Ritual Journeys in South Asia

Ritual Journeys in South Asia
Author: Christoph Bergmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2019-08-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351679503

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This book focuses on the ritualized forms of mobility that constitute phenomena of pilgrimage in South Asia and establishes a new analytical framework for the study of ritual journeys. The book advances the conceptual scope of ‘classical’ Pilgrimage Studies and provides empirical depth through individual case studies. A key concern is the strategies of ritualization through which actors create, assemble and (re-)articulate certain modes of displacement to differentiate themselves from everyday forms of locomotion. Ritual journeys are understood as being both productive of and produced by South Asia’s socio-economically uneven, politically charged and culturally variegated landscapes. From various disciplinary angles, each chapter explores how spaces and movements in space are continually created, contested and transformed through ritual journeys. By focusing on this co-production of space and mobility, the book delivers a conceptually driven and empirically grounded engagement with the diverse and changing traditions of ritual journeying in South Asia. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book is a must-have reference work for academics interested in South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Anthropology and Human Geography with a focus on pilgrimage and the socio-spatial ideas and practices of ritualized movements in South Asia.

Words and Deeds

Words and Deeds
Author: Jörg Gengnagel
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2005
Genre: Buddhism
ISBN: 9783447051521

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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.

Consecration Rituals in South Asia

Consecration Rituals in South Asia
Author: István Keul
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-02-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004337180

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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.

Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia

Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia
Author: Fabrizio Ferrari
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2011-03-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136846298

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Drawing on original fieldwork, this book develops a fresh methodological approach to the study of indigenous understandings of disease as possession, and looks at healing rituals in different South Asian cultural contexts. Contributors discuss the meaning of 'disease', 'possession' and 'healing' in relation to South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism, and how South Asians deal with the divine in order to negotiate health and wellbeing. The book goes on to look at goddesses, gods and spirits as a cause and remedy of a variety of diseases, a study that has proved significant to the ethics and politics of responding to health issues. It contributes to a consolidation and promotion of indigenous ways as a method of understanding physical and mental imbalances through diverse conceptions of the divine. Chapters offer a fascinating overview of healing rituals in South Asia and provide a full-length, sustained discussion of the interface between religion, ritual, and folklore. The book presents a fresh insight into studies of Asian Religion and the History of Medicine.

Dealing with Deities

Dealing with Deities
Author: Selva J. Raj
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791482006

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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.

Sacred Play

Sacred Play
Author: Selva J. Raj
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2010-01-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438429819

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Explores the significance of levity and humor in South Asian religious traditions.

Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia

Devotional Islam in Contemporary South Asia
Author: Michel Boivin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2015-12-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317379993

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The Muslim shrine is at the crossroad of many processes involving society and culture. It is the place where a saint – often a Sufi - is buried, and it works as a main social factor, with the power of integrating or rejecting people and groups, and as a mirror reflecting the intricacies of a society. The book discusses the role of popular Islam in structuring individual and collective identities in contemporary South Asia. It identifies similarities and differences between the worship of saints and the pattern of religious attendance to tombs and mausoleums in South Asian Sufism and Shi`ism. Inspired by new advances in the field of ritual and pilgrimage studies, the book demonstrates that religious gatherings are spaces of negotiation and redefinitions of religious identity and of the notion of sainthood. Drawing from a large corpus of vernacular and colonial sources, as well as the register of popular literature and ethnographic observation, the authors describe how religious identities are co-constructed through the management of rituals, and are constantly renegotiated through discourses and religious practices. By enabling students, researchers and academics to critically understand the complexity of religious places within the world of popular and devotional Islam, this geographical re-mapping of Muslim religious gatherings in contemporary South Asia contributes to a new understanding of South Asian and Islamic Studies.

Ritual Innovation

Ritual Innovation
Author: Brian Kemble Pennington
Publisher: Suny Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Ritual
ISBN: 9781438469027

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Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends.

Culture, Creation, and Procreation

Culture, Creation, and Procreation
Author: Monika Böck
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2000
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781571819123

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These 12 chapters discuss the constitution of kinship among different communities in South Asia and addressing the relationship between ideology and practice, cultural models, and individual strategies. Chapters center around three topics: community and person, gender and change, and shared knowledge and practice. The volume as a whole contributes to the on-going debate on models of well-being within kinship studies. Contributors include anthropologists from Europe, Asia, and the United States. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The World in Words

The World in Words
Author: Daniel Joseph Majchrowicz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009340751

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A literary and historical analysis of Urdu travel writing during the nineteenth century.