Zoroastrian Rituals in Context.
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Rituals, it is agreed, play a prominent role in Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest continuous traditions of mankind. In this book, scholars from a broad range of disciplines make the first ever collective effort to address this issue. From a historical and geographical perspective, texts and contexts studied in these pages range from antiquity to modernity, all the way from Japan, China, India, Iran, Europe to California. The essays touch on questions of theory, ritual texts, change and performances, gender and professional religion (priesthood/lay-people). The rituals studied are placed in a broad scope of social and local settings ranging from the royal court to the needy, from the rural village to the urban metropolis, from the domestic to the public.
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1 online resource. :
9789047412502
Initiating women in Freemasonry : the adoption rite /
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Freemasonry is generally regarded a male phenomenon. Yet, both before 1723 and since 1744, women were initiated as well. This book is about the rituals, used for the initiation of women in the Adoption Lodges, since the middle of the 18th century. It describes their contents, roots and creation before reviewing and conceptualising their development in the past three centuries. It analyses the different families of rituals within the Adoption Rite, and gives an overview of specific developments, showing how the rituals were adapted to their changing contexts. Apart from its relevance for the history of Freemasonry in general and the Adoption Rite in particular, the book also writes a hitherto unknown chapter of women's history. Of particular interest for the history of feminism is the chapter about the 20th century, which could only be written now that the documents concerning it, which had been moved to Moscow in 1945, had been returned in 2000.
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1 online resource (xvii, 550 pages, [32] pages of plates) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004219342 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Vaishnavism of the Gowd Saraswat Brahmins and a Few Konkani Folklore Tales /
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Gowd Saraswat Brahmins (GSB) have contributed immensely to the Konkani literature. But after the Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1500, it further transformed Konkani into a vernacular language of the majority of Goan population. This book delves about the history of Gowd Saraswat Brahmin community and their affiliation towards Vaishnavism sect, as the community adopted the principles of the twelfth century ascetic Madhavacharya. The later part contains six classical folk tales collected from the Konkani literature, which is the significant part of this book.
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1 online resource (64 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004752276
Belief, Bounty, and Beauty, Rituals around Sacred Trees in India.
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This study is focused on the interaction of material and symbolic values in the domain of sacred trees in India. By presenting samples from 3,000 years of Indian ritual practice, it is shown that in many sacred geographies trees continue to connect the present with the past, the material with the symbolic, and the contemporary ecological with the traditionally sacred. Although in India religion may have become very much a temple cult, its embeddedness in the natural world enhances today's 'green' interpretation of religious traditions. That in environmental matters such religious inspiration may be both successful and highly ambivalent at the same time is the thought-provoking position taken in the final chapters.
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1 online resource. :
9789047415619
Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture /
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Editing and examining source-critically for the first time the Late Babylonian ritual texts dealing with the New Year Festival, this book proposes an incisive re-interpretation of the most frequently discussed of all Mesopotamian rituals. The festival's twelve-day paradigm is dissolved in favor of a more historically dynamic model, with the ritual texts being firmly anchored in the Hellenistic period. As part of a larger group of texts constituting what can be called Late Babylonian Priestly Literature, they reflect the Babylonian priesthoods' fears and aspirations of that time much more than an actual ritual reality.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004513037
9789004512955
Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture /
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Editing and examining source-critically for the first time the Late Babylonian ritual texts dealing with the New Year Festival, this book proposes an incisive re-interpretation of the most frequently discussed of all Mesopotamian rituals. The festival's twelve-day paradigm is dissolved in favor of a more historically dynamic model, with the ritual texts being firmly anchored in the Hellenistic period. As part of a larger group of texts constituting what can be called Late Babylonian Priestly Literature, they reflect the Babylonian priesthoods' fears and aspirations of that time much more than an actual ritual reality.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004513037
9789004512955
Theorizing Rituals, Volume 1: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts.
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Volume one of Theorizing Rituals assembles 34 leading scholars from various countries and disciplines working within this field. The authors review main methodological and meta-theoretical problems (part I) followed by some of the classical issues (part II). Further chapters discuss main approaches to theorizing rituals (part III) and explore some key analytical concepts for theorizing rituals (part IV). The volume is provided with extensive indices.
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1 online resource. :
9789047410775
Recovering Confucian Authority : The Field of Ritual Learning in Early Imperial China 9 to 316 CE /
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The political and cultural power of Confucianism is nowhere more apparent than in ritual. Confucian-educated officials proficient in Ritual Learning shape the ritual institutions that express dynastic legitimacy. This book follows the workings of Ritual Learning during the first three centuries of the Common Era, a time marked by three dynastic changes and difficult recovery of the ritual order under new regimes. Contrary to common understanding, the Eastern Han is a time of flux, uncertainty, and neglect in Confucian ritual forms, and the following third century is an era when Confucian dominance over imperial ritual crystallized as never before.
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1 online resource (200 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004714137
Theorizing rituals /
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Volume two of Theorizing Rituals mainly consists of an annotated bibliography of more than 400 items covering those books, edited volumes and essays that are considered most relevant for the field of ritual theory. Instead of proposing yet another theory of ritual, the bibliography is a comprehensive monument documenting four decades of theorizing rituals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047421825 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Light of devotion : oil lamps of Kerala /
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This in-depth study of the medieval oil lamps of Kerala and beyond considers these art objects as primary sources for a broader discussion on the ritual use of Hindu oil lamps, their related and unique cultural history, their motifs, style and subject matter. From an understudied region, many of the pieces presented are previously unpublished.
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Also issued in print: 2022. :
1 online resource (x, 144 pages) : illustrations (colour) :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9781803272559 (PDF ebook) :
Discourses of purity in transcultural perspective (300-1600) /
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While comparative studies on purity and impurity presented in the last decades have mostly concentrated on the ancient world or on modern developments, this volume focusses the hitherto comparatively neglected period between circa 300 and 1600 c. E. The collection is innovative because it not only combines papers on both European and Asian cultures but also considers a wide variety of religions and confessions. The articles are written by leading experts in the field and are presented in six systematic sections. This analytical categorization facilitates understanding the functional spectrum that the binomial purity and impurity could cover in past societies. The volume thus presents an in-depth comparative analysis of a category of paramount importance for interfaith relations and processes of transfer.
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1 online resource (vi, 372 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004289758 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals : Volume Three /
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Among the most important sources for understanding the cultures and systems of thought of ancient Mesopotamia is a large body of magical and medical texts written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. An especially significant branch of this literature centers upon witchcraft. Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals and incantations attribute ill-health and misfortune to the magic machinations of witches and prescribe ceremonies, devices, and treatments for dispelling witchcraft, destroying the witch, and protecting and curing the patient. The Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals aims to present a reconstruction of this body of texts; it provides critical editions of the relevant rituals and prescriptions based on the study of the cuneiform tablets and fragments recovered from the libraries of ancient Mesopotamia.
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1 online resource. :
9789004416277
9789004416260