What does it mean to be a Brahmin, and what could it mean to become one? Over the years, intellectuals and dogmatists have offered plenty of answers to the first question, but the latter presents a cultural puzzle, since normative Brahminical ideology deems it impossible for an ordinary individual to change caste without first undergoing death and rebirth. There is, however, one notable figure in the Hindu mythological tradition who is said to have transformed himself from a king into a Brahmin by amassing great ascetic power, or tapas: the ornery sage Visvamitra. Through texts composed in Sanskrit and vernacular languages, oral performances, and visual media, Crossing the Lines of Caste examines the rich mosaic of legends about Visvamitra found across the Hindu mythological tradition. It offers a comprehensive historical analysis of how the "storyworlds" conjured up through these various tellings have served to adapt, upgrade, and reinforce the social identity of real-world Brahmin communities, from the ancient Vedic past up to the hypermodern present. Using a performance-centered approach to situate the production of the Visvamitra legends within specific historical contexts, Crossing the Lines of Caste reveals how and why mythological culture has played an active, dialogical role in the construction of Brahmin social power over the last three thousand years.

This book examines the making of heritage in contemporary Japan, investigating the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions are ascribed public recognition and political significance. Through detailed ethnographic and historical case studies, it analyses the social, economic, and even global political dimensions of cultural heritage. It shows how claims to heritage status in Japan stress different material qualities of objects, places and people - based upon their ages, originality and usage. Following on an introduction that thoroughly assesses the field, the ethnographic and historiographic case studies range from geisha; noh masks; and the tea ceremony; urban architecture; automata; a utopian commune and the sites of Mitsubishi company history. They examine how their heritage value is made and re-made, and appraise the construction of heritage in cases where the heritage value resides in the very substance of the object’s material composition - for example, in architecture, landscapes and designs - and show how the heritage industry adds values to existing assets: such as sacredness, urban charm or architectural and ethnic distinctiveness. The book questions the interpretation of material heritage as an enduring expression of social relations, aesthetic values and authenticity which, once conferred, undergoes no subsequent change, and standard dismissals of heritage as merely a tool for enshrining the nation; supporting the powerful; fostering nostalgic escapism; or advancing capitalist exploitation. Finally, it considers the role of people as agents of heritage production, and analyses the complexity of the relationships between people and objects. This book is a rigorous assessment of how conceptions of Japanese heritage have been forged, and provides a wealth of evidence that questions established assumptions on the nature and social roles of heritage.

Genocide is not only a problem of mass death, but also of how, as a relatively new idea and law, it organizes and distorts thinking about civilian destruction. Taking the normative perspective of civilian immunity from military attack, A. Dirk Moses argues that the implicit hierarchy of international criminal law, atop which sits genocide as the 'crime of crimes', blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities, and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes. Talk of genocide, then, can function ideologically to detract from systematic violence against civilians perpetrated by governments of all types. The Problems of Genocide contends that this violence is the consequence of 'permanent security' imperatives: the striving of states, and armed groups seeking to found states, to make themselves invulnerable to threats.

Language in the Buddhist Tantra of Japan dismantles the preconception that Buddhism is a religion of mystical silence, arguing that language is in fact central to the Buddhist tradition. By examining the use of 'extraordinary language'-evocations calling on the power of the Buddha-in Japanese Buddhist Tantra, Richard K. Payne shows that such language was not simply cultural baggage carried by Buddhist practitioners from South to East Asia. Rather, such language was a key element in the propagation of new forms of belief and practice. In contrast to Western approaches to the philosophy of language, which are grounded in viewing language as a form of communication, this book argues that it is the Indian and East Asian philosophies of language that shed light on the use of language in meditative and ritual practices in Japan. It also illuminates why language was conceived as an effective means of progress on the path from delusion to awakening.

This ninth Orality and Literacy volume considers oral composition, performance, reception, and the mutual interplay between oral performance and written text. Authors under consideration are Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Isocrates, orators of the Second Sophistic, and Proclus. Cross-cultural studies are included.

Ťhe Panćatantra, Jatakas, Kathāsaritasāgara, Hitopadeśa, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Eesop’s tales – the ancient folk compendiums have knowledge and wisdom for the people of all spheres. They are valuable for all ages with immense light over much darkness. Ťhe Panćatantra is a collection of five books by Vishnu Sharma who has educated three dull minded princes and able for kingdom. Manoj Das, an eminent Indian author who panned his writing to Indian literature in both Odia and English. Folk compendiums fascinate him and as a result of this fascination he writes short stories like Chasing the Rainbow: Growing up in an Indian Village, Selected Fiction, Tales told by Mystics, Mystery of the Missing Cap and Other Stories, The Bridge in the Moonlit Night and Other Stories, etc, the book is an illuminated study of short stories of Manoj Das and Indian Folklore that are not simply tell/story to listen.

Wider Bagan: Ancient and Living Buddhist Traditions is the first book to define the area outside the renowned Buddhist capital where vestiges of Bagan era cultural traditions can be found. From nearly six hundred attributes inventoried in Wider Bagan, thematic and geographical analysis of the Wider Bagan data reveals a related but different trajectory from that of the capital. The Sasanā of the court was honoured, and though its economy profited many places across Wider Bagan, local resilience was foremost. While the capital and Wider Bagan existed in relation to each other, their aims and narratives differed. Much has been written about Bagan, but little attention on the ground has been devoted to areas beyond the capital. These places have stories to tell—ones of the past and of the present—that are narrated in this book. "Wider Bagan is the most important recent publication on Myanmar’s past. Tracing Bagan’s ideational and material legacies, it recovers how this kingdom’s successors related to their heritages. Meticulously researched, beautifully illustrated, studded with clear maps, tables and outlines—Wider Bagan reveals these legacies’ custodians—inhabiting territories stretching as far as Yunnan and Bengal. Multiple topics are examined also in light of local scholarship, often ignored due to linguistic limitations. The resulting evocations of times and places make Wider Bagan an enduring guide to people’s lives—also in the larger scheme of things—like the community tracing its founding to the Buddha Gotama’s grandfather. No one interested in Myanmar’s complex past and fractious present can ignore the author’s conclusions."—Lilian Handlin, Member of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences CAMLab. "In her detailed survey of hundreds of sites in the Ayeyarwady River basin, Moore and her collaborators have revealed a long-suspected, but hitherto undocumented, rural cultural landscape with origins well before and persisting long after the political heyday of metropolitan Bagan in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. During their investigations, the authors had numerous encounters with local scholar-archaeologists who identified frequently overlooked physical attributes that define the local cultural landscape. In mapping these attributes, the authors reconstructed a narrative of local resilience that speaks to a long local history of diversity and adaptability over an extensive region, where other scholars—working mainly from historical chronicles—had observed only a rigid hegemony emanating from the political centre at Bagan. Moore’s innovative methodology breaks new ground for the study of early urban formations, not only in Myanmar but throughout mainland Southeast Asia. This research contributes to a building body of evidence that suggests a fresh paradigm to replace the long-standing concentric circle model most often used to explain state formation throughout the region. In this new paradigm, the contradiction between urban and rural settlements is dismantled as the stories of the smaller villages and towns re-enact the iterative process between places, communities of users, and social memory of Wider Bagan, demonstrating, in the process, an ecology of resilient settlement that has endured through generations of political, social and economic upheaval."—Richard A. Engelhardt, UNESCO Chair Professor of Cultural Heritage Management and Regional Advisor for Culture in Asia and the Pacific

Singing the Goddess into Place examines Chamundi of the Hill, a collection of songs that tells the stories of the gods and goddesses of the region around the city of Mysore in southern Karnataka. The ballad actively transforms the region into a land where gods and goddesses live, embedding these deities within the social worlds of their devotees and remapping southern Karnataka into sacred geography connected through networks of devotion and pilgrimage. In this in-depth study of the songs and their context, Caleb Simmons not only provides the first English-language translation of these songs but brings to light the unstudied folk perspectives on the foundational myth of Mysore and its urban history. Singing the Goddess into Place demonstrates how folk narratives reflect local context while also actively working to upend social inequities based on caste and ritual/devotional practices. By delving into this world, the book helps us understand how a landscape is transformed through people's relationship with it and how this relationship helps build meaning for the communities that call it home.

The book provides insights on decolonising media and communication studies education from diverse African scholars at different stages of their careers. These academics, located on the continent and in the diaspora, share an interest in decolonising higher education broadly and media and communication studies teaching and learning in particular. Although many African countries gained flag independence from different European colonial powers between the 1950s and the 1970s, this book argues that former colonies remain ensnared in a colonial power matrix. Many African universities did not jettison ways of teaching and learning established during colonialism, and even those journalism, communication, and media studies training programmes which were established after the attainment of flag independence did not place decolonial agendas at the front and centre when setting them up. Starting with big picture thematic questions around decolonisation, the book goes on to consider what the implications of change would be for students and instructors, before reflecting on how far it is possible to decolonise curricula and syllabi and what this might look like in practice across a range of subject areas and country contexts. Overall, this book presents a nuanced picture of what a decolonised media and communication studies education could look like in sub-Saharan Africa. This book is essential for researchers in Africa in disciplines such as media and communication studies, journalism, film studies, cultural studies, and higher education studies. More broadly, the concepts and ideas on decolonising teaching and learning discussed in the book are relevant to instructors in any discipline who are interested in doing the decolonial work of contesting coloniality.

Living Folk Religions presents cutting-edge contributions from a range of disciplines to examine religious folkways across cultures. This collection embraces the non-elite and non-sanctioned, the oral, fluid, accessible, evolving religions of people (volk) on the ground. Split into five sections, this book covers: What Is Folk Religion? Spirit Beings and Deities Performance and Ritual Praxis Possession and Exorcism Health, Healing, and Lifestyle Topics include demons and ambivalent gods, tree and nature spirits, revolutionary renunciates, oral lore, possession and exorcism, divination, midwestern American spiritualism, festivals, queer sexuality among ritual specialists, the dead returned, vernacular religions, diaspora adaptations, esoteric influences underlying public cultures, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), music and sound experiences, death rituals, and body and wellness cultures. Living Folk Religions is a must-read for those studying Comparative Religions, World Religions, and Religious Studies, and it will also interest specialists and general readers, particularly enthusiastic readers of Anthropology, Folklore and Folk Studies, Global Studies, and Sociology.