1st Edition

Images of the Body in India South Asian and European Perspectives on Rituals and Performativity

Edited By Axel Michaels, Christoph Wulf Copyright 2011
304 Pages
by Routledge India

310 Pages
by Routledge India

304 Pages
by Routledge India

This intriguing book engages with the concept of the body in its cultural context by acknowledging and demonstrating that the human body is understood differently in Western and Indian cultures. The contributors go on to show that any attempt to put forward a single concept of the body within Indian culture would be misleading. Divided into three parts, the book examines the considerable and... Read more
Rethinking the Body: An Introduction; The Body in Religious and Philosophical Texts; A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations *; The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India; God's Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic; Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy; Body, Breath and Representation in ?aiva Tantrism 1; Telling Bodies; The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History; Open Bodies; The Body in Narratives and Ritual Performances; Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar; Performing God's Body; Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi; Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge; Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals; The Body in Visualisations and Images; Translating the Body into Image: The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising ‘World Class' at Elite Weddings in Urban India; Lost in Transition? Managing Paradoxical Situations by Inventing Identities

Biography

Axel Michaels is Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg.

Christoph Wulf is Professor of Anthropology and Philosophy of Education, Freie Universität Berlin.