| Tantra, Ritual Performance, and Politics in Nepal and Kerala: Embodying the Goddess-Clan Contributor(s): Martin, Matthew (Author) |
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ISBN: 9004438998 ISBN-13: 9789004438996 Publisher: Brill OUR PRICE: $153.90 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: August 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Devotional - Social Science | Customs & Traditions - Religion | Comparative Religion |
| Physical Information: 308 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In previous studies of South Asian Tantric ritual, scholars tend to focus on one region or context. For the first time, Tantra, Ritual Performance and Politics in Nepal and Kerala: Embodying the Goddess-clan offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observed in two locales: Navadurgā rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyāṭṭam in North Kerala. In this book, Matthew Martin advances a new theory of ritual, which spotlights the way dancer-mediums embody medieval goddess-clans and ancestor deities, through offerings of food and sacrifice, that synchronize their denizens with the land in spiralling web-like ritual networks. Uniquely interdisciplinary in style, this study synthesizes cultural history, ethnography, and theory to explore the continuities - historical, societal, and political - that characterize these ritual traditions across the subcontinent. |