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Examines the use and avoidance of flesh foods, including beef, pork, chicken, and eggs, camel, dog, horse, and fish, from antiquity to the present day. Simoons finds that the recurrent theme of maintaining ritual purity, good health, and well-being underlies diet habits. He emphasizes that only a full range of factors can explain eating patterns, and stresses the interplay of religious, moral, hygienic, ecological, and economic factors in the context of human culture. From publisher description.
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The vast and ancient topic of kingship in India has mostly been studied from the perspectives of rulers and other elites. But what constitutes sovereignty viewed from "below"? This book — ethnographic and comparative in its essence — deals with indigenous conceptualizations of sovereignty taking as its starting point a local proverb that connects the ritual (Dasara) of the king with festivals performed by his "tribal" subjects. The first part of the book initially introduces some pan-Indian ideas of kingship and proceeds to discuss indigenous notions of sovereignty as represented in rituals and myths in the region concerned (highland Odisha). The second part is devoted to the investigation of the proverbial performances. Mainly based on historical sources first the Dasara festival of the king is discussed, subsequently the indigenous rituals are described and analyzed, which the author ethnographically documented around the turn of the millennium. Ultimately, the proverb and the rituals constitute the idea of a sacrificial polity in which rulers and ruled share sovereignty in the sense that they are co-responsible for the flow of life.
No detailed description available for "Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India".
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