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 Lanka 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).
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- ISBN10 0226616029
- ISBN13 9780226616025
- Publish Date 1 January 1984
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 May 2008
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 648
- Language English