The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism

shared identity as Hindus. The immediate significance of this development was primarily political. It also highlighted a sense o ...

it was extinguished. One then set out from home to relight it elsewhere with a fire drill after a lapse of time, say a year. Mor ...

(Olivelle 1993: 36). The scope of sacrifice was vast with cosmo-moral signifi- cance and included the three (or five) daily obli ...

To quote Olivelle again, “the four a ̄s ́ramascame to be regarded as constitut- ing four ideals of the Brahmanical ethic” that w ...

alms nobody is left out, not even dogs, those who have fallen, “Dog-cookers,” those whose evil deeds have made them ill, birds, ...

prevailing consensus regarding a ̄s ́ramas as stages of life may be illustrated by referring to two widely read studies of Hindu ...

The folk traditions are not lacking in this respect. Indeed, there are not only explicit guidelines about house-making, which co ...

vegetarian food or else ghosts and evil spirits will take possession of the house under construction; he must avoid bodily conta ...

Although parental love, filial piety, and fraternal solidarity are said to be the foundation of the householder’s life, abandonm ...

hierarchical. In all cases, it is expressed through spontaneous and selfless feel- ings of caring (pa ̄lana), nourishing (pos.an ...

ideally this endeavor should be subordinated to dharmaand combined with detachment (virakti) and the love of one’s chosen person ...

make a virtue of necessity. At a deeper level, however, one might detect a fear of the renouncer, for he poses a threat to the i ...

concludes that the overall tendency “is to glorify the status of an householder and push into the background the two a ̄s ́ramas ...

Notes 1 In the original: yasma ̄t trayo ’pva ̄s ́ramin.o jnãnena ̄nnena ma ̄nhavam/gr.hasthenaiva dha ̄ryante tasma ̄jjyes.t.ha ...

References Bühler, G. 1964. The Laws of Manu. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass. Cook, Nilla Cram. 1958. The Way of the Swan: Poems of ...

Srivastava, Vinay Kumar. 1977. Religious Renunciation of a Pastoral People. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Thapar, Romila. 1989 ...

Regional Traditions ...

CHAPTER 14 The Teyyam Tradition of Kerala Rich Freeman The tradition of worshipping teyyams, the local deities of northern Keral ...

throughteyyamnarratives and recitations, and ritually, through the organiza- tion of worship, the various constituents and modes ...

however, the S ́u ̄dracategory has always included many of those dominant, martial, and landed castes that would elsewhere in In ...