This volume contains fifteen articles by eminent Indian and European scholars describing and analyzing various aspects of folk culture in South Asia. The principal emphasis is on folk religion, including both ritual performances and oral texts.
The articles cover a wide spectrum of regional traditions, ranging from Kerala and Karnataka in the southwest to Nepal and the Himalayas in the northeast, and a stunning variety of materials, including ball games, oral poetry, a ritual hunt, ghost and deity possession, and the traditions of itinerant genealogists. Several major themes typical of Indian folk religion bind the different articles together. Among these themes are references to a royal and martial paradigm for understanding divinity, and an emphasis on the gods immediate presence, in possession and in ritual.
Papers included are Part I: King Khandobas hunt and his encounter with Bni, the shepherdess; Ritual rivalry in Kerala; performing possession: ritual and con-sciousness in the Teyyam complex of Northern Kerala; Ti Paradvata; a goddess and her ritual impersonation in the Teyyam tradition of Kerala; Siva under refuse: the hidden Mahdeva and protective stones in Nepal: On Himalayan ball games, head-hunting , and related matters; God, ghosts and demons: possession in South Asia; Part II: The genres of Tulu folk-poetry: an introduction; Kannalye: the place of a Tulu pddana among interrelated oral traditions; Text variability and authenticity in the Siri cut; Avatra, avenger, and king; narrative themes in the Rjasthn oral epic of Devnaryn; The episode of the golden iva image in the Bagarvat; Itinerant Vai]s]navite genealogists of the Ganges basin; Nasruddin and dinth, Nizmuddin and Kniphnth; Hindu-Muslim religious syncretism in the folk literature of the Deccan;The king and the tribal bard: patterns of protest by two minorities.
