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The essays collected in this book are based on field research carried out over an extended period in several villages in the Bengali-speaking area of South Asia. The center of attention is the religious life of ordinary people in rural Bengal. They cover a broad spectrum, including the Bengali attachment to Goddesses, the religious treatment of the calamities that befall poor people, and the analysis of myths, both historically and structurally. A long essay ...
Kinship has been a central concern of anthropology for more than a century. As a key element in the organization of every human society, kinship is also a major source of the principles that guide people in the other spheres of life. Ronald B. Inden, a historian of India, and Ralph W. Nicholas, an anthropologist who has studied contemporary Bengali culture and society, have joined complementary skills to analyze the kinship system of a major human society that ...
The rituals and narratives of Gajan dominate the spring season in the villages of Bengal. It is a ritual of the common village people created from indigenous sources and heavily laden with symbols of fertilization and reproduction. Rites of Spring Analyzes the meaning of these narratives and their social and historical contexts. In origin, Gajan was a type of worship peculiar to Dharma Thakur, a form of the supreme being not known outside Bengal. Today it is ...