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A vivid account of ritual, power, and social inequality in rural India.

Excerpt from The Village Gods of South India The material for this account of the village gods of south India has been gathered almost entirely from my own observation and inquiry.I have been able to get little help from books, as this is, I think, the first attempt at dealing systematically with this aspect of Indian religion.It does not pretend to be anything like an exhaustive account of all the various rites and ceremonies observed in the worship of the village deities.The variety of ritual and ceremonial in the different districts of South India is almost endless, and I have not attempted in this book to give an account even of all the various ceremonies that have come within my own knowledge.Perhaps it would be more correct to call the book "An Introduction to the study of the village Gods of south India." I believe, however, that all the main types of this particular form of Hinduism are included in the following pages, and that enough has been said to enable the reader to get a fairly complete idea of its general character and to compare it with similar forms of religion in other parts of the world. I have to acknowledge the kindness of the Editor of The Nineteenth Century and After for allowing me to reprint in Chapters IV, VI, and VII portions of articles contributed by me to that Magazine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II NAMES, CHARACTERS, AND FUNCTIONS OF THE VILLAGE GODS () The names of village deities are legion. Some of them have an obvious meaning, many are quite unintelligible to the people themselves, and I have often failed to get any clue to their origin, even from native pandits. They differ in almost every district, and often the deities worshipped in one village will be quite unknown in other villages five or six miles off. In Masulipatam on the East Coast, in the Telugu country, the following were given me as the names of the village deities worshipped in the district, vis. Mutyalamma, the pearl goddess (amma or amman is only a female termination); Chinnintamma, the goddess who is head of the house; Challalamma, the goddess presiding over buttermilk; Ghantalamma, the goddess who goes with bells; Yaparamma, the goddess who transacts business; Mamillamma, the goddess who sits under a mango tree; Gangamma, the water goddess, who in this district is the protectress against small-pox. But, at a village about twenty miles from Masulipatam, I found that fifteen different goddesses were worshipped in the neighbourhood, of whom only four were identical with those of Masulipatam. Some were named after the villages from which they had been imported, e.g. Addankamma, the goddess from Addanki, and Pandilamma, the goddess from Pandil; others had names derived from common objects of country life, e.g. Wanamalamma, the goddess of the tope, Balamma, the goddess of the cart, and Sitalamma, the water goddess. In the Ellore district, farther west, the deities worshipped are chiefly Gangamma, who is sometimes called Mahalakshmi (one of the names of Vishnu's wife), and sometimes Chamalamma (another name of Kali, the wife of Siva), and Poleramma, ...

Many Hindus today are urban middle-class people with religious values similar to those of their professional counterparts in America and Europe. Just as modern professionals continue to build new churches, synagogues, and now mosques, Hindus are erecting temples to their gods wherever their work and their lives take them. Despite the perceived exoticism of Hindu worship, the daily life-style of these avid temple patrons differs little from their suburban neighbors. Joanne Waghorne leads her readers on a journey through this new middle-class Hindu diaspora, focusing on their efforts to build and support places of worship. She seeks to trace the changing religious sensibilities of the middle classes as written on their temples and on the faces of their gods. She offers detailed comparisons of temples in Chennai (formerly Madras), London, and Washington, D.C., and interviews temple priests, devotees, and patrons. In the process, she illuminates the interrelationships between ritual worship and religious edifices, the rise of the modern world economy, and the ascendancy of the great middle class. The result is a comprehensive portrait of Hinduism as lived today by so many both in India and throughout the world. Lavishly illustrated with professional photographs by Dick Waghorne, this book will appeal to art historians as well as urban anthropologists, scholars of religion, and those interested in diaspora, transnationalism, and trends in contemporary religion. It should be especially appealing for course use because it introduces the modern Hinduism practiced by the friends and neighbors of students in the U.S. and Britain.

With 600 signed, alphabetically organized articles covering the entirety of folklore in South Asia, this new resource includes countries and regions, ethnic groups, religious concepts and practices, artistic genres, holidays and traditions, and many other concepts. A preface introduces the material, while a comprehensive index, cross-references, and black and white illustrations round out the work. The focus on south Asia includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with short survey articles on Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim, and various diaspora communities. This unique reference will be invaluable for collections serving students, scholars, and the general public.