Religion & Folklore of Northern India PDF Download

Author: William Crooke
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1025

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This 2-volume study examines the reality of Hindu worship in northern India from the perspective of its popular manifestation. In rural areas, practical Hinduism differed dramatically from organized Vedic Hinduism and included cult worship of a multitude of local deities which were not formally recognized by the Vedas but exerted a greater influence on the rhythms, meanings and decisions of day-to-day life. Crooke's study may have been the first to look at the religion through eyes other than those of missionaries or the Hindu elite, seeking to fill a gap in European intellectual knowledge of India by documenting living traditions in a serious and accessible manner. Volume 1: The Godlings of Nature The Heroic and Village Godlings The Godlings of Disease The Worship of the Sainted Dead Worship of the Malevolent Dead Volume 2: The Evil Eye and the Scaring of Ghosts Tree and Serpent Worship Totemism and Fetishism Animal-Worship The Black Art Some Rural Festivals and Ceremonies

Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ancestor worship
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Author: William Crooke
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465585370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 912

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Among all the great religions of the world there is none more catholic, more assimilative than the mass of beliefs which go to make up what is popularly known as Hinduism. To what was probably its original form—a nature worship in a large degree introduced by the Aryan missionaries—has been added an enormous amount of demonolatry, fetishism and kindred forms of primitive religion, much of which has been adopted from races which it is convenient to describe as aboriginal or autochthonous. The same was the case in Western lands. As the Romans extended their Empire they brought with them and included in the national pantheon the deities of the conquered peoples. Greece and Syria, Egypt, Gallia and Germania were thus successively laid under contribution. This power of assimilation in the domain of religion had its advantages as well as its dangers. While on the one hand it tended to promote the unity of the empire, it degraded, on the other hand, the national character by the introduction of the impure cults which flourished along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. But, besides these forms of religion which were directly imported from foreign lands, there remained a stratum of local beliefs which even after twenty centuries of Christianity still flourish, discredited though they may be by priests and placed under the ban of the official creed. Thus in Greece, while the high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Agamemnon are forgotten, the Nereids, the Cyclopes and the Lamia still live in the faith of the peasants of Thessaly. So in modern Tuscany there is actually as much heathenism as catholicism, and they still believe in La Vecchia Religione—“the old religion;”—and while on great occasions they have recourse to the priests, they use magic and witchcraft for all ordinary purposes. It is part of the object of the following pages to show that in India the history of religious belief has been developed on similar lines. Everywhere we find that the great primal gods of Hinduism have suffered grievous degradation. Throughout the length and breadth of the Indian peninsula Brahma, the Creator, has hardly more than a couple of shrines specially dedicated to him. Indra has, as we shall see, become a vague weather deity, who rules the choirs of fairies in his heaven Indra-loka: Varuna, as Barun, has also become a degraded weather godling, and sailors worship their boat as his fetish when they commence a voyage. The worship of Agni survives in the fire sacrifice which has been specialized by the Agnihotri Brâhmans. Of Pûshan and Ushas, Vâyu and the Maruts, hardly even the names survive, except among the small philosophical class of reformers who aim at restoring Vedism, a faith which is as dead as Jupiter or Aphrodite.

Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ancestor worship
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780800219154
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Susan Snow Wadley
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788180280160
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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The Study Of Folk Traditions Provides A Critical Look At The Accepted, Largely High Caste Male-Authored Views Of Hinduism And Society In India.

Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Author: William Crooke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ancestor worship
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description

Author: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722875
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes six representative Indian folklore genres from a single regional repertoire to show the influence of their intertextual relations on the composition and interpretation of artistic performance. Placing special emphasis on women’s rituals, she looks at the relationship between the framework and organization of indigenous genres and the reception of folklore performance. The regional repertoire under examination presents a strikingly female-centered world. Female performers and characters are active, articulate, and frequently challenge or defy expectations of gender. Men also confound traditional gender roles. Flueckiger includes the translations of two full performance texts of narratives sung by female and male storytellers respectively.