The Cult Of The Goddess Pattini

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The Cult Of The Goddess Pattini

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Release Date : 1987-01-01

The Cult Of The Goddess Pattini written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Motilal Banarsidass this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1987-01-01 with Religion categories.

Pattini-goddess, virgin, wife and mother; folk deity of Sinhala Buddhists and Jains; and assimilated goddess of the Hindu pantheon-has been worshiped in Sri Lanks and South India for fifteen hundred years or more, as she still is today. This long-awaited book is the culmination of Gananath Obeyesekere's comprehensive study of the Pattini cult and its historical, sociological, and psychoanalytical role in the culture of South Asia. A well-known anthropologist and a native of Sri Lanka, Obeyesekere displays his impeccable scholarship and a stunning range of theoretical perspectives in this work, the most detailed analysis of a single religious complex in South Asian ethnography (and possibly in all of anthropology). Since 1955 Obeyesekere has observed and participated in modern performances of the rituals of worship, healing, and propitiation in the Pattini cult, particularly the postharvest ritual known as the gammaduva. He presents detailed texts of the gammaduva, placing them in their historical and mythic traditions. Using the texts, he formulates a cultural analysis of the Buddhist pantheon and a critique of empiricist notions of South Asian historiography. Obeyesekere shows that some seemingly historical figures of South India and Sri Lanka are mythic characters and that their historical significance can best be understood by an anthropological analysis of myth rather than through a reification of myth in history. The concurrent Hindu worship of Pattini with its myths and rituals is described in detail. Obeyesekere documents the Sanskritization of Pattini, the changing physical structures of the goddess's shrines from the 1930s to the present, the assumption by Brahman priests of ritual functions formerly carried out by folk priest, and the sociocultural causes of these changes. He traces, too, the origins and diffusion of the cult throughout its entire history, as well as its survival today. Of psychological interest is the problematic status of Pattini as virgin, wife, and mother and her relationship with her god-husband Palanga and his courtesan Madevi. Obeyesekere discusses the psychodynamics of this relationship in detail and explains its role in Hindu-Buddhist socialization and family structure. Further, he uses this analysis to account for local variations in the performance and structure of the ritual. The ritual of the killing and resurrection of Pattini's husband and her role as mater dolorosa will interest scholars of comparative religion.

Isis

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Author : Chris Morgan
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2016-02

Isis written by Chris Morgan and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-02 with History categories.

On Indias south-western or Malabar coast is situated an ancient Hindu temple which is these days devoted to the famous Hindu god Shiva and his consort the fearsome goddess Kali. This is Kurumbha-Bhagavathy Devi outside of the modern city of Cochin or Kochi in Kerala state. Travel back in time and the temple housed other gods. Once it was the home of the Buddhist/Jaina goddess Pattini whose mortal husband was tried and killed in a series of brutal events still commemorated in the temples ritual year. Before this and the story gets even stranger, as there are said to be remains of a secret, underground shrine, the home to a mystery cult dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. At the time of Christ, there was indeed a Greco-Roman merchant colony based in this part of India. Greek, Roman & Near Eastern merchants travelled to India after a regular, if epic, sea journey of two thousand miles across the Arabian Ocean, making their first landfall at a port known in the ancient world as Musiris. Clues to the religious practices of these ancient traders is evident not just in the surviving architecture but in very many, sometimes unique features of the later cults, continuing into the modern day. Some of the best examples come from the rites of Pattini as once practiced at Kurumba-Bhagavathy Devi. Experts have often identified in the story of her husbands death and resurrection, something of the Near Eastern cult of Attis. But a more recent and credible theory is that the temple once hosted the mysteries of the cult of Isis, whose husband Osiris was also cruelly cut down but then resurrected by her magical prowess. So without more ado let me tell the whole story from its beginnings on the banks of the Nile. The story of Isis and Osiris is the basis of Egypts most popular religion. In what follows I trace the origins of this to the Egypts pyramid age in the middle of the second millennia BCE. Arguably it is even older. A great deal of this book is devoted to describing what is known about the cult of Isis and Osiris from Egyptian records. This, I shall argue, is the basis for what comes later in the time-line, when the world was dominated by the Greek and Roman Empires. Isis and Osiris became the focus of a global religion and the basis of the most popular of all classical mystery cults. This is precisely the time at which a small, Near Eastern shrine was built in South-West India to service the needs of the merchant trading post. Mysteries of Isis were popular among all social classes in the ancient world, but especially mariners. In India we have a building which could itself be thought of as storing the memory of influences from each new wave of belief. We can follow the progress and transformation of its changing occupants, as each absorbs some of the archeological memory. Finally we arrive at its current incarnation and the celebration of the Bharani festival, which marks the beginning of the hot summer before the coming of the Monsoon rains. Many non-orthodox rites will enliven the tale. The mysterious society of Atikals that returns to their lost temple every year to conduct secret rites culminating in twelve hours of Misrule, during which hundred of thousands of devotees appear from all over Kerala. There are other devotees who carry sticks, which they swirl in their dancing; others brandish the sickle sword. Most of these pilgrims are non-Brahmin ritual specialists such as the Veliccappadu. Their name means a channel who sheds light for they are spirit mediums, men and women, followers of Kali who utter oracles when in trance. They dress in red and wear heavy anklets and bells. In the final part of my story I present a complete and lost version of the most famous drama of all time, the celebrated myth or passion play of Isis and murdered husband Osiris, clearly recognizable even in its current idiom based as it is in South Asian ritual drama. The drama is reproduced in its entirety as it reveals many previously unknown aspects of one of the worlds oldest myths.

Imagining Karma

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date : 2002-11-11

Imagining Karma written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Univ of California Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2002-11-11 with Religion categories.

With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.

Buddha In The Crown

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Author : John Clifford Holt
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 1991-01-31

Buddha In The Crown written by John Clifford Holt and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1991-01-31 with Religion categories.

Historical, anthropological, and philosophical in approach, Buddha in the Crown is a case study in religious and cultural change. It examines the various ways in which Avalokitesvara, the most well known and proliferated bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism throughout south, southeast, and east Asia, was assimilated into the transforming religious culture of Sri Lanka, one of the most pluralistic in Asia. Exploring the expressions of the bodhisattva's cult in Sanskrit and Sinhala literature, in iconography, epigraphy, ritual, symbol, and myth, the author develops a provocative thesis regarding the dynamics of religious change. Interdisciplinary in scope, addressing a wide variety of issues relating to Buddhist thought and practice, and providing new and original information on the rich cultural history of Sri Lanka, this book will interest students of Buddhism and South Asia.

The Cilappatik Ram

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Author : Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ
language : en
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Release Date : 2004

The Cilappatik Ram written by Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ and has been published by Penguin Books India this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2004 with Epic poetry, Tamil categories.

Men And Women Of Maturai Of The Four Temples! I Curse This City. Its King Erred In Killing The Man I Loved One Of The World'S Masterpieces, The Cilappatikaram (5Th Century Ce) By Ilanko Atikal Is India'S Finest Epic In A Language Other Than Sanskrit. It Spells Out In Unforgettable Verse The Problems That Humanity Has Been Wrestling With For A Long Time: Love, War, Evil, Fate And Death. The Tale Of An Anklet Is The Love Story Of Kovalan And Kannaki. Originating In Tamil Mythology, The Compelling Tale Of Kannaki Her Love, Her Feats And Triumphs, And Her Ultimate Transformation To Goddess Follows The Conventions Of Tamil Poetry And Is Told In Three Phases: The Erotic, The Heroic And The Mythic. This Epic Ranks With The Ramayana And The Mahabharata As One Of The Great Classics Of Indian Literature And Is Presented For The First Time In A Landmark English Verse Translation By The Eminent Poet R. Parthasarathy, Making It Accessible To A Wider Audience. Winner Of The 1995 Sahitya Akademi Prize For Translation (English), The 1994 Pen/ Book-Of-The-Month Club Translation Citation Of The Pen American Centre, And The 1996 Association For Asian Studies A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize For Translation.

The Cult Of Draupad

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Author : Alf Hiltebeitel
language : en
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
Release Date : 1991

The Cult Of Draupad written by Alf Hiltebeitel and has been published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1991 with Draupadī (Hindu mythology) categories.

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume work on the little known South Indian folk cult of the goddess Draupadi and on the classical epic, the Mahabharata, that the cult brings to life in mythic, ritual and dramatic forms. It focuses on the Draupadi cult's own double mythology, moving from its storieis about Draupadi's 'primal temple' near the capital of the medieval South Indian Kingdom of Gingee to its version of the Mahabharata war on the North Indian plain of Kuruksetra. Throughout, Hiltebeitel intertwines 'regional' data, gathered from both oral and written sources, with the 'epic', drawn from the cult's own performative traditions as well as from classical versions of the Mahabharata in both Tamil and Sanskrit. He re-examines many issues critical to Indological studies and takes up them while breaking new ground in investigating the further rapport between the Hindu goddess and the Indian epic. Future volumes will treat the rituals of the Draupadi cult and the Mahabharata as seen through a Draupadi cult retrospective. Contents List of Maps, List of Plates, List of Tables, Preface, Acknowledgements, Conventions, PART I: From Gingee: Introduction: Invocatory Songs to Draupadi, 'The Lady Who Resides in Gingee', The Draupadi Cult: Its Historical and Regional Settings, Social Background, Diffusion, Variation, and Change, The Sources of the Gingee Kingdom: The Living River and the Tree of Gold, Myths of the Melacceri Draupadi Temple, Muttal Ravuttan: Draupadi's Muslim Devotee, PART II: To Kuruksetra: The Draupadi Cult's Mahabharata: An Introduction, The Death of Baka: Prelude to the Drama Cycle, Additional Marriages, The two Sabhas: 'The Rajasuya Sacrifice' and 'Dice Match and Disrobing' , Arjuna's Tapas, Draupadi's Forest Exile and the Period in Disguise: Virapancali, Puvalicci, and Kuravanci, Krsna the Messenger, Aravan's Sacrifice, Pormannan's Fight: Pottu Raja at Kuruksetra, Pormannan's Flight: The War Kings Weapons and Their Mythical Sources, Kuruksetra: The Mahabharata War, When Draupadi Walked on fire, Appendix 1: The Lunar Dynasty from its origins to draupadi's Second Advent at Gingee, Appendix 2. An outline History of Gingee, Abbreviations, Bibliography, Index.

The Apotheosis Of Captain Cook

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2021-07-13

The Apotheosis Of Captain Cook written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-07-13 with History categories.

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself. In this new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, the author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994 book, How "Natives" Think, which was a direct response to this work.

Cannibal Talk

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Release Date : 2005-06-06

Cannibal Talk written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Univ of California Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2005-06-06 with History categories.

"A tour de force: meticulously argued, nuanced, and wideranging in its interpretations. In the hands of a master, the prodigious scholarship and large intellectual appetite make for a very convincing, comprehensive work."—George Marcus, coeditor of Writing Culture "The sheer scope of Cannibal Talk is remarkable, and its contribution to the anthropology of colonialism outstanding. Obeyesekere's research, original thinking, and applied reading are unrivalled on the discourses of cannibalism and their implications. "—Paul Lyons, University of Hawai'i

The Buddha In Sri Lanka

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date : 2017-08-07

The Buddha In Sri Lanka written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Taylor & Francis this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-08-07 with Social Science categories.

This book examines culture, religion and polity in the context of Buddhism. Gananath Obeyesekere, one of the foremost analytical voices from South Asia develops Freud’s notion of ‘dream work’, the ‘work of culture’ and ideas of no-self (anatta) to understand Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lanka. This work offers a restorative interpretation of Buddhist myths in contrast to the perspective involving deconstruction. The book deals with a range of themes connected with Buddhism, including oral traditions and stories, the religious pantheon, philosophy, emotions, reform movements, questions of identity and culture, and issues of modernity. This fascinating volume will greatly interest students, teachers and researchers of religion and philosophy, especially Buddhism, ethics, cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, Sri Lanka and modern South Asian history.

The Awakened Ones

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Author : Gananath Obeyesekere
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2012-02-07

The Awakened Ones written by Gananath Obeyesekere and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-02-07 with Religion categories.

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding. Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.