Did anyone got possessed by a diety

December 9, 2020

https://academic.oup.com/jhs/article-abstract/3/1/151/2188572?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The Self-Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilisation. By Frederick M. Smith.

The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilisation

. By

Frederick M.

Smith

.

New York

:

Columbia University Press

,

2006

. ISBN: 978-0-231-13748-5 (hardback), xxvii + 701, 12 plates. $60.00.

Stuart Ray Sarbacker

The Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 3, Issue 1, April 2010, Pages 151–154, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiq005

Published:

09 March 2010

Issue Section:

Book Reviews

Frederick Smith's The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature provides a number of groundbreaking insights with respect to conceptualisations of and methodological approaches to the phenomenon of possession (āveśa, praveśa, and samāveśa) in the Indian traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and more broadly in South Asian religion. Smith's analysis of the issues of gender, embodiment, economics, and class in relation to possession demonstrates the complex sociodynamics of adorcism (encouragement of positive possession states) and exorcism (removal of negative possession states), as have been postulated in the larger comparative context. Smith's work also elicits a number of insights into the dynamic spectrum within the traditions of yoga and tantra between world negation and world surmounting that are characteristic of the...