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Aghor medicine : pollution, death, and healing in northern India / Ron Barrett ; foreword by Jonathan P. Parry.
De Gruyter University of California Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Barrett, Ron, 1963-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Medical anthropology--India--Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh).
- Medical anthropology.
- Aghorīs--Rituals.
- Aghorīs.
- Healing--Religious aspects--Aghoris.
- Healing.
- Leprosy--Treatment--India--Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh).
- Leprosy.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (240 p.)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, c2008.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically powerful organization. Based on extensive fieldwork, this lucidly written book explores the dynamics of pollution, death, and healing in Aghor medicine. Ron Barrett examines a range of Aghor therapies from ritual bathing to modified Ayurveda and biomedicines and clarifies many misconceptions about this little-studied group and its highly unorthodox, powerful ideas about illness and healing.
- Contents:
- Front matter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Foreword
- Note on Transliteration, Abbreviations, and Names
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The Cosmic Sink
- 2. Fire in the Well
- 3. The Reformation
- 4. The Wrong Side of the River
- 5. Dawā and Duwā
- 6. Death and Nondiscrimination
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Glossary
- References
- Index
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-209) and index.
- Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
- ISBN:
- 9786611385651
- 9781281385659
- 1281385654
- 9780520941014
- 0520941012
- 9781435653689
- 1435653688
- OCLC:
- 476162434
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