Tantra, Ritual Performance, and Politics in Nepal and Kerala

In previous studies of South Asian Tantric ritual, scholars tend to focus on one region or context. For the first time, Ritual Performance, Folk Mediumship, and Politics in Nepal and Kerala offers a comparative approach to Tantric mediumship as observedin two locales: Navadurgåa rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal, and Teyyåaòtòtam in North Kerala. In this book, Matthew Martin advances a new theory of ritual, which spotlights the way dancer-mediums embody medieval goddess-clans and ancestor deities, through offerings of food and sacrifice, that synchronize their denizens with the land in spiralling ritual networks. Uniquely interdisciplinary in style, this study synthesizes cultural history, ethnography, and theory to explore the continuities - historical, societal, and political - that characterize these ritual traditions across the subcontinent--