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Indian Demonology
This Book Deals At Length With The Myths And Legends Pertaining To Various Kinds Of Celestial, Aerial And Terrestrial Demonical Beings And Demon Lore Found In The Vedas, Buddhist, Jain, Epic And Puranic Sources. It Demonstrates How They Have Been Subjected Under Diverse Historical Conditions To The Processes Of Social, Religious And Cultural Transformations.
DEMONS & DEMONESSES OF HINDU MYTHOLOGY
Did you know that you need a Hayagriva to slay a Hayagriva? Or that living beings can be created from something as gross as ear-wax or sweat? Or that the way you pronounce a Sanskrit word can change your destiny, turning you into a buffalo instead of a queen? Demons and Demonesses of Hindu Mythology takes you millions of years back in time when beings as tall as mountains walked the ground, their every stride causing earthquakes and tsunamis; when they stayed in their mother's wombs for thousands of years before being born; when they transformed into lions or buffaloes or elephants in the blink of an eye and when encountering beings with five heads, three legs, twenty arms or indeed torsos w...
Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees
The Hindu sacred order is guarded by the very gods who violate it and the demons who oppose it. This book is a who's who of such transgressive figures, both familiar and unfamiliar, showing their place within the Hindu order that they violate. It is also a reflection of the serious scholarly debate over the nature and composition of this Hindu order. The chapters range from pan-Hindu deities such as Bhairava and Virabhadra to guardian gods of specific regions and lineages and of different goddess cults. Chapters cover violent themes in SAaivite hagiography, the position of Brahmans in relation to cultic carnivorism, guardian heroes in folk epic, the deified dead, the royal mythology of a "criminal caste," and a wide-ranging overview of transgressive sacrality.
The Disguises of the Demon
Among the most ancient deities of South Asia, the yaksha straddle the boundaries between popular and textual traditions in both Hinduism and Buddhism and both benevolent and malevolent facets. As a figure of material plenty, the yaksis epitomized as Kubera, god of wealth and king of the yaks In demonic guise, the yaksis related to a large family of demonic and quasi-demonic beings, such as nagas, gandharvas, raks, and the man-eating pisaacas. Translating and interpreting texts and passages from the Vedic literature, the Hindu epics, the Puranas, Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, and the Buddhist Jātaka Tales, Sutherland traces the development and transformation of the elusive yaksfrom an early identification with the impersonal absolute itself to a progressively more demonic and diminished terrestrial characterization. Her investigation is set within the framework of a larger inquiry into the nature of evil, misfortune, and causation in Indian myth and religion.
The Book of Demons
From The Rig Veda To Myriads Of Folk Narratives, The Belief In Demons Prevails All Over India, Vividly Illustrating That A Demon Is Something People Fear Because It Is Beyond Their Comprehension And Control. Time And Again, The Menacing And Uncontrollable Forces Of Night, Darkness And Death, Along With Powerful Defeated Enemies And Incomprehensible Natural Phenomena, Are Demonized. The Book Of Demons Presents A Perceptive Overview Of The Various Types Of Demonic Beings And Concepts That Exist In Hindu Literature, Supplemented With A Dictionary Of Individual Demons For Ready Reference. Besides The Well-Known Rakshasas And Asuras, The Author Also Reveals A Densely Populated World Of Lesser-Kno...
The Divine and the Demonic
Based on fieldwork in the north Indian state of Rajasthan, this book focuses on supernatural affliction - illness and misfortune ascribed to demonic spirits or ghosts and to other mystical agents, such as sorcerers and witches. The study augments and extends the existing scholarship on a range of issues, including inter alia beliefs about spirit possession, sorcery, witchcraft and the evil eye. The themes of ritual practice, especially exorcism or healing ceremonies, Hindu priests and curers, popular Hinduism and pilgrimage are discussed, and the anthropology of South Asia is explored with an emphasis on medical anthropology and Indian ethnomedicine. At a theoretical level, the book sharply contrasts with much of the literature on spirit possession or on supernatural affliction and its treatment, as the author's phenomenological orientation involves movement away from psychological or psychiatric paradigms as well as from other forms of Western rationalism that have tended to dominate scholarly work. The book thus offers fresh insights, both in terms of understanding supernatural malaise and its treatment, and in terms of the application of the approach the author engages.
The Righteous Demon
Bali is a central and intriguing figure in Hindu mythology. Designated as a demon, he nevertheless is traditionally described as being virtuous, an ideal devotee and a perfect king. Clifford Hospital resolves this paradox by sorting out variants of the Bali myth in some twenty-six texts which range from the Mahabharata to sections of Robert Southey's poem The Curse of Kehama. In the process he devises a method which will enable scholars to understand the literary genre known as Puranas.The author organizes the myths about Bali into coherent groups based on chronology and thematic similarities. These groups are then arranged into more or less chronological order so that various phases of the ...
Devotee Demons Desire for Immortality
On various Hindu demons.
