Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts - Non-Human Animals in South Asian Myth, Ritual and Folklore - Fabrizio M. Ferrari

Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts - Non-Human Animals in South Asian Myth, Ritual and Folklore - Fabrizio M. Ferrari

Preface

Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts - Non-Human Animals in South Asian Myth, Ritual and Folklore - Fabrizio M. Ferrari

Fabrizio M. Ferrari [+-]
University of Chester
Fabrizio M. Ferrari was educated in Indology at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and received his PhD from SOAS in 2005 for a study on religious folklore in West Bengal. He taught South Asian Religions and Religious Studies at SOAS and is now Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Chester. He is the author of Oltre il confine, dove la terra è rossa. Canti d’amore e d’estasi dei bāul del Bengala (Ariele, 2001) and of Guilty Males and Proud Females: Negotiating Genders in a Bengali Festival (Seagull, 2010). He wrote the first monograph in English on the Italian anthropologist and historian of religion Ernesto de Martino (Ernesto de Martino on Religion. The Crisis and the Presence, Equinox, 2012) and has edited the volume on Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia: Disease, Possession and Healing (Routledge, 2011). His research is mainly directed towards the study of religious folklore in the frame of Marxist anthropology. His forthcoming book is Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India: The Healing Power of Śītalā (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2014).
Thomas Dähnhardt [+-]
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Thomas Dähnhardt is Assistant Professor in Hindi and Urdu Languages and Literatures in the Department of Asian and Mediterranean African Studies at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Description

The study of non-human animals as other-than-human persons (including animal-spirits and divine animals) has marked a significant shift in the ethics and politics of the academic study of religion. Charming Animals and Frightful Beasts investigates how South Asian religions, with their sacred narratives, ritual and non-ritual practices and performances, bear witness to the active presence of non-human animals as both culture makers/bearers and symbols of spirituality. With bourgeoning debates on religion, indigeneity, ecotheology and environmentalism, this volume urges for a promotion and an in-depth analysis of the roles and places of animals in South Asian traditions. The structure of the book reflects that of the most popular collection of folktales on animals in South Asia, the Pañcatantra . Such an arrangement creates the backbone for an articulate, clear and reasoned discussion on animals and the concept of animality in different South Asian traditions, or various aspects of the same tradition. Like the original Sanskrit text, the volume is divided into five books ( tantras ), each dealing with themes as different as South Asian animals as divine messengers, restorers of order, symbols of cultural identity, exemplary beings, spiritual teachers, objects of human reverence and portents symbolizing the life cycle, including its inevitable end.

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Citation

Ferrari, Fabrizio M. ; Dähnhardt, Thomas. Preface. Charming Beauties and Frightful Beasts - Non-Human Animals in South Asian Myth, Ritual and Folklore. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. vii - viii Oct 2013. ISBN 9781908049599. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=21337. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.21337. Oct 2013

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