Description
Book SynopsisProposes that positive oracular or ecstatic possession is the most common form of spiritual expression in India, and that it has been linguistically distinguished from negative, disease-producing possession for thousands of years.
Trade ReviewThis comprehensive work should appear on the shelf of every serious scholar of South Asian religion... Essential. CHOICE An important and path-breaking book. -- Alf Hiltebeitel Journal of the American Oriental Society An amazing and essential study for anybody working on deity and spirit possession in South Asia. -- Beatrix Hauser Social Anthropology
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Orthodoxies, Madness, and Method 1. Academic and Brahmanical Orthodoxies Part II: Ethnography, Modernity, and the Languages of Possession 2. New and Inherited Paradigms: Methodologies for the Study of Possession 3. Possession, Trance Channeling, and Modernity 4. Notes on Regional Languages and Models of Possession Part III. Classical Literature 5. The Vedas and Upanisads 6. Friendly Acquisitions, Hostile Takeovers, The Panorama of Possession in the Sanskrit Epics 7. Enlightenment and the Classical Culture of Possession 8. Vampires, Prostitutes, and Poets: Narrativity and the Aesthetics of Possession 9. Devotion as Possession 10. Possession in Tantra: Constructed Bodies and Empowerment 11. Tantra and the Diaspora of Childhood Possession 12. The Medicalization of Possession in Ayurveda and Tantra 13. Conclusions: Identity Among the Possessed and Dispossessed Bibliography Index
