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

摘要

Frederick Smith has written a monumental study of possession in South Asia, piecing together a massive range of literary sources across time and combining these sources with a survey of ethnographic materials as well as (briefly) some of his own observations of possession traditions in south India. The boundaries of personhood are mutable in the South Asian context; the hierarchical cosmos comprises "fluid signs" and shifting identities functioning at all levels, especially between humanity and divinity as well as other entities.