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Ghosts: Life and Death in North India
English
396 (B&W. 10)
The belief in ghosts is part of the pan-human belief in souls. In India, ghosts are the souls of people who die before their allotted time or from a dread disease, murder, or suicide, or who end their lives without experiencing such joys of adulthood as sexual pleasure and children, especially a son. In Hinduism, ghosts are integrated into a sophisticated system of moral causality (dharma, karma, and rebirth), and an ancient sacred literature and mythology.
Individual Indians, both men and women, become susceptible to ghost possession in stressful circumstances. Brides, usually teenagers, are especially vulnerable as they try to cope with moving to a strange village, new relatives, required submissive behavior, sexual adjustment, and the worries of pregnancy and first childbirth.
The authors' many-faceted analysis of Indian ghost beliefs features a descriptive and comparative case-study method. Functional analysis places ghost beliefs into ethnographic context, showing, for example, the relationship of family life or gender to ghost illness, ghost possession, and poltergeist attack. Historical analysis relates ghost illness and ghost possession to Hindu ideology and sacred texts and to such traumatic events as famines and the epidemics of bubonic plague (1896-1921,10 million deaths) and influenza (1918- 1919, 12.5 million deaths).
Ghost illness is analyzed in the context of curing practices and theories of Ayurveda (the ancient Hindu art and science of medicine), Western medicine (allopathy), homeopathy, Unani (Greek), and popular pharmaceutical medicine, with emphasis on the first two. Analysis of ghost phenomena draws on psychological and biological concepts, especially research that deals with dissociative disorder
396 (B&W. 10)
The belief in ghosts is part of the pan-human belief in souls. In India, ghosts are the souls of people who die before their allotted time or from a dread disease, murder, or suicide, or who end their lives without experiencing such joys of adulthood as sexual pleasure and children, especially a son. In Hinduism, ghosts are integrated into a sophisticated system of moral causality (dharma, karma, and rebirth), and an ancient sacred literature and mythology.
Individual Indians, both men and women, become susceptible to ghost possession in stressful circumstances. Brides, usually teenagers, are especially vulnerable as they try to cope with moving to a strange village, new relatives, required submissive behavior, sexual adjustment, and the worries of pregnancy and first childbirth.
The authors' many-faceted analysis of Indian ghost beliefs features a descriptive and comparative case-study method. Functional analysis places ghost beliefs into ethnographic context, showing, for example, the relationship of family life or gender to ghost illness, ghost possession, and poltergeist attack. Historical analysis relates ghost illness and ghost possession to Hindu ideology and sacred texts and to such traumatic events as famines and the epidemics of bubonic plague (1896-1921,10 million deaths) and influenza (1918- 1919, 12.5 million deaths).
Ghost illness is analyzed in the context of curing practices and theories of Ayurveda (the ancient Hindu art and science of medicine), Western medicine (allopathy), homeopathy, Unani (Greek), and popular pharmaceutical medicine, with emphasis on the first two. Analysis of ghost phenomena draws on psychological and biological concepts, especially research that deals with dissociative disorder
396 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1993
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