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Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
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John Richardson Freeman
Published/Copyright:
September 25, 2009
Abstract
This article treats the liturgical narratives that bring on spirit possession in the Teyyam worship of northern Kerala for a deity named Poṭṭan, the apotheosis of an Untouchable who is celebrated as having openly contended with the great Śaṅkarācārya over the issue of caste. By tracing the history and stratigraphy of these liturgical materials from their later Sanskritized framing back into their earlier textual antecedents in Malayalam and Tamil, we find evidence for formalized bodies of knowledge among the lower castes which had fused indigenous cults of spirit possession with Tantric doctrines of embodied liberation to argue for the baselessness of caste discrimination.
Published Online: 2009-09-25
Published in Print: 2009-09
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
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Articles in the same Issue
- Rethinking the Body: An Introduction
- A Hindu to His Body: The Reinscription of Traditional Representations
- The Skin and the Self: A Note on the Limits of the Body in Brahmanic India
- God′s Body: Epistemic and Ritual Conceptions from Sanskrit Texts of Logic
- Yogic Rays: The Self-Externalization of the Yogi in Ritual, Narrative and Philosophy
- Body, Breath and Representation in Śaiva Tantrism
- Telling Bodies
- The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History
- Open Bodies
- Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar
- Performing God′s Body
- Bodies Filled with Divine Energy: The Indian Dance Odissi
- Ritual Competence as Embodied Knowledge
- Human Body, Folk Narratives and Rituals
- Translating the Body Into Image. The Body Politic and Visual Practice at the Mughal Court During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India
- The Politics of the Sensuous and the Sacred Body in India
- Lost in Transition? Managing paradoxical situations by inventing identities
