' in India and beyond, and explains how Indian narratives, ritual texts and devotional songs have celebrated Sitala as a loving mother who protects her children from the effects, and the fear, of poxes, fevers and infantile disorders but also all sorts of new threats (such as global pandemics, addictions and environmental catastrophes). The book explores a wide range of ritual and devotional practices, including scheduled festivals, songs, vows, pageants, austerities, possession, animal sacrifices and various forms of offering. Built on extensive fieldwork and a close textual analysis of sources in Sanskrit and vernacular languages (Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali) as well as on a rich bibliography on the struggle against smallpox in colonial and post-colonial India, the book reflects on the ambiguous nature of Sitala as a phenomenon largely dependent on the enduring fascination with the exotic, and the horrific, that has pervaded public renditions of Indian culture in indigenous fiction, colonial reports, medical literature and now global culture. To aid study, the volume includes images, web links, appendixes and a filmography.

Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India

Author : Fabrizio M. Ferrari
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781472598721

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Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India by Fabrizio M. Ferrari Pdf

This volume examines notions of health and illness in North Indian devotional culture, with particular attention paid to the worship of the goddess Sitala, the Cold Lady. Consistently portrayed in colonial and postcolonial literature as the ambiguous 'smallpox goddess', Sitala is here discussed as a protector of children and women, a portrayal that emerges from textual sources as well as material culture. The eradication of smallpox did not pose a threat to Sitala and her worship. She continues to be an extremely popular goddess. Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India critically examines the rise and affirmation of the 'smallpox myth' in India and beyond, and explains how Indian narratives, ritual texts and devotional songs have celebrated Sitala as a loving mother who protects her children from the effects, and the fear, of poxes, fevers and infantile disorders but also all sorts of new threats (such as global pandemics, addictions and environmental catastrophes). The book explores a wide range of ritual and devotional practices, including scheduled festivals, songs, vows, pageants, austerities, possession, animal sacrifices and various forms of offering. Built on extensive fieldwork and a close textual analysis of sources in Sanskrit and vernacular languages (Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali) as well as on a rich bibliography on the struggle against smallpox in colonial and post-colonial India, the book reflects on the ambiguous nature of Sitala as a phenomenon largely dependent on the enduring fascination with the exotic, and the horrific, that has pervaded public renditions of Indian culture in indigenous fiction, colonial reports, medical literature and now global culture. To aid study, the volume includes images, web links, appendixes and a filmography.

Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman

Author : Carola Lorea
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004324718

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Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman by Carola Lorea Pdf

In this book, Lorea explores the relationship between Bengali folklore, heterodox religious movements and politics of cultural representation through the contextual study of the eccentric guru Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), his ecstatic songs and their performers.

Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia

Author : Ivette M. Vargas-O'Bryan,Zhou Xun
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317689959

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Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia by Ivette M. Vargas-O'Bryan,Zhou Xun Pdf

Recent academic and medical initiatives have highlighted the benefits of studying culturally embedded healing traditions that incorporate religious and philosophical viewpoints to better understand local and global healing phenomena. Capitalising on this trend, the present volume looks at the diverse models of healing that interplay with culture and religion in Asia. Cutting across several Asian regions from Hong Kong to mainland China, Tibet, India, and Japan, the book addresses healing from a broader perspective and reflects a fresh new outlook on the complexities of Asian societies and their approaches to health. In exploring the convergences and collisions a society must negotiate, it shows the emerging urgency in promoting multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research on disease, religion and healing in Asia. Drawing on original fieldwork, contributors present their latest research on diverse local models of healing that occur when disease and religion meet in South and East Asian cultures. Revealing the symbiotic relationship of disease, religion and healing and their colliding values in Asia often undetected in healthcare research, the book draws attention to religious, political and social dynamics, issues of identity and ethics, practical and epistemological transformations, and analogous cultural patterns. It challenges the reader to rethink predominantly long-held Western interpretations of disease management and religion. Making a significant contribution to the field of transcultural medicine, religious studies in Asia as well as to a better understanding of public health in Asia as a whole, it will be of interest to students and scholars of Health Studies, Asian Religions and Philosophy.

The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess

Author : Mandakranta Bose
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2018-05-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780191079696

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The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess by Mandakranta Bose Pdf

The Oxford History of Hinduism: The Goddess provides a critical exposition of the Hindu idea of the divine feminine, or Devī, conceived as a singularity expressed in many forms. With the theological principles examined in the opening chapters, the book proceeds to describe and expound historically how individual manifestations of Devī have been imagined in Hindu religious culture and their impact upon Hindu social life. In this quest the contributors draw upon the history and philosophy of major Hindu ideologies, such as the Purāṇic, Tāntric, and Vaiṣṇava belief systems. A particular distinction of the book is its attention not only to the major goddesses from the earliest period of Hindu religious history but also to goddesses of later origin, in many cases of regional provenance and influence. Viewed through the lens of worship practices, legend, and literature, belief in goddesses is discovered as the formative impulse of much of public and private life. The influence of the goddess culture is especially powerful on women's life, often paradoxically situating women between veneration and subjection. This apparent contradiction arises from the humanization of goddesses while acknowledging their divinity, which is central to Hindu beliefs. In addition to studying the social and theological aspect of the goddess ideology, the contributors take anthropological, sociological, and literary approaches to delineate the emotional force of the goddess figure that claims intense human attachments and shapes personal and communal lives.

Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation

Author : Sathyaraj Venkatesan,Antara Chatterjee,A. David Lewis,Brian Callender
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2022-05-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9789811912962

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Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation by Sathyaraj Venkatesan,Antara Chatterjee,A. David Lewis,Brian Callender Pdf

This edited book analyses how artists, authors, and cultural practitioners have responded to and represented episodes of epidemics/pandemics through history. Covering a broad range of notable epidemics/pandemics (black death, cholera, Influenza, AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19), the chapters examine the cultural representations of epidemics and pandemics in different contexts, periods, languages, media, and genres. Interdisciplinary in nature and drawing on perspectives from medicine, literature, medical anthropology, philosophy of medicine, and cultural theory, the book investigates and emphasizes the urgent need to reflect on past catastrophes caused by such outbreaks. By delving into cultural history, it re-examines how societies and communities have responded in the past to species-threatening epidemics/pandemics. Sure to be of interest to lay readers as well as students and researchers, this work situates epidemics and pandemics outbreaks within the contexts of culture and narrative, and their complex and layered representation, commenting on intersections of contagion, culture, and community. It offers a cross-cultural, global, and comparative analysis of the trajectories, histories and responses to various epidemics/pandemics that impacted people worldwide.

Arguing from Cognitive Science of Religion

Author : Hans Van Eyghen
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2020-04-02
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350100312

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Arguing from Cognitive Science of Religion by Hans Van Eyghen Pdf

This book considers whether recent theories from Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) undermine the epistemic status of religious belief. After introducing the key theories in the growing area of CSR, Hans Van Eyghen explores some of the epistemic questions surrounding CSR, including: Is CSR incompatible with the truth of religious belief? How might CSR show that religious belief is unreliably formed? And, finally, does CSR undermine the justification of religious belief by religious experiences? In addressing these questions, he demonstrates how CSR does not undermine the epistemic bases for religious belief. This book offers a clear and concise overview of the current state of cognitive science of religion and will be of particular interest to scholars working in philosophy and epistemology of religion.

Reciting the Goddess

Author : Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780190844554

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Reciting the Goddess by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz Pdf

Reciting the Goddess presents the first critical study of the Svasthanivratakatha (SVK), a sixteenth-century Hindu narrative textual tradition. The extensive SVK manuscript tradition offers a rare opportunity to observe the making of a specific, distinct Hindu religious tradition. Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz argues that the SVK serves as a lens through which we can observe the creation of modern 'Hinduism' in the Himalayas, as the text both mirrored and informed key moments in the self-conscious creation of Nepal as the 'world's only Hindu kingdom' in the late medieval and early modern period. Birkenholtz mines the literary historiography that is contained within the SVK text itself, chronicling the text's literary and narrative development as well as the development of the Svasthani goddess tradition. She outlines the process whereby the SVK gradually transformed into a Purana text, and became a critical source for Nepali Hindu belief and identity. She also examines the elusive character of the goddess Svasthani whose identity is tied to the pan-Hindu goddess tradition, and the representation of women in the SVK and the ways in which the text influenced local and regional debates on the ideal of Hindu womanhood. Reciting the Goddess presents Nepal's celebrated SVK as a micro-level illustration of the powerful ways in which people, place, and literature intersect to produce new ideas and concepts of identity and place, even in a historically non-literate culture.

Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds

Author : Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781438480138

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Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds by Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger Pdf

In Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes the agency of materiality—the ability of materials to have an effect on both humans and deities—beyond human intentions. Using materials from three regions where Flueckiger conducted extensive fieldwork, she begins with Indian understandings of the agency of ornaments that have the desired effects of protecting women and making them more auspicious. Subsequent chapters bring in examples of materiality that are agentive beyond human intentions, from a south Indian goddess tradition where female guising transforms the aggressive masculinity of men who wear saris, braids, and breasts to the presence of cement images of Ravana in Chhattisgarh, which perform alternative theologies and ideologies to those of dominant textual traditions of the Ramayana epic. Deeply ethnographic and accessibly written, Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds expands our understanding of material agency as well as the parameters of religion more broadly. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program—a limited competition designed to make outstanding humanities books available to a wide audience. Learn more at the Fellowships Open Book Program at https://www.neh.gov/grants/odh/FOBP, and access the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/8716.

The Gender of Caste

Author : Charu Gupta
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2016-04-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780295806563

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The Gender of Caste by Charu Gupta Pdf

Caste and gender are complex markers of difference that have traditionally been addressed in isolation from each other, with a presumptive maleness present in most studies of Dalits (“untouchables”) and a presumptive upper-casteness in many feminist studies. In this study of the representations of Dalits in the print culture of colonial north India, Charu Gupta enters new territory by looking at images of Dalit women as both victims and vamps, the construction of Dalit masculinities, religious conversion as an alternative to entrapment in the Hindu caste system, and the plight of indentured labor. The Gender of Caste uses print as a critical tool to examine the depictions of Dalits by colonizers, nationalists, reformers, and Dalits themselves and shows how differentials of gender were critical in structuring patterns of domination and subordination.

Teaching AIDS

Author : Dilip K. Das
Publisher : Springer
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2019-02-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789811361203

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Teaching AIDS by Dilip K. Das Pdf

This book approaches the subject of AIDS pedagogy by analysing the complex links between representation or discourse, ideology, power relations and practices of self, understood from the perspective of embodiment. While there is a fairly large amount of literature available on the social, economic, psychological and policy dimensions of the epidemic, there is virtually nothing on its cultural politics. As a critique of the national AIDS pedagogy, this book attempts to fill the gap. It addresses important issues in cultural studies, body studies, medical humanities, disease control policy and behaviour change communication strategies. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of culture studies and social sciences, especially social anthropology, community health, health management. and gender studies.

Dealing with Disasters

Author : Diana Riboli,Pamela J. Stewart,Andrew J. Strathern,Davide Torri
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030561048

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Dealing with Disasters by Diana Riboli,Pamela J. Stewart,Andrew J. Strathern,Davide Torri Pdf

Providing a fresh look at some of the pressing issues of our world today, this collection focuses on experiential and ritualized coping practices in response to a multitude of environmental challenges—cyclones, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, warfare and displacements of peoples and environmental resource exploitation. Eco-cosmological practices conducted by skilled healing practitioners utilize knowledge embedded in the cosmological grounding of place and experiences of place and the landscapes in which such experience is encapsulated. A range of geographic case studies are presented in this volume, exploring Asia, Europe, the Pacific, and South America. With special reference throughout to ritual as a mode of seeking the stabilization, renewal, and continuity of life processes, this volume will be of particular interest to readers working in shamanic and healing practices, environmental concerns surrounding sustainability and conservation, ethnomedical systems, and religious and ritual studies.

What is Hinduism?

Author : Michael Baltutis
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2024-05-14
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781040025925

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What is Hinduism? by Michael Baltutis Pdf

This book is an engaging introduction to the complex religious tradition of Hinduism. Central to its focus is demonstrating the fundamental diversity within Hinduism through the multiplicity of its core beliefs and traditions. Chapters are divided into four historical categories – Vedic, Ascetic, Classical, and Contemporary Hinduism – with each examining one deity alongside one key term, serving as a twin focal point for a more complex discussion of related key texts, ideas, social structures, religious practices, festivals, and concepts such as ritual and sacrifice, music and devotion, and engagement and renunciation. The organization of this book requires that we see deities as not simply divine individuals who preside over one part of the Hindu world, but that each deity operates as a larger cultural category whose related persons, concepts, and practices provide a vivid lens through which Hindu devotees see and continue to readapt to the world in which they live. With study questions, glossaries, and lists of key contemporary figures, this book is an essential and comprehensive resource for students encountering the multiplicity of Hinduism for the first time.

Veins of Devotion

Author : Jacob Copeman
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780813544496

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Veins of Devotion by Jacob Copeman Pdf

Veins of Devotion details recent collaborations between guru-led devotional movements and public health campaigns to encourage voluntary blood donation in northern India. Focusing primarily on Delhi, Jacob Copeman carefully situates the practice within the context of religious gift-giving, sacrifice, caste, kinship, and nationalism. The book analyzes the operations of several high-profile religious orders that organize large-scale public blood-giving events and argues that blood donation has become a site not only of frenetic competition between different devotional movements, but also of intense spiritual creativity.

Medical Marginality in South Asia

Author : David Hardiman,Projit Bihari Mukharji
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781136284038

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Medical Marginality in South Asia by David Hardiman,Projit Bihari Mukharji Pdf

Examining the world of popular healing in South Asia, this book looks at the way that it is marginalised by the state and medical establishment while at the same time being very important in the everyday lives of the poor. It describes and analyses a world of ‘subaltern therapeutics’ that both interacts with and resists state-sanctioned and elite forms of medical practice. The relationship is seen as both a historical as well as ongoing one. Focusing on those who exist and practice in the shadow of statist medicine, the book discusses the many ways in which they try to heal a range of maladies, and how they experience their marginality. The contributors also provide a history of such therapeutics, in the process challenging the widespread belief that such ‘traditional’ therapeutics are relatively static and unchanging. In focusing on these problems of transition, they open up one of the central concerns of subaltern historiography. This is an important contribution to the history of medicine and society, and subaltern and South Asian studies.