Ashes of Immortality by Catherine Weinberger-Thomas, Paperback, 9780226885698 | Buy online at The Nile
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Ashes of Immortality

Widow-Burning in India

Author: Catherine Weinberger-Thomas, Jeffrey Mehlman and David Gordon White  

Ashes of Immortality
Paperback

This work attempts to see the satis - the Hindu custom of women sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands - through Hindu eyes, providing an experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

This work attempts to see the satis - the Hindu custom of women sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands - through Hindu eyes, providing an experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia.

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Description

"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands—horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power.

Ashes of Immortality attempts to see the satis through Hindu eyes, providing an extensive experiential and psychoanalytic account of ritual self-sacrifice and self-mutilation in South Asia. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in northern India, where the state-banned practice of sati reemerged in the 1970s, as well as extensive textual analysis, Weinberger-Thomas constructs a radically new interpretation of satis. She shows that their self-immolation transcends gender, caste and class, region and history, representing for the Hindus a path to immortality.

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About the Author

Jeffrey Mehlman is University Professor of French at Boston University. He is the author of several books, as well as a translator of many texts by Lacan and Derrida, among others. David Gordon White is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books, including The Alchemical Body, Kiss of the Yogini, and Sinister Yogis, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Product Details

Publisher
The University of Chicago Press | University of Chicago Press
Published
15th February 2000
Edition
2nd
Pages
329
ISBN
9780226885698

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