In previous studies of South Asian Tantric ritual, scholars tend to focus on one region or context. For the first time, Tantra, Ritual Performance and Politics in Nepal and Kerala: Embodying the Goddess-clan offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observed in two locales: Navadurga rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyattam in North Kerala. In this book, Matthew Martin advances a new theory of ritual, which spotlights the way dancer-mediums embody medieval goddess-clans and ancestor deities, through offerings of food and sacrifice, that synchronize their denizens with the land in spiralling web-like ritual networks. Uniquely interdisciplinary in style, this study synthesizes cultural history, ethnography, and theory to explore the continuities - historical, societal, and political - that characterize these ritual traditions across the subcontinent.
- ISBN10 9004438998
- ISBN13 9789004438996
- Publish Date 13 August 2020 (first published 10 August 2020)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country NL
- Imprint Brill
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 296
- Language English
- URL brill.com/product_id4059171