Download or read book Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon written by Paul Wirz and published by Brill Archive. This book was released on 1954 with total page 418 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 Formations of Ritual written by David Scott and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formations of Ritual was first published in 1994. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Yaktovil is an elaborate healing ceremony employed by Sinhalas in Sri Lanka to dispel the effects of the eyesight of a pantheon of malevolent supernatural figures known as yakku. Anthropology, traditionally, has articulated this ceremony with the concept metaphor of "demonism." Yet, as David Scott demonstrates in this provocative book, this use of "demonism" reveals more about the discourse of anthropology than it does about the ritual itself. His investigation of yaktovil and yakku within the Sinhala cosmology is also an inquiry into the ways in which anthropology, by ignoring the discursive history of the rituals, religions, and relationships it seeks to describe, tends to reproduce ideological-often, specifically colonial-objects. To do this, Scott describes the discursive apparatus through which yakku are positioned in the moral universe of Sinhala, traces the appearance of yakku and yaktovil in Western discourse, evaluates the contribution of these figures and this ceremony in anthropology, and attempts to show how the larger anthropology of Buddhism, in which the anthropology of yaktovil is embedded, might be reconfigured. Finally, he offers a rereading of the ritual in terms of the historically selfconscious approach he proposes.The result points to a major rethinking of the historical nature not only of the objects, but also of the concepts through which they are constructed in anthropological discourse. David Scott teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
Download or read book A Celebration of Demons written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sinhalese exorcism rituals are perhaps the most complex and the most magnificent in performance still extant. For this second edition, the author has written a new preface and introduction in which he argues that the techniques of healing in Sri Lanka and the aesthetics of this healing cannot be reduced to Western psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic terms, and develops new and original approaches to ritual and the aesthetic in general.
Download or read book Ravana s Kingdom written by Justin W. Henry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ravana, the demon-king antagonist from the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic poem, has become an unlikely cultural hero among Sinhala Buddhists over the past decade. In Ravana's Kingdom, Justin W. Henry delves into the historical literary reception of the epic in Sri Lanka, charting the adaptions of its themes and characters from the 14th century onwards, as many Sri Lankan Hindus and Buddhists developed a sympathetic impression of Ravana's character, and through the contemporary Ravana revival, which has resulted in the development of an alternative mythological history, depicting Ravana as king of the Sri Lanka's indigenous inhabitants, a formative figure of civilizational antiquity, and the direct ancestor of the Sinhala Buddhist people. Henry offers a careful study of the literary history of the Ramayana in Sri Lanka, employing numerous sources and archives that have until now received little to no scholarly attention, as well as the 21st century revision of a narrative of the Sri Lankan people-a narrative incubated by the general public online, facilitated by social media and by the speed of travel of information in the digital age. Ravana's Kingdom offers a glimpse into a centuries-old, living Ramayana tradition among Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka-a case study of the myth-making process in the digital age.
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 The Mahavamsa written by Thera Mahanama-sthavira and published by Jain Publishing Company. This book was released on 1999 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music written by Alison Arnold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 1126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, sixty-eight of the world's leading authorities explore and describe the wide range of musics of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nepal and Afghanistan. Important information about history, religion, dance, theater, the visual arts and philosophy as well as their relationship to music is highlighted in seventy-six in-depth articles.
Download or read book Nation Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka written by Roshan de Silva Wijeyeratne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation, Constitutionalism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka offers a new perspective on contemporary debates about Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka. In this book de Silva Wijeyeratne argues forcefully that ‘Sinhalese Buddhism’ in the period prior to its engagement with the British colonial State signified a relatively unbounded (although at times boundary forming) set of practices that facilitated both the inclusion and exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ concepts and people within a particular cosmological frame. Juxtaposing the premodern against the backdrop of colonial modernity, de Silva Wijeyeratne tells us that in contrast modern 'Sinhalese Buddhism/nationalism' is a much more reified and bounded concept, one imagined through a 19th century epistemology whose purpose was not so much inclusion, but a much more radical exclusion of non-‘Buddhist’ ideas and people. In this insightful analysis modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, then, emerges through the conjunction of discourse, power and knowledge at a distinct moment in the trajectory of the colonial State. An intrinsic feature of this modernist moment is that premodern categories (such as the cosmic order) were subject to a bureaucratic re-valuation that generated profound consequences for State-society relations and the wider constitutional/legal imaginary. This book goes onto explore how key constitutional and nation-building moments were framed within the cultural milieu of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism – a nationalism that reveals the power of a re-valued Buddhist cosmic order to still inform the present. Given the intensification of the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist project following the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, this book is of interest to scholars of nationalism, South Asian studies, the anthropology of ritual, and comparative legal history.
Download or read book Religion and Societies written by Carlo Caldarola and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.
Download or read book Beyond Rationalism written by Bruce Kapferer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2003-02-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so the authors are concerned to break away from the dictates of a western externalist rationalist understanding of these phenomena without falling into the trap of mysticism. The articles address a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.
Download or read book Multi religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka written by Mark P. Whitaker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a collection of original research about every day, innovative, interactive, and multiple religiosities among Sri Lankan Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and devotees of New Religious Movements in post-war Sri Lanka. The contributors examine the unique and innovative religiosity that can be observed in Sri Lanka, which reveals a complex reality of mingled, and even simultaneous, cooperation and conflict. The book shows that innovative religious practices and institutions have achieved a new prominence in public life since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. Using the analytic framework of ‘innovative religiosity’ to allow researchers to look at this question between and across Sri Lanka’s plural religious landscape in order to escape both the epistemological and ethnographic isolation of studies that limit themselves to one form of religious practice, the chapters also investigate the extent to which inter-religious tolerance is still possible in the wake of Sri Lanka’s religion-involving civil war, and the continuing influence of populist Buddhist nationalism, globalization and geopolitics on Sri Lanka’s post-war governance. The book offers a novel approach to the study of post-conflict societies and furthers the understanding of the status of tolerance between religious practitioners in contexts where both ethnic conflict and multi-religious sites are prominent. This book is an important resource for researchers studying Anthropology, Asian Religion, Religion in Context and South Asian Studies.
Download or read book Asian and Pentecostal written by Allan Anderson and published by OCMS. This book was released on 2005 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a thematic discussion and case studies on the history and development of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the countries of South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia.
Download or read book Iconography of Religions written by Albert C. Moore and published by Chris Robertson. This book was released on 1977 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia written by Fabrizio Ferrari and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on original fieldwork, this book develops a fresh methodological approach to the study of indigenous understandings of disease as possession, and looks at healing rituals in different South Asian cultural contexts. Contributors discuss the meaning of 'disease', 'possession' and 'healing' in relation to South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Sikhism, and how South Asians deal with the divine in order to negotiate health and wellbeing. The book goes on to look at goddesses, gods and spirits as a cause and remedy of a variety of diseases, a study that has proved significant to the ethics and politics of responding to health issues. It contributes to a consolidation and promotion of indigenous ways as a method of understanding physical and mental imbalances through diverse conceptions of the divine. Chapters offer a fascinating overview of healing rituals in South Asia and provide a full-length, sustained discussion of the interface between religion, ritual, and folklore. The book presents a fresh insight into studies of Asian Religion and the History of Medicine.
Download or read book Sacred Play written by Selva J. Raj and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the significance of levity and humor in South Asian religious traditions.
Download or read book Buddhism and Medicine written by C. Pierce Salguero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the centuries, Buddhist ideas have influenced medical thought and practice in complex and varied ways in diverse regions and cultures. A companion to Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, this work presents a collection of modern and contemporary texts and conversations from across the Buddhist world dealing with the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism and medicine. Covering the early modern period to the present, this anthology focuses on the many ways Buddhism and medicine were shaped by the forces of colonialism, science, and globalization, as well as ruptures and reconciliations between tradition and modernity. Editor C. Pierce Salguero and an international collection of scholars highlight diversity and innovation in the encounters between Buddhist and medical thought. The chapters contain a wide range of sources presenting different perspectives rooted in distinct times and places, including translations of published and unpublished documents and transcripts of ethnographic interviews as well as accounts by missionaries and colonial authorities and materials from the contemporary United States and United Kingdom. Together, these varied sources illustrate the many intersections of Buddhism and medicine in the past and how this nexus continues to be crucial in today’s global context.
