Ravanisation The Revitalisation Of Ravana Among Sinhalese Buddhists In Post War Sri Lanka

Download or read book "Ravanisation": The Revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Post-War Sri Lanka written by Deborah de Koning and published by LIT Verlag. This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses Ravanisation: the revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in post-war (after 2009) Sri Lanka. The Hindu Ramayana generally portrays Ravana as a cruel king. How and why, then, has Ravana gained the interest of Sinhalese Buddhists? This study takes an ethnographic perspective to answer these questions. The book discusses multiple Ravana representations that have emerged at an urban Buddhist site (the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya) and a rural site (Lakegala), and discloses how Ravanisation relates to Sinhalese Buddhist ethno-nationalism. In addition, the material, ritual, and spatial perspectives offer unique insights in the personal and local relevance of Ravana. Dr. Deborah de Koning holds a PhD degree in Religious Studies (Tilburg University, research funded by the Dutch Research Council) and currently works as lecturer Intercultural Communication and Hinduism and Buddhism at the Christian University of Applied Sciences (CHE, The Netherlands).

Download or read book Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects written by Albertina (Tineke) Nugteren and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a volume about the life and power of ritual objects in their religious ritual settings. In this Special Issue, we see a wide range of contributions on material culture and ritual practices across religions. By focusing on the dynamic interrelations between objects, ritual, and belief, it explores how religion happens through symbolic materiality. The ritual objects presented in this volume include: masks worn in the Dogon dance; antique ecclesiastical silver objects carried around in festive processions and shown in shrines in the southern Andes; funerary photographs and films functioning as mnemonic objects for grieving children; a dented rock surface perceived to be the god’s footprint in the archaic place of pilgrimage, Gaya (India); a recovered manual of rituals (from Xiapu county) for Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, juxtaposed to a Manichaean painting from southern China; sacred stories and related sacred stones in the Alor–Pantar archipelago, Indonesia; lotus symbolism, indicating immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia; lavishly illustrated variations of portrayals of Ravana, a Sinhalese god-king-demon; figurines made of cow dung sculptured by rural women in Rajasthan (India); and mythical artifacts called ‘Apples of Eden’ in a well-known interactive game series.

Download or read book Rituals of Prosecution written by Jane K. Wickersham and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Counter-Reformation, inquisition manual authors working in Italian lands adapted the Catholic Church's traditional tactics of inquisitorial procedure, which had been formulated in the medieval period, to the prosecution of philo-Protestants. Through a comparison of the texts of four such authors to contemporary inquisition processes, Jane K. Wickersham situates the Roman inquisition's prosecution of philo-Protestants within the larger framework of the complex religious upheavals of the sixteenth century. Identifying the critical role played by ritual practice in discovering and prosecuting heretical subjects, Wickersham uncovers two core reasons for its use: first, as a practical means of prosecuting a variety of philo-Protestant beliefs, and second, as an approach firmly grounded within the Catholic Church's history of prosecuting heresy. Finally, Rituals of Prosecution provides an in-depth examination of the inquisitorial processes of urban residents from humble socio-economic backgrounds, providing new insight into how the prosecution of ordinary people was conducted in the early modern era.

Download or read book The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity written by Harshana Rambukwella and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of cultural authenticity in the making of nations? Much scholarly and popular commentary on nationalism dismisses authenticity as a romantic fantasy or, worse, a deliberately constructed mythology used for political manipulation. The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity places authenticity at the heart of Sinhala nationalism in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Sri Lanka. It argues that the passion for the ‘real’ or the ‘authentic’ has played a significant role in shaping nationalist thinking and argues for an empathetic yet critical engagement with the idea of authenticity. Through a series of fine-grained and historically grounded analyses of the writings of individual figures central to the making of Sinhala nationalist ideology the book demonstrates authenticity’s rich and varied presence in Sri Lankan public life and its key role in understanding postcolonial nationalism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in South Asia and the world. It also explores how notions of authenticity shape certain strands of postcolonial criticism and offers a way of questioning the taken-for-granted nature of the nation as a unit of analysis but at the same time critically explore the deep imprint of nations and nationalisms on people's lives.

Download or read book Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness written by Kē. En. Ō Dharmadāsa and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly four decades, Sri Lanka has been the scene of an escalating ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamils, who form the largest minority. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness traces the development of Sinhalese nationalism by paying particular attention to the Sinhala language and how it relates to Sinhalese national identity. After Sri Lanka became independent from Great Britain in 1948, an official national language had to be chosen - either "Sinhala only" or "parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil". The victory of the "Sinhala only" proposition that won in the general election of 1956 started the antagonism between the Sinhalese and the Tamils that persists to this day. Using hitherto untapped primary sources, K. N. O. Dharmadasa delineates some of the peculiar features of the linkage between state, religion, and ethnicity in traditional Sinhalese society, providing insight into a tragic conflict that has a long and turbulent history. The book has much to offer historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists of language and religion, as well as students and scholars of South Asia, postcolonialism, ethnicity, cultural identity, and conflict.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research written by Tarja Väyrynen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of feminist approaches to questions of violence, justice, and peace. The volume argues that critical feminist thinking is necessary to analyse core peace and conflict issues and is fundamental to thinking about solutions to global problems and promoting peaceful conflict transformation. Contributions to the volume consider questions at the intersection of feminism, gender, peace, justice, and violence through interdisciplinary perspectives. The handbook engages with multiple feminisms, diverse policy concerns, and works with diverse theoretical and methodological contributions. The volume covers the gendered nature of five major themes: • Methodologies and genealogies (including theories, concepts, histories, methodologies) • Politics, power, and violence (including the ways in which violence is created, maintained, and reproduced, and the gendered dynamics of its instantiations) • Institutional and societal interventions to promote peace (including those by national, regional, and international organisations, and civil society or informal groups/bodies) • Bodies, sexualities, and health (including sexual health, biopolitics, sexual orientation) • Global inequalities (including climate change, aid, global political economy). This handbook will be of great interest to students of peace and conflict studies, security studies, feminist studies, gender studies, international relations, and politics. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Download or read book Buddhism Transformed written by Richard Gombrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study a social and cultural anthropologist and a specialist in the study of religion pool their talents to examine recent changes in popular religion in Sri Lanka. As the Sinhalas themselves perceive it, Buddhism proper has always shared the religious arena with a spirit religion. While Buddhism concerns salvation, the spirit religion focuses on worldly welfare. Buddhism Transformed describes and analyzes the changes that have profoundly altered the character of Sinhala religion in both areas.