Introduction to the Special Issue: Out for Blood: Sacrifice, Tantra, and Normative Hinduism
|
Āyurveda and Mind-Body Healing: Legitimizing Strategies in the Autobiographical Writing of Deepak Chopra
Abstract
This paper explores the early autobiographical work of the popular health and wellbeing guru, Deepak Chopra. The autobiography (entitled Return of the Rishi) is Chopra’s account of his early forays into meditation and Āyurveda, the Indian health tradition. It is the story of his “spiritual transformation” and his development into a proficient Āyurvedic healer. Following the lead of his one-time guru and mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Chopra represents Āyurveda as “consciousness-based” medicine. This paper demonstrates how, by means of a series of narrative strategies deploying the motif of the semi-divine ṛṣi, or sage, and foregrounding personal experience as the ultimate source of spiritual legitimacy and authority, Chopra (a biomedical doctor with little or no formal training in Āyurveda) seeks to secure legitimacy as an authority on Āyurveda and an adept with extraordinary healing powers.
|
Red: An Ethnographic Study of Cross-Pollination Between the Vedic and the Tantric
Abstract
This essay explores the connections between Tantric rites and those of Indian tribal religions with “blood” as the central subject. Rooted in ethnographic research in Assam, India, the essay compares the ritual of bali, animal sacrifice, as practiced in the famous śākta pīṭha, Kāmākhyā, with corresponding data gathered from the practice of bali in the indigenous Ṭiwā tribe. The ethnographic findings are further mapped to instructions on bali given in the tenth-century text Kālikāpurāṇa and the sixteenth-century text Yoginītantra to highlight these complex negotiations that have continued for centuries. The primary objective of this essay is to concretize and bring into relief some of the dynamics inherent in the ways these neighboring sacrificial traditions relate to each other, to Brāhmaṇical Sanskritic norms, to sacred space, and to recent challenges from animal rights activists. In doing so, the essay also briefly discusses the mind state of the sacrifier and the effects of the sacrifice on the community.
|
Eradicated with Blood: Text and Context of Animal Sacrifice in Tantric and Tantra-Influenced Rituals
Abstract
This essay discusses transformations in the ritual use of blood offerings from late medieval to contemporary Tantric and Tantra-influenced traditions. Specifically, it examines animal sacrifice and the use of animal blood or body parts in defensive and/or destructive Tantric uccāṭana rituals in historical text sources and in Tantra-influenced ojhāī practices (North Indian popular ritual practices of self-defense and/or destruction that are widely perceived as Tantra affiliated) in contemporary religion. The essay argues that while uccāṭana—mainly because of its partly destructive character and demand for blood—was apparently never integrated into non-Tantric traditions in an unaltered form, it does serve as one of several roots for contemporary ojhāī rituals. Thus, a form of ‘uccāṭana light’ (including but not limited to blood offerings) has found its way into popular Hinduism.
|
Mental Pain in the Mahābhārata
Abstract
A number of passages in the Mahābhārata draw the distinction between bodily pain (śārīraṃ duḥkham) and mental pain (mānasaṃ duḥkham). The notion of bodily pain in these passages seems more or less straightforward. The notion of mental pain, however, is at least initially obscure. My thesis in this paper is that mental pains are states like dislike, dissatisfaction, disappointment, and so on—states that are sometimes referred to as “attitudinal pains.” This analysis is consistent with all four of the criteria of mental pain cited in the Mahābhārata. Additionally, it serves to highlight features of mental pain that are easily overlooked. Finally, the interpretation helps to explain the common claim that life is pervaded by duḥkha.
|
Is the Goddess Haḍimbā Tantric? Negotiating Power in a Western Himalayan Sacrificial Arena
Abstract
Neither the goddess Haḍimbā of the Western Himalayan Kullu Valley in Himachal Pradesh nor the frequent animal sacrifices that are offered to her are presented as Tantric by her devotees. The heated controversy in the region over the legitimacy of these sacrifices is also not interpreted in association with Tantra. However, if we situate both Haḍimbā and the controversy over sacrifices to her in a broader context, it becomes evident that this is but a stage in a lengthy process of negotiation between peripheral mountain religion and mainstream Brāhmaṇic Hindu ideals. It also becomes apparent that these negotiations are quite similar to those that took place in Assam in the eighth century and that gave rise to and shaped Tantra there. If the processes are indeed similar, this could reveal that Haḍimbā is a Tantric goddess after all or, at least, that the sacrifices made to her by the kings of Kullu are based in the logic of Tantric rituals of power.
|
Blood in the Mainstream: Kālī Pūjā and Tantric Orthodoxy in Early Modern Bengal
Abstract
A consideration of how Kālī Pūjā enters festival contexts in early modern Bengal can suggest new ways of thinking about blood sacrifice in Hinduism. In this case, it appears that we may have underappreciated the impact of sectarian conflict. Through an exploration of the traditional origins of public Kālī Pūjā, I argue that its promotion with the attendant sacrifice by Brāhmaṇa aristocrats such as Rāja Kṛṣṇacandra Rāya of Nadīyā (1710–1782) can be read as a claim on public space for the Tantric yet socially and theologically conservative Smārta Hinduism favored by the upper castes over and against the comparatively egalitarian, sacrifice-averse ethos of the local Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava movement.
|
Book Reviews
|
Kālīghāṭ and the Fashioning of Middle-Class Modernities
Abstract
The upper middle classes have worked over the past century to transform the Hindu temple from a symbol of “backwardness” to a symbol of the modern Indian city. By writing books and journal articles, filing lawsuits and organizing campaigns—thereby engaging in what Sanjay Joshi calls “cultural entrepreneurialism”—individuals in this segment of society both respond to and shape an evolving global discourse on Indian modernity. This article focuses in particular on the ways in which they have worked on Kālīghāṭ, a Hindu temple and pilgrimage site in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) that was once the target of the most vehement criticisms of temple Hinduism, but is now promoted as an appropriate symbol of modern Kolkata. This case study on one prominent temple in an Indian metropolis sheds light on a process that has shaped notions of Hindu temples throughout the nation.
|
The Śrī Maṅkala Vināyakar Satsaṅg Group: Religious Practice and Middle-Class Status in Tamil Nadu, South India
Abstract
This article presents an organized group of middle-class, multicaste Hindu housewives living in the suburbs of Madurai, Tamil Nadu—the Śrī Maṅkala Vināyakar Satsaṅg (SMVS) Group. Hindu satsaṅg groups are common throughout India and revolve primarily around devotional singing, although the word satsaṅg also denotes a grouping/community specifically organized around a guru and their students. Using my experiences participating in and observing this specific satsaṅg group and its practices, I demonstrate how caste, class, and Hindu religious practice intersect in contemporary urban Tamil Nadu. Through an examination of how religious knowledge is shared and learned in the SMVS Group, I show that what are viewed as high-caste Hindu performances of piety (for example, Sanskrit recitation) are formative in many Hindu women’s perceptions and constructions of their middle-class identities. Further, I highlight the study of multicaste women’s social networks, both urban and rural, as a nuanced and valuable lens through which to study middle-class identity in India.
|
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου