Fruits of Worship (Practical Religion in Bengal)

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Item Code: IDH484
Publisher: Chronicle Books, New Delhi
Author: Ralph W. Nicholas
Language: English
Edition: 2003
ISBN: 8180280063
Pages: 248 (B & W Illus: 2, Map: 1)
Cover: Hardcover
Other Details 8.5" X 5.5
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Book Description
From the Jacket

The essays collected in this book are based on field research carried out over an extended period in several villages in the Bengali-speaking area of South Asia. The center of attention is the religious life of ordinary people in rural Bengal. They cover a broad spectrum, including the Bengali attachment to goddesses, the religious treatment of the calamities that befall poor people, and the analysis of myths, both historically and structurally. A long essay examines the rise of Sitala, goddess of disease, in south-western Bengal in the nineteenth century. It is accompanied by English translations of two versions of the Bengali Sitala narrative from that period. The Sanskrit Candi, or Sri Sri Durga Saptasati, which is the authority for the ever more popular annual Durga puja, is analyzed in relation to the worship of which it is an integral part. Also examined are the structure of the annual cycle of religious observances and the social organization of Vaisnava and Islamic religious groups.

Through detailed analysis of the religious acts of ordinary people, including their rituals, the author builds up a uniquely complex picture of the world in its totality implicit in the culture of the villages of the Bengal delta.

About the Author

Ralph W. Nicholas is William Rainey Harper Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He began anthropological research in Bengal villages in 1960 and this field remains his foremost intellectual concern. He served as Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. Dean of the College, Director of the Center for International Studies, and President of the International House at the University of Chicago before returning more directly to his research in Bengal. He has long been active in the American Institute of Indian Studies, and in 2002 became its President. His studies combine detailed fieldwork with overarching concerns of Anthropology and South Asian Studies.

CONTENTS
Introduction1
1The Bengali Calendar and the Hindu Religious Year in Bengal13
2Vaisnavism and Islam in Rural Bengal28
3Understanding a Hindu Temple in Bengal47
4The Village Mother in Bengal62
5Candi78
6The Fever Demon and the Census Commissioner: Sitala Mythology in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Bengal105
7The Goddess Sitala and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal166
8Sitala and the Art of Printing: The Transmission and the Propagation of the Myth of the Goddess of Smallpox in Rural West Bengal192
End Notes212
References231
Index240
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