Notions of Life in Death and Dying : The Dead in Tribal Middle India
By- Eva Reichel
This anthropological study, sparked off by fieldwork among the Ho of Orissa and Jharkhand, is about ‘The Dead in Tribal Middle India’ who continue to be involved in the lives of the living.
The structured ceremonious treatment of corpse and soul of the dead and the symbolic interaction of the mourners - kin and affines – provide for the actors’ orientation and guidance from ritual. The public expression of the emotional response towards the ‘organic event’ in grieving is socially informed and life-oriented as much as death-centred. It is indicative of a culture-specific concept which conceives of death as a drawn out tranformative process and of the dead as integrally linked to the living and rooted in a known cosmic - societal perspective. The social obligations enacted in the drama of death and life contribute to reproducing tribal society, revealing marked differences from the radically decentred Western notion of the human condition with its focus on the individual as representing the supreme value.
This volume explores the cultural logic surrounding the conceptual unity and continuity of life, death and afterlife by examining the social and ideational setting of tribal middle India. The main body of the study is an analysis of the meaning of death as conveyed in the ethnographic literature on the Hill Juang of Keonjhar, the Sora in eastern Orissa, the Koya of Malkangiri, the Muria Gond of Bastar and the Ho of Singhbum and Mayurbhanj. The material on the Ho discussed here has so far not been published or is only locally accessible. Apart from anthropologists and sociologists, this volume will be of considerable interest to South Asian scholars, especially those working on Orissa and Jharkhand.
Born in 1948, Eva Reichel studied English language and literature and worked as a teacher. After retiring she read social anthropology at the Free University of Berlin where she currently is a lecturer at the Institute of Ethnology.
By- Eva Reichel
This anthropological study, sparked off by fieldwork among the Ho of Orissa and Jharkhand, is about ‘The Dead in Tribal Middle India’ who continue to be involved in the lives of the living.
The structured ceremonious treatment of corpse and soul of the dead and the symbolic interaction of the mourners - kin and affines – provide for the actors’ orientation and guidance from ritual. The public expression of the emotional response towards the ‘organic event’ in grieving is socially informed and life-oriented as much as death-centred. It is indicative of a culture-specific concept which conceives of death as a drawn out tranformative process and of the dead as integrally linked to the living and rooted in a known cosmic - societal perspective. The social obligations enacted in the drama of death and life contribute to reproducing tribal society, revealing marked differences from the radically decentred Western notion of the human condition with its focus on the individual as representing the supreme value.
This volume explores the cultural logic surrounding the conceptual unity and continuity of life, death and afterlife by examining the social and ideational setting of tribal middle India. The main body of the study is an analysis of the meaning of death as conveyed in the ethnographic literature on the Hill Juang of Keonjhar, the Sora in eastern Orissa, the Koya of Malkangiri, the Muria Gond of Bastar and the Ho of Singhbum and Mayurbhanj. The material on the Ho discussed here has so far not been published or is only locally accessible. Apart from anthropologists and sociologists, this volume will be of considerable interest to South Asian scholars, especially those working on Orissa and Jharkhand.
Born in 1948, Eva Reichel studied English language and literature and worked as a teacher. After retiring she read social anthropology at the Free University of Berlin where she currently is a lecturer at the Institute of Ethnology.
ISBN 81-7304-823-4 2009 124p. Rs.425/ Pounds 35
MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
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To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com
MANOHAR PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS
4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002
Phones: 23284848, 23289100
Fax: 23265162
E-mail: manbooks@vsnl.com
sales@manoharbooks.com
To order your copy at www.manoharbooks.com
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