Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town

Leela Prasad

Paper, 312 pages, 25 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13921-2
$26.50 / £16.00

November, 2006
Cloth, 312 pages, 25 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-13920-5
$78.00 / £45.00

Acknowledgments

Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction

1. Sringeri: Place and Placeness

2. Connectedness and Reciprocity: Historicizing Sringeri Upacara

3. Shastra: Divine Injunction and Earthly Custom

4. "The Shastras Say . . . ": Idioms of Legitimacy and the "Imagined Text"

5. In the Courtyard of Dharma, Not at the Village Square: Delivering Ashirvada in Sringeri

6. Edifying Lives, Discerning Proprieties: Conversational Stories and Moral Being

Ethics, an Imagined Life

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Related Subjects

• Asian Religion
• Asian Studies

About the Author

Leela Prasad is assistant professor of practical ethics and Indian religions at Duke University. She has edited Live Like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American Experience and coedited Gender and Story in South India. Her book in progress, Annotating Pastimes, is a study of folktale collecting in colonial India.

top of page