Demoting Vishnu PDF Download

Author: Anne T. Mocko
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190275227
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
"This book examines how public ritual once placed kings at the privileged apex of Nepal's government, and how in the 21st century those same rituals stopped serving the king and turned instead to authorize party-based politicians. Ritual upheaval undermined the institutional logic of monarchy, and demonstrated that kingship was contingent/dispensable"--

Author: A. Azfar Moin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. This collaborative and interdisciplinary book recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective. Editors A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern present a theoretical framework for understanding sacred kingship, which leading scholars reflect on and respond to in a series of essays. They distinguish between two separate but complementary religious tendencies, immanentism and transcendentalism, which mold kings into divinized or righteous rulers, respectively. Whereas immanence demands priestly and cosmic rites from kings to sustain the flourishing of life, transcendence turns the focus to salvation and subordinates rulers to higher ethical objectives. Secular modernity does not end the struggle between immanence and transcendence—flourishing and righteousness—but only displaces it from kings onto nations and individuals. After an essay by Marshall Sahlins that ranges from the Pacific to the Arctic, the book contains chapters on religion and kingship in settings as far-flung as ancient Egypt, classical Greece, medieval Islam, Mughal India, modern European drama, and ISIS. Sacred Kingship in World History sheds new light on how religion has constructed rulership, with implications spanning global history, religious studies, political theory, and anthropology.

Author: Anne T. Mocko
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190275242
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
'Demoting Vishnu' examines how the same public ritual that once placed kings at the privileged apex of Nepal's government have now, in the 21st-century, stopped serving the king, turning instead to authorise party-based politicians.

Author: Anne Taylor Mocko
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267472717
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description
Part One of the dissertation traces the institutional history of the Nepali monarchy over three chapters: first surveying the institution's development up until 2001, second examining the political tensions during the reign of King Gyanendra (2001-2006), and finally providing a detailed chronology of the demotion of Gyanendra, from April 2006 to May 2008–the period during which the prime minister progressively eclipsed the king. Part Two of the dissertation–the section analyzing discrete royal rituals--provides in-depth analyses of four rituals: coronation, Bhoto Jatra, Indra Jatra, and Dasai. These chapters explore how the performance of these rituals had supported and reproduced the monarchy in the past, and how each ritual subsequently contributed to the process of weakening and dismantling the monarchy. Following Parts I & II, the dissertation concludes with a chapter discussing the ways rituals have continued to be revised in the wake of Gyanendra's 2008 departure from the royal palace.

Author: Brian K. Pennington
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438469047
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Challenges prevailing conceptions of what religious ritual does and how it achieves its ends. Religious rituals are often seen as unchanging and ahistorical bearers of long-standing traditions. But as this book demonstrates, ritual is a lively platform for social change and innovation in the religions of South Asia. Drawing from Hindu and Jain examples in India, Nepal, and North America, the essays in this volume, written by renowned scholars of religion, explore how the intentional, conscious, and public invention or alteration of ritual can effect dramatic social transformation, whether in dethroning a Nepali king or sanctioning same-sex marriage. Ritual Innovation shows how the very idea of ritual as a conservative force misreads the history of religion by overlooking ritual’s inherent creative potential and its adaptability to new contexts and circumstances. Brian K. Pennington is Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University and the author of Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. Amy L. Allocco is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University.

Author: Michael Baltutis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040025927
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book is an engaging introduction to the complex religious tradition of Hinduism. Central to its focus is demonstrating the fundamental diversity within Hinduism through the multiplicity of its core beliefs and traditions. Chapters are divided into four historical categories – Vedic, Ascetic, Classical, and Contemporary Hinduism – with each examining one deity alongside one key term, serving as a twin focal point for a more complex discussion of related key texts, ideas, social structures, religious practices, festivals, and concepts such as ritual and sacrifice, music and devotion, and engagement and renunciation. The organization of this book requires that we see deities as not simply divine individuals who preside over one part of the Hindu world, but that each deity operates as a larger cultural category whose related persons, concepts, and practices provide a vivid lens through which Hindu devotees see and continue to readapt to the world in which they live. With study questions, glossaries, and lists of key contemporary figures, this book is an essential and comprehensive resource for students encountering the multiplicity of Hinduism for the first time.

Author: Vicki A. Spencer
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498530184
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This collection of essays explores conceptions of toleration and tolerance in Asia and the West. It tests the assumption in contemporary Western political discourse and theory that toleration is a uniquely Western virtue and finds that many other traditions have comparable ideas and practices in grappling with religious and cultural diversity.

Author: Milinda Banerjee
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319505238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book challenges existing accounts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which political developments are explained in terms of the rise of the nation-state. While monarchies are often portrayed as old-fashioned – as things of the past – we argue that modern monarchies have been at the centre of nation-construction in many parts of the world. Today, roughly a quarter of states define themselves as monarchies as well as nation-states – they are Royal Nations. This is a global phenomenon. This volume interrogates the relationship between royals and ‘their’ nations with transnational case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe as well as South America. The seventeen contributors discuss concepts and structures, visual and performative representations, and memory cultures of modern monarchies in relation to rising nationalist movements. This book thereby analyses the worldwide significance of the Royal Nation.

Author: Sudhir Chella Rajan
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption. Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled. Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.

Author: Tom Lansford
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1071853058
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 3505

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Book Description
The Political Handbook of the World 2022-2023 provides timely, thorough, and accurate political information, with more in-depth coverage of current political controversies than any other reference guide. The updated 2022-2023 edition continues to be the most authoritative source for finding complete facts and analysis on each country′s governmental and political makeup. Tom Lansford has compiled in one place more than 200 entries on countries and territories throughout the world, this volume is renowned for its extensive coverage of all major and minor political parties and groups in each political system. It also provides names of key ambassadors and international memberships of each country, plus detailed profiles of more than 30 intergovernmental organizations and UN agencies. And this update will aim to include coverage of current events, issues, crises, and controversies from the course of the last two years.