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This book explores the festival of Thaipusam in terms of its own inner dynamics - the traditions and belief structures which ensure the festival's continuing relevance to Malaysian Hindus. It argues that Thaipusam reflects a growing sense of Hindu identity in Malaysia and an as yet inchoate unity. It contends that while the kavadi ritual provides profound meaning at the individual and group level, Thaipusam furnishes a public arena for and gives expression to a powerful Hindu resurgence, largely, though not exclusively, fuelled by Dravidian assertiveness. In situating the festival within the context of a Malaysia dominated by Malay and Islamic power brokers, a society in which both the Indian community and Hinduism are relegated to the margins, the book explores the festival of Thaipusam as a vehicle for mobilization of religious symbols and values which not only simultaneously articulate ethnicity and thus resist the forces which threaten cultural and religious integrity, but which also ultimately signal wider allegiances to the broader politico-cultural world of an imagined, immeasurably rich, and enduring Indo-Hindu civilization.
Part introduction to Tantric traditions, part personal growth guide, this exploration of the Eternal Moon Phase Goddesses—with nightly meditation and journaling practices—is for anyone who wants to embrace the confusion, loss, loneliness, desire and pleasure that make up the spectrum of human experience—and better understand who they already are.
This book has inspired many scholars to study the numerous works on Alankara, to produce papers dealing with several aspects of Alankarasastra and to publish several important texts. The author has made substantial additions and changes in this edition and has included valuable new material.The book is divided into two parts. The first part contains an account of the important works on Alankarasastra, a brief analysis of their contents and the chronology of writers on Alankarasastra and other kindred matters. The second part comprises a review of subjects that fall under the purview of Alankarasastra. The author has attempted to show how from very small beginnings various theories of Poetics and Literary Criticism were evolved, to dilate upon the different aspects of an elaborate theory of Poetics and trace the history of literary theories in India.
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