Download or read book Devas Demons and Buddhist Cosmology in Sri Lanka written by Achala Gunasekara-Rockwell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-08-19 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the worship of devas and demons in Sri Lanka, illustrating how diverse influences interacted to create the Sinhala Buddhist cosmology. The work explains the processes by which apotheosis plays an important role in revitalizing that cosmology. The author offers an examination of holy sites associated with the worship of Hūniyam. These sacred spaces each have a unique background historically, and the ritualists associated with these sites have divergent understandings concerning Hūniyam. Building upon the examination of the temples, the book delves into the iconography of Hūniyam, illustrating his transformation from demon to deity in the manner that he is depicted in imagery associated with his worship. The book moves to a discussion of Aritṭ ạ Kivenḍu Perumāl, a South Indian adventurer, demonstrating the likelihood that he is the historical figure later apotheosized as Hūniyam. Sri Lankan society felt his impact so strongly that in death he became a demon in the Sinhala Buddhist cosmology. Finally, the book demonstrates that the same apotheosis processes are at work today. This book will be of interest to researchers and students engaged in the study of religion, anthropology, folklore, and history, specifically in the South Asian context.
Download or read book Placating the Demons written by Gananath Obeyesekere and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines dominant ceremonial practices in Sri Lanka. It presents key ideas and symbolic systems that exist to this day, in similar shapes or in different guises. It looks at issues such as misfortunes caused by demons (yaksa dosa), an important ceremonial practice known as the puna-yāgaya, ideas pertaining to spirit possession, trance, and mediums. It also deals with classical Ayurvedic theories of disease, urban ceremonial practices such as cases of the apotheoses from demon to divinity, as well as multiple forms of Buddhist ceremonial practices that are part of the Sri Lankan consciousness and have found their way into public cultural performances in Sri Lanka. As a comprehensive volume on ceremonial practices in Sri Lanka, this work will be useful for scholars and researchers in cultural studies, sociology, social-anthropology, and particularly those interested in myths and rituals in South Asia.
Download or read book Religious Authority in South Asia written by István Keul and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on genealogies of religious authority in South Asia, examining the figure of the guru in narrative texts, polemical tracts, hagiographies, histories, in contemporary devotional communities, New Age spiritual movements and global guru organizations. Experts in the field present reflections on historically specific contexts in which a guru comes into being, becomes part of a community, is venerated, challenged or repudiated, generates a new canon, remains unique with no clear succession or establishes a succession in which charisma is routinized. The guru emerges and is sustained and routinized from the nexus of guruship, narratives, performances and community. The contributors to the book examine this nexus at specific historical moments with all their elements of change and contingency. The book will be of interest to scholars in the field of South Asian studies, the study of religions and cultural studies.
Download or read book Popular Hinduism Stories and Mobile Performances written by Mrinal Pande and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-06-24 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the recent transformations of popular Hinduism by focusing upon the religious cum artistic practice of Ramkatha, staged narratives of the Ramcharitmanas. Focusing on the sensory and media experiences, the author examines the aesthetics and dynamics of the Ramkatha ethnoscape through participant-observation in everyday practices, and how it particularly, translates politics from the realm of religion. Besides being socially constructed, the Ramkatha heavily relies on technologies for its production and continuation. Negotiated through a telling of Hindu religious stories, the mediated voice of Morari Bapu, a former school-teacher turned narrator, is a major medium of performance transposed into multiple media such as theatre, stage, music and spectacle. The book engages with voice as a vehicle of meaning to scrutinize its discursive production, imagination and re-production across mobile contexts. It investigates how the transnationally disseminated practices re-contextualize religious subjectivities of an affective community enmeshed in spatio-sensorial modes. The book will be of interest to academic audiences in the fields of South Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, as well as Performance Studies and Religious Studies.
Download or read book Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh written by Abdul Wohab and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its relationship with secularism in Bangladesh from pre-British to contemporary times. It focuses on the importance of understanding the dynamics between religion and secularism within specific cultural contexts. The author draws upon historical, sociological, and political literature, Bangladeshi electoral results, newspaper reports, and elite interviews with political commentators and offers a rich historical and empirical analysis. Arguing that extremist interpretations of Islam, which aim to establish a theocratic state, have not been able to influence the pluralistic religious and cultural life of Bangladesh substantially, the book shows that religious and cultural pluralism will continue to thrive despite the apparent threat posed by increasing religiosity among Bangladeshi Muslims. This book is a timely and significant contribution to the discourse on secularism and Islam, with relevance beyond Bangladesh and the wider Islamic world. It will appeal to scholars and researchers working in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religions, and the Sociology of Religion.
Download or read book The Mah va sa written by Mahānāma and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Deities and Demons Magic and Masks written by Nandadeva Wijesekera and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beliefs and customs of Sri Lanka.
Download or read book Yasodhar the Wife of the B dhisattva written by and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-02-07 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What about Buddha's wife? We all know that Prince Siddhartha left his wife and infant son to begin his journey to enlightenment. The Pali canon does not mention the woman he left behind. Yasodharā enters the commentarial tradition around the first century CE and lives on in the folk tradition, growing from a shadowy figure to a nun and arahat (an Enlightened One), even gaining magical powers. In this book, Ranjini Obeyesekere offers a translation of two works from Sri Lanka on this intriguing figure. The Yasodharāvata (The Story of Yasodharā) is a folk poem, whose best-known verses are Yasodharā's lament over the departure of her husband. The Yasodharāpadānaya (The Sacred Biography of Yasodharā) is an account of Yasodharā as a nun capable of miracles, who has traveled through saṃsāra with the Bodhisattva, and who is praised by him. Obeyesekere places these works within their historical and literary context and provides a glossary of Buddhist terms.
Download or read book Satan and M ra written by James W. Boyd and published by Brill Archive. This book was released on 1975 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Northwestern University, 1970).
Download or read book Buddha in the Crown written by John Holt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sri Lanka has one of Asia's most pluralistic religious cultures. From a study of the changing role played by one Buddhist deity in Sinhala religious culture, the author of this study develops a thesis about the mechanism of religious change.
Download or read book The Buddha in Sri Lanka written by Gananath Obeyesekere and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Buddhism written by Kevin Trainor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this strikingly illustrated and authoritative volume, readers have an introduction to one of the world's greatest living faiths. 200 color photos, maps & drawings.
Download or read book Skill and Trust written by Beatrice Vogt and published by Vu University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tovil is an indigenous healing ritual among the Sinfiala of Sri Lanka. It is a treatment for mental illness. During the ritual, which takes place at night, the patient embodies the demons who are the cause of his or her psychic problems. The ritual is a psychodrama, accompanied and induced by drumming, dancing and singing. The emphasis of this study is not on the patient but on the healer.
Download or read book Farming Like the Forest written by Karin Hochegger and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Celebration of Demons written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1991 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stressing the importance of performance in the organization of ritual experience, Kapferer reveals that music, dance, and comicdrama are key aesthetic forms in Sinhalese demon ceremonies.
Download or read book Women Under the Bo Tree written by Tessa J. Bartholomeusz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-08-25 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively examination of female world-renunciation on Buddhist Sri Lanka.
Download or read book Handbook of Religion written by Terry C. Muck and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive handbook provides a Christian perspective on religion and its many manifestations around the world. Written by top religion scholars from a broad spectrum of Christianity, it introduces world religions, indigenous religious traditions, and new religious movements. Articles explore the relationship of other religions to Christianity, providing historical perspective on past encounters and highlighting current issues. The book also contains articles by adherents of non-Christian religions, offering readers an insider's perspective on various religions and their encounters with Christianity. Maps, timelines, and sidebars are included.
