Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (931 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0520252195 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-08-25 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Adeptly introduces the reader to this system of healing and would be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in multicultural medicine."--"Feminist Review" . "Fascinating in its exploration
For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. Based on extensive fieldwork, this lucidly written book explores the dynamics of pollution, death, and healing in Aghor medicine. Ron Barrett examines a range of Aghor therapies from ritual bathing to modified Ayurveda and biomedicines and clarifies many misconceptions about this little-studied group and its highly unorthodox, powerful ideas about illness and healing.. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically powerful organization. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases
William Courson said A fascinating encounter with a little known, and less studied, tradition. For centuries, the Aghori have been counted among the most radically unconventional, eccentric and orthodoxy-upsetting ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation ground, meditating whilst seated on rotting corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, consuming intoxicants out of human skulls and "blessing" those who would approach them by a slap in the face - cultivating an affinity for noxiousness in all its myriad forms in th. The book is BOORING Margaret The book is very hard to get through. the author changes "voices" often and use of Indian terms with no explanation makes reading this even harder. It had to read it for school and still never got through it