Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
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.
Preface
Introduction
Alf Hiltebeitel
1 Brahmans and Meat-Eating Gods
Madeleine Biardeau
2 Outcaste, Guardian, and Trickster: Notes on the Myth of Kattavarayan
David Dean Shulman
3 The Changing Face of Kattavarayan
Eveline Masilamani-Meyer
4 Tricking the Goddess: Cowherd Katamaraju and Goddess Ganga in the Telugu Folk Epic
Velcheru Narayana Rao
5 Night of the Growing Dead: A Cult of Virabhadra in Coastal Andhra
David M. Knipe
6 Bhairava's Royal Brahmanicide: The Problem of the Mahabrahmana
Elizabeth-Chalier Visuvalingam
7 New Data on the Kapalikas
David N. Lorenzen
8 Rapist or Bodyguard, Demon or Devotee? Images of Bhairo in the Mythology and Cult of Vaisno Devi
Kathleen M. Erndl
9 The Bir Babas of Banaras and the Deified Dead
Diane M. Coccari
10 The Capitulation of Mani: A Conversion Myth in the Cult of Khandoba
John M. Stanley
11 Between Ghost and God: A Folk Deity of the Deccan
Günther D. Sontheimer
12 Draupadi's Two Guardians: The Buffalo King and the Muslim Devotee
Alf Hiltebeitel
13 Violent and Fanatical Devotion among the Nayanars: A Study in the Periya Puranam of Cekkilar
D. Dennis Hudson
14 From Robber Baron to Royal Servant of God? Gaining a Divine Body in South India
Joanne Punzo Waghorne
15 The Transgressive Sacrality of the Diksita: Sacrifice, Criminality and Bhakti in the Hindu Tradition
Sunthar Visuvalingam
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index