The cult of the goddess Pattini / Gananath Obeyesekere.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Obeyesekere, Gananath.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pattini (Hindu deity)--Cult.

Pattini (Hindu deity).

Pattini (Buddhist deity)--Cult.

Pattini (Buddhist deity).

Physical Description:

xvii, 629 pages, 8 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Summary:

Pattini--goddess, virgin, wife, and mother; folk deity of Sinhala Buddhists and Jains; and assimilated goddess of the Hindu pantheon--has been worshiped in Sri Lanka and South India for fifteen hundred years or more, as she still is today. This long-awaited book is the culmination of Gananath Obeyesekere's comprehensive study of the Pattini cult and its historical, sociological, and psychoanalytical role in the culture of South Asia. A well-known anthropologist and a native of Sri Lanka, Obeyesekere displays his impeccable scholarship and a stunning range of theoretical perspectives in this work, the most detailed analysis of a single religious complex in South Asian ethnography (and possibly in all of anthropology).

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 609-618.

ISBN:

0226616029 :

OCLC:

9392849