Tantra, Ritual Performance, and Politics in Nepal and Kerala : Embodying the Goddess-clan /
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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: Navadurgā rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyāṭṭam 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.
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Revision of author's PhD dissertation. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004439023
9789004438996
Civic ideology, organization, and law in the Rule scrolls : a comparative study of the Covenanters' sect and contemporary voluntary associations in political context /
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Over the past sixty years, several studies have demonstrated that the Dead Sea Scrolls sect was one of numerous voluntary associations that flourished in the Hellenistic-Roman age. Yet the origins of organizational and regulatory patterns that the sect shared with other associations have not been adequately explained. Drawing upon sociological studies of modern associations, this book argues that most ancient groups appropriated patterns from the state. Comparison of the Rule Scrolls with Greco-Roman constitutional literature, as well as philosophical, rabbinic, and early Christian texts, shows that the sect's appropriation helped articulate an \'alternative civic ideology\' by which members identified themselves as subjects of a commonwealth alternative and superior to that of the status quo. Like other associations with alternative civic ideology, the Covenanters studied constitution and law with the intention of reform, anticipating governance of restored Israel at the End of Days.
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Revised version of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 2007. :
1 online resource (xxv, 586 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [525]-552) and indexes. :
9789004212183 :
0169-9962 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.