© Columbia University Press
The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization
November, 2006
Cloth, 736 pages, 13 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13748-5
$62.00
/ £36.50
"This comprehensive work should appear on the shelf of every serious scholar of South Asian religion... Essential." — CHOICE
"For centuries if not millennia, the elephant in the room of South Asian religions has been the phenomenon of possession. In this paradigm-shifting work, Frederick M. Smith not only situates 'permeable embodiment' at the core of a wide array of Vedic, devotional, Tantric, medical, literary, and vernacular traditions, but also tells us the reasons for its incongruous erasure from the normative discourse of Indian analytical thought. This work of breathtaking sweep and stunning erudition will force scholars to rethink the fundamental categories of self, person, body, and mind in South Asia." — David White, professor of religious studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
"The notion of possession, avesa, lies at the heart of all classical South Asian discussions of the internal economy of the mind. It remains a central theme today in ritual praxis and narrative throughout the subcontinent. Yet this powerful and basic set of ideas has never been comprehensively and systematically studied-until Frederick M. Smith's magisterial new book. Beginning with the Maussian distinction between 'person' and 'self,' Smith traces both empirical and theoretical descriptions of altered states of consciousness, self-alienation, and pragmatic programs for achieving ecstasy and self-transcendence through 3,000 years of literary sources as well as modern ethnographies. This book opens up a whole new world." — David Shulman, professor of Indian studies and comparative religion, Hebrew University, Jerusalem