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 v
Redemptive EncountersThree Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition
BABB LAWRENCE A.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Human Being In Depth
SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA
SRI SATGURU PUBLICATIONS
The Laws of Manu
WENDY DONIGER,BRIAN K. SMITH
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE GROUP
The Zend Avesta Vol. 4 Part I The Vendidad The Sacred Books of the East
F. MAX MULLER
MOTILAL BANARSIDASS PUBLISHERS PVT. LTD.
Pahlavi Texts Vol. 18 Part 2 The Sacred Books of the East
The Sacred Books of China Vol. 27 Part 4 Sacred Books of the East
The Bhagavadgita
S. RADHAKRISHNAN
HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS LIMITED
The Universe God and God Realization
SWAMI SATPRAKASHANANDA
SRI RAMAKRISHNA MATH
Wisdom of the Gods for You and Me
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
RUPA PUBLICATIONS INDIA PVT. LTD.
The Hindu Way An Introduction to Hinduism
SHASHI THAROOR
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY/RUPA PUBLICATIONS
Fill up your details to notify you when this book will be available