The Cult of the Goddess Pattini - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Cult of the Goddess Pattini write by Gananath Obeyesekere. This book was released on 1987-01-01. The Cult of the Goddess Pattini available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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
Isis - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Isis write by Chris Morgan. This book was released on 2016-02. Isis available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
Buddha in the Crown
Buddha in the Crown - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Buddha in the Crown write by John Clifford Holt. This book was released on 1991-01-31. Buddha in the Crown available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 Cilappatikāram
The Cilappatikāram - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Cilappatikāram write by Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ. This book was released on 2004. The Cilappatikāram available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
Imagining Karma
Imagining Karma - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Imagining Karma write by Gananath Obeyesekere. This book was released on 2002-11-11. Imagining Karma available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
