Download or read book Baulsphere written by Mimlu Sen and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2012-02-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freewheeling Mimlu Sen lives in Paris, where one day she witnesses an electrifying performance by three Bauls, mystic minstrels from Bengal, who spin like pillars of dust. Their music inspires her to return to Calcutta, and to go on an extraordinary journey with one of them, Paban Das Baul, from her respectable home in the city to his humble village, and further on, into the verdant Bengali countryside that is their common heritage. Paban takes Mimlu through the itinerant Baul’s route—from the festival at Kenduli with its marathon performances, to tranquil Shantiniketan, where Bauls frequently stop en route and disrupt quotidian life; Agrodwip, deep in the Vaishnava world, to Nabasana, where mesmerizing guru Hari Goshain presides over Baul games and ultimately, her initiation; and to Boral, where she holds her own big Baul festival, a mahatsava. Along the way, she encounters tantrics and tribals, exorcisms and witch sightings, catfish that climb trees and esoteric sexo-yogic secrets—and she falls in love. Baulsphere takes you into the heart of rural Bengal, and into the fascinating world of the Bauls. Passionate, enthralling and searingly lyrical, it is a stunning book.
Download or read book The Four Moons in the Human Body written by Dr. Siddhartha Ganguli and published by Allied Publishers. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bauls & Fakirs of Bengal and Bangladesh certainly constitute a breed, different from other ethnic religious sects. They do not believe in worshipping in any citadel of religion like a temple, a mosque, or a church. They have the conviction that the body itself is the habitat of cosmic energy and also that the entire cosmos is present in a living body. They compare the body with a cage and the soul with an unknown bird which has come to stay for some time only. Most of the Bauls, who are not just singers but serious followers of the Baul path, do not believe in replication—creating any future progeny. They adopt special procedures for sexual union with menstruated female partners to retain the semen without losing it. To learn this very special technique which they do not share with any one, they have to take the help of learned and experienced Gurus who also teach them weird rituals like ‘Chari Chandra Bhed’ which involves consumption of semen, menstrual blood, urine and faeces. These folk medicine practices help them to keep diseases away and maintain good health. There have been lot of surveys and studies on the Bauls & Fakirs—primarily of historical, religious and sociological nature. This book goes a little deep to look at their songs, lifestyle, philosophy & practices from biological, psychological & management angles to establish that the Baulsphere is based on concepts and practices that have been proven scientific from modern research studies.
Download or read book Contradictory Lives written by Lisa I. Knight and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the popular imagination, Bauls in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh are depicted as a sect of musical mendicants with flowing hair clad in ocher-colored clothes and carrying a one-stringed instrument. Their popularity stems from their mystical songs and their carefree, whimsical behavior. Somewhat less celebrated are Baul beliefs and practices: they are fiercely opposed to the caste system and sectarianism and, at least in the context of their sexo-yogic rituals and philosophy, extol women over men. Despite the importance of women among Bauls, scholarly and popular discourses on Bauls marginalize Baul women by depicting the ideal Baul as male and as unencumbered by social constraints and worldly concerns. For Baul women, these ideals pose distinct challenges to their position and reputation as women in rural Bengal, where gendered norms limit womens actions. However, as musical performers hoping for patronage, behaving as a Baul can ensure their livelihood. This book shows how Baul women interpret and respond to these various constructions of gender and Baul identity and suggests that Baul women are encumbered actors. It argues that Baul women negotiate their identity, position, and life choices in light of contradictory expectations of appropriate behavior for Bengali women and for Bauls. It demonstrates that Baul women draw on the very tools of their encumbering to create for themselves a meaningful life and a more just society. As they sing, wander, take renunciation, and raise a family, they expand ideas about both women and Bauls in Bengal. --Publisher description.
Download or read book Pu pik Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions written by Robert Leach and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puṣpikā 3 is the outcome of the third and fourth International Indology Graduate Research Symposiums held in Paris and Edinburgh in 2011 and 2012. This volume presents the results of recent research by early-career scholars into the texts, languages and literary, philosophical and religious traditions of South Asia. The articles offer a broad range of disciplinary perspectives on a wide array of subjects including classical and medieval philosophy, esoteric knowledge and practices in the Vedas, Kālidāsa's great poem Meghadūta ('The Cloud Messenger'), soteriology in a 17th century Jain text, identity, orality and the songs of the Bauls in 20th century Bengal, and Sanskrit pedagogy.
Download or read book Cultural Constellations Place Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India c 1850 1927 written by Swarupa Gupta and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swarupa Gupta outlines a paradigm for moving beyond ethnic fragmentation by showing how people made places to forge an interregional arena. The analysis includes interpretive strategies to mediate contemporary separatisms.
Download or read book Bauls of Bengal written by Rebati Mohan Sarkar and published by Gyan Publishing House. This book was released on 1990 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-researched work based on long term field investigations amongst Bauls of Bengal, the community of singers with rich cultural heritage. The study centers around the different facets of their life and thought, basic understanding of their philosophy, sadhana as well as their day-to-day struggle for basic existence. Page: 6 14:06 Tuesday 16/05/00 The Title 'Bauls of Bengal: In the Quest of Man of the Heart written/authored/edited by R.M. Sarkar', published in the year 2003. The ISBN 9788121203203 is assigned to the Hardcover version of this title. This book has total of pp. 314 (Pages). The publisher of this title is Gyan Publishing House. This Book is in English. The subject of this book is Anthropology / Tribal Studies/MUSIC / THEATRE / Art
Download or read book Baulsphere written by Mimlu Sen and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freewheeling Mimlu Sen lives in Paris, where one day she witnesses an electrifying performance by three Bauls, mystic minstrels from Bengal, who spin like pillars of dust. Their music inspires her to return to Calcutta, and to go on an extraordinary journey with one of them, Paban Das Baul, from her respectable home in the city to his humble village, and further on, into the verdant Bengali countryside that is their common heritage. Paban takes Mimlu through the itinerant Baulâ¬"s route⬠from the festival at Kenduli with its marathon performances, to tranquil Shantiniketan, where Bauls frequently stop en route and disrupt quotidian life; Agrodwip, deep in the Vaishnava world, to Nabasana, where mesmerizing guru Hari Goshain presides over Baul games and ultimately, her initiation; and to Boral, where she holds her own big Baul festival, a mahatsava. Along the way, she encounters tantrics and tribals, exorcisms and witch sightings, catfish that climb trees and esoteric sexo-yogic secrets⬠and she falls in love. Baulsphere takes you into the heart of rural Bengal, and into the fascinating world of the Bauls. Passionate, enthralling and searingly lyrical, it is a stunning book.
Download or read book Folklore Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman written by Carola Lorea and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Nine Lives written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Last Mughal (“A compulsively readable masterpiece” —The New York Review of Books), an exquisite, mesmerizing book that illuminates the remarkable ways in which traditional forms of religious life in India have been transformed in the vortex of the region’s rapid change—a book that distills the author’s twenty-five years of travel in India, taking us deep into ways of life that we might otherwise never have known exist. A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet—and spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . A woman leaves her middle-class life in Calcutta and finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for three months of every year . . . An idol carver, the twenty-third in a long line of sculptors, must reconcile himself to his son’s desire to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd from Rajasthan keeps alive in his memory an ancient four-thousand-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who initially resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes both her daughters into a trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling. William Dalrymple chronicles these lives with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of circumstance. And while the stories reveal the vigorous resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, they reveal as well the continuity of ancient traditions that endure to this day. A dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Singing written by Graham Welch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singing has been a characteristic behaviour of humanity across several millennia. Chorus America (2009) estimated that 42.6 million adults and children regularly sing in one of 270,000 choruses in the US, representing more than 1:5 households. Similarly, recent European-based data suggest that more than 37 million adults take part in group singing. The Oxford Handbook of Singing is a landmark text on this topic. It is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wishes to know more about the pluralistic nature of singing. In part, the narrative adopts a lifespan approach, pre-cradle to senescence, to illustrate that singing is a commonplace behaviour which is an essential characteristic of our humanity. In the overall design of the Handbook, the chapter contents have been clustered into eight main sections, embracing fifty-three chapters by seventy-two authors, drawn from across the world, with each chapter illustrating and illuminating a particular aspect of singing. Offering a multi-disciplinary perspective embracing the arts and humanities, physical, social and clinical sciences, the book will be valuable for a broad audience within those fields.
Download or read book Cultural Fusion of Sufi Islam written by Sarwar Alam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been argued that the mystical Sufi form of Islam is the most sensitive to other cultures, being accommodative to other traditions and generally tolerant to peoples of other faiths. It readily becomes integrated into local cultures and they are similarly often infused into Sufism. Examples of this reciprocity are commonly reflected in Sufi poetry, music, hagiographic genres, memoires, and in the ritualistic practices of Sufi traditions. This volume shows how this often-side-lined tradition functions in the societies in which it is found, and demonstrates how it relates to mainstream Islam. The focus of this book ranges from reflecting Sufi themes in the Qur’anic calligraphy to movies, from ideals to everyday practices, from legends to actual history, from gender segregation to gender transgression, and from legalism to spiritualism. Consequently, the international panel of contributors to this volume are trained in a range of disciplines that include religious studies, history, comparative literature, anthropology, and ethnography. Covering Southeast Asia to West Africa as well as South Asia and the West, they address both historical and contemporary issues, shedding light on Sufism’s adaptability. This book sets aside conventional methods of understanding Islam, such as theological, juridical, and philosophical, in favour of analysing its cultural impact. As such, it will be of great interest to all scholars of Islamic Studies, the Sociology of Religion, Religion and Media, as well as Religious Studies and Area Studies more generally.
Download or read book Love A Good Medicine The Saga of the Elixir of Life Introducing LoveOlogy written by Dr. Siddhartha Ganguli and published by Allied Publishers. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human emotion of love has its own spectrum like the rainbow, with its two extremes—represented by two different neuro-chemicals: ‘Dopamine’ (‘Smart Love’ & ‘Short-lived’ or ‘Short Love’) and ‘Oxytocin’ (‘Sustained Love’). In the ancient Indian ‘NatyaShastra’ of the great Bharata Muni, the essence or rasa of love is ‘Sringara’, having at its two poles ‘Kama’ (lust) and ‘Prema’ (pure love). As illustrations of the ‘Sringara’ rasa, the author has analysed a number of love song lyrics from different cultures. In this book, while the author has looked at and analysed ‘love’ from the angles of bio-medical, social, psychological and neurological sciences, one unique concept shared is that of the ‘love pie’. A very special section deals with ‘Futuristic Love’ where the author has discussed the idea of having a love-relationship with ‘AI’ (‘Artificial Intelligence’). Special contributions by the Stellar Maestro world-famous polymath musician-astrophysicist-philosopher-painter Dr Leonid Timoshenko of Russia and the top-ranking gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Gouri Kumra from India are precious value-additions.
Download or read book Man in India written by Sarat Chandra Roy (Rai Bahadur) and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Political Emotions written by Martha C. Nussbaum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we achieve and sustain a "decent" liberal society, one that aspires to justice and equal opportunity for all and inspires individuals to sacrifice for the common good? In this book, a continuation of her explorations of emotions and the nature of social justice, Martha Nussbaum makes the case for love. Amid the fears, resentments, and competitive concerns that are endemic even to good societies, public emotions rooted in love—in intense attachments to things outside our control—can foster commitment to shared goals and keep at bay the forces of disgust and envy. Great democratic leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., have understood the importance of cultivating emotions. But people attached to liberalism sometimes assume that a theory of public sentiments would run afoul of commitments to freedom and autonomy. Calling into question this perspective, Nussbaum investigates historical proposals for a public "civil religion" or "religion of humanity" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Rabindranath Tagore. She offers an account of how a decent society can use resources inherent in human psychology, while limiting the damage done by the darker side of our personalities. And finally she explores the cultivation of emotions that support justice in examples drawn from literature, song, political rhetoric, festivals, memorials, and even the design of public parks. "Love is what gives respect for humanity its life," Nussbaum writes, "making it more than a shell." Political Emotionsis a challenging and ambitious contribution to political philosophy.
Download or read book Plautdietsch English Englisch Plaudietsch word finder written by Eldo Neufeld and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Indian English Literature written by KRISHNA SHARMA and published by Krishna Kumar Sharma. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has been designed to help the students who want to crack the exams like NET JRF, SET SLET, TGT PGT, etc. It contains several writers and their important works in detail that is useful and exam-oriented. Once you read it, you will recommend this book to others, this is expected.
Download or read book Yoga Tarangini written by Jan K. Brzezinski and published by Motilal Banarsidass. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commentary on Goraksasataka of Gorakhanatha, classical verse work on Haṭha yoga; presenting the viewpoint of the Nātha sect in Hinduism.
