oreint blackswan (2 resultados)

Hardcover. Condición: New. 1st Edition. Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Hindu Rituals in Bengal. 3. Vaisnavism. 4. The Cycles of Laksmi Worship. 5. Dangerous Goddesses. 6. Siva, Surya and Dharma. 7. Brata Rites: Sasthi, Tarini and Mangal Candi. 8. Conclusion. An expression common among Bengali Hindus says baro mase, tero parban, in twelve months there are thirteen festivals. While each of these occasions is built around the worship of a particular god or goddess, they are also performances where setting, attire, ornamentation, recitation, music, and sometimes theater are brought together. Thirteen dramatically understates the number of such occasions around the year. Previous books in this series have described and analyzed the axial rituals in the annual cycle in the village of Kelomal, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal. These are the famous Sanskritic Durga Puja, the high point of the autumn in Bengal, and the less well known vernacular spring ritual of Gajan, devoted to Siva. The present work deals with the great variety of rituals that take place during the remainder of the year, including worship of Sitala, goddess of disease and mother of the village; Manasa, goddess of snakes; Laksmi, embodiment of prosperity dwelling in the rice crop; Krsna, who offers the possibility of liberation; Satya Narayana, who has a Muslim personality as Satya Pir; and the goddesses worshiped by women within the house: Sasthi, goddess of children; the auspicious Mangal Candi; and Bipattarini, who saves people from danger. (jacket).

Hardcover. Condición: New. 1st Edition. Contents: Introduction. 1. The Alchemy of Empire. 2. Mortar and the Making of Madras. 3. Ice and the Production of British Climate. 4. Inoculation and the Limits of British Imperialism. 5. "Plaisters," Paper, and the Labor of Letters. Bibliography. Index. The Alchemy of Empire unravels the non-European origins of Enlightenment science. Focusing on the mundane materials of empire-building, this study traces the history of substances like mud, mortar, ice, and paper, as well as forms of knowledge like inoculation. It demonstrates how East India Company employees deployed the field of alchemy in order to make sense of the new worlds they confronted, often resorting to analogy as reason when analysis failed. Rajani Sudan questions the assumptions of the Enlightenment developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the European notion that "Reason belonged uniquely to the West." She identifies key substances that were appropriated, first through trade and then through colonial governance, and that eventually became intellectual products of European science. Colonialism is thus read not only as a form of governance but as a technology of empire. Sudan argues that the Enlightenment was born largely out of Europe's (and Britain's) sense of insecurity and inferiority in the early modern world. Through an in-depth study of the imperial archive, Sudan uncovers the history of British Enlightenment in the literary artifacts of the eighteenth century, ranging from the correspondence of the East India Company and the papers of the Royal Society to the poetry of Alexander Pope and the novels of Jane Austen. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British studies, as well as those interested in the intersections of history, science, ecology, and literature. (jacket).