See also, for example, Margaret Trawick Egnor, “The Changed Mother, or
What the Smallpox Goddess Did When There Was No More Smallpox,” in Contributions
to Asian Studies, vol. 18, South Asian. Systems of Healing, ed. E. Valentine Daniel and
Judy F. Pugh (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 24–45, in which I describe the possession of a
woman in Madras by the goddess Mariamman. See Sarah Caldwell, “Bhagavati: Ball of
Fire,” in Devi: Goddesses of India, ed. John S. Hawley and Donna M. Wulff (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 195–226.
See Susan Wadley, “The Spirit ‘Rides’ or the Spirit ‘Comes’: Possession in a
North Indian Village,” in The Realm of the Extra-Human: Agents and Audiences, ed.
Agehananda Bharati (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 233–52; John M. Stanley, “Gods,
Ghosts, and Possession,” in The Experience of Hinduism, ed. Eleanor Zelliot and Max-
ine Berntsen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1968), 26–59, esp. 26; and
Gananath Obeyesekere, “Psychocultural Exegesis of a Case of Spirit Possession in Sri
Lanka,” in Case Studies in Spirit Possession, ed. Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garri-
son (New York: Wiley, 1977), 235–94, esp. 290.
Ann Grodzins Gold, “Spirit Possession Perceived and Performed in Rural Ra-
jasthan,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s. 32, no. 1 (1988): 3511. Peter J. Claus dis-
tinguishes between spirit possession and spirit mediumship, defining the former as “an
unexpected intrusion of the supernatural into the lives of humans” and the latter as “the
legitimate, expected possession of a specialist by a spirit or deity, usually for the purpose
of soliciting the aid of the supernatural for human problems” (“Spirit Possession and
Spirit Mediumship from the Perspective of Tulu Oral Traditions,” Culture, Medicine,
and Psychiatry 3, no. 1 [1979]: 29). Although his point is well taken, I prefer not to make
such a hard-and-fast distinction, as there is often considerable overlap, as well as transi-
tion, from one to the other.
Paul Hershman, “Hair, Sex, and Dirt,” Man, n.s. 9, no. 2 (1974): 277.
An example of this kind of song is “Datide darbar kanjankajkheddiya,” writ-
ten by Camanlal Jofand sung by Narendra Cancal (Polydor Records no. 2392 894). The
words are printed in the pamphlet Matadiyanbhetaj,ghar ghar vic mahimateri(Delhi:
AfokaPrakafan, n.d.), 7–10.
For a full-length study of the concept of play in Hinduism, see David Kinsley,
The Divine Player: A Study of Krsna Lila(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979).
Interview, CamundaDevitemple, June 9, 1983.
Interview, BabaBalak Nath temple, May 13, 1983.
This seems to be the case in the ceremony described by Ruth S. Freed and Stan-
ley A. Freed, “Two Mother-Goddess Ceremonies of Delhi State in the Great and Little
Traditions,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 3 (1962): 346–77. I am also
personally familiar with the case of a male astrologer in a Kangra village who, as a re-
sult of performing an arduous religious regimen, acquired the magical power (siddhi)
of being able to act as a medium and transmit the words of the goddess Daksinakali. He
