This nine essays in this volume are based on the author’s fieldwork in Puri, Orissa between 1975 and 1993. During this eighteen-year period, she focused on two sets of rituals–one, in and around the temple of Jagannatha, studied mostly through the lens of the rituals of the Devadasis; the other, the festival of Raja Parba at Bali Haracandi, which celebrates the menses of the earth, sea, Goddesses, and women. These essays contain detailed and rich re-tellings of complex rituals with their attendant stories and myths. They have been put together fifteen years after the author left the field of Indian studies. What she sees in these essays today is that the world of Goddesses, Gods, spirits, demons, and the like, is real. However, the nature of this ‘real’ is strikingly different from the notion of the real as understood since the scientific revolution. Here she deals with a few ideas and categories that prevent such a realization–‘the subaltern’, the third-world woman, the sacred, and history’.This volume will be useful to students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, religion, and women’s studies. Those interested in studies on development and modernity, ritual and myth, and Indian dance forms, too, will find this volume interesting.
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