For the Tamils, an ethnic community in modern-day South India and Sri Lanka, a concept of physical and spiritual heat as female energy (sakti) influences their diet, their traditional medical practices, their view of men and women, and their worship of Hindu deities. An anthropologist who has conducted firsthand field research in both locations interprets this cultural viewpoint here photographically. Some of the striking interconnections between "cooling" and "heating" foods, Ayurvedic humoral medical treatments, male and female gender relations, popular beliefs about sexuality and the life cycle, and "cooling" rituals of worship for "hot" Hindu goddesses are illustrated in this volume, which accompanies the "Symbolic Heat" photographic exhibit mounted by the University of Colorado Museum.
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