Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions

This book analyses cultural questions related to representations of the body in South Asian traditions, human perceptions and attitudes toward the body in religious and cultural contexts, as well as the processes of interpreting notions of the body in religious and literary texts.

Autorentext

Diana Dimitrova is Professor of Hinduism and South Asian Traditions at the University of Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Hinduism and Hindi Theatre; Gender, Religion and Modern Hindi Drama and Western Tradition and Naturalistic Hindi Theatre. She is also the editor of Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia and Imagining Indianness: Cultural Identity and Literature (with Thomas de Bruijn). Her publications include the edited volumes, The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness and Divinizing in South Asian Traditions (with Tatiana Oranskaia), also published by Routledge. She is the series editor of the Routledge Series on South Asian Culture.

Inhalt

Introduction: Rethinking the Body in South Asian Traditions 1. The vaa as Body: Seizure, Illness and Restriction of the Body in the Harivaa 2. Tinged with Pain and Promise: Images of Bodies in the Poetry of Appar 3. Allegorical representations of the body in the Vijñnagta by Keavds 4. Devotional Bodies and Embodied Devotion: Yoga, Bhakti and Pilgrimage in the Radhasoami Tradition 5. Bodies in Cracking India 6. Cultivating a female body: Appropriation of female rituality (saskra) within thehijra community 7. When Humans Pose as Hindu Gods