Ghosts : life and death in North India. Anthropological papers of the AMNH ; no. 72
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Date
1993
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New York : American Museum of Natural History ; Seattle, WA : Distributed by the University of Washington Press
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Abstract
This monograph is the ninth of a series devoted to the description and analysis of life in Shanti Nagar, a village in the Union Territory of Delhi. Our research is based on holistic fieldwork carried out in 1957-59 and 1977-1978. Previous monographs, all published in the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, have dealt with social organization, economics, rites of passage, fertility and sterilization, elections, sickness and health, enculturation and education, and ghosts in the context of a woman's psychomedical case history. The present monograph places ghost illness, ghost possession, and poltergeist attacks in an historical, psychological, ecological, medical, ideological, and holistic ethnographic context. A descriptive and comparative case-study method is central to the analysis. Among the ghost-related topics that are covered are beliefs; causes; gender, age and caste distribution; sectarian differences (the Arya Samaj vs. Sanatan Dharma); and the recruitment, training, and methods of exorcists and curers.
Description
396 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-330) and index.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-330) and index.
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