The Feminine Sacred in South Asia
By- Harald Tambs-Lyche (ed)
Published in association with
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France
South Asia is the only major region where the ‘Great
Goddess’ is still a living reality for believers—yet its society remains
male-dominated. Drawing their examples from ritual practice, myth, and sacred
texts the contributors to this volume discuss the place of the feminine within
the sacred sphere of South Asian religion. The theme is full of contradictions,
for the impurity of woman must be held against the powers she incarnates, and
the religious status of these powers is an old theme of debate among Hindu and
Buddhist thinkers. Finally, the feminine pole in religious thought cannot
simply be equated with human womanhood. . . . Yet the very presence of feminity
in the sacred sphere contrasts with its exclusion from scriptural Islam or from
protestantism, and offers, perhaps, to women a mode of religious expression in
an idiom where gender is a central paradigm of thought.
This volume then, contributing to the debate on
feminity in South Asian religion, should also be of interest to scholars
dealing with gender in a broader perspective.
Harald
Tambs-Lyche, a social
anthropologist, is professor of ethnology at the University of Picardie-Jules
Verne, Amiens (France). He has worked on Gujaratis at home and abroad (London Patidars, Routledge, 1980; Power, Profit and Poetry, Manohar,
1997). He is currently doing fieldwork in Karnataka.
ISBN
978-81-7304-246-1 2004 148p.
Rs.300/Pounds 35
MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com
To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com
