penance

[jkirk]

> From Joanna Kirkpatrick. Not clear if there's much on the psychology of hook
swinging in Oddie's work, but then I've not read it.

See the film, "Kataragama." Gananath Obeyesekere was the consultant on this
film. In it a Muslim man who dedicates himself every year at the annual
festival tells his personal reasons why he does it yearly.

Geoffrey A. Oddie, Popular Religion, Elites and Reform: Hook-Swinging and
Its Prohibition in Colonial  India, 1880-1894 (Delhi: Manohar, 1995), pp.
1-41.


And:

This anthology has a possibly insightful article by G. A. Oddie:
Re-Visioning India's Religious Traditions: Essays in Honour of Eric Lott
by Scott, David C. (ed. and contributor) and Selvanayagam, Israel (ed. and
contributor)
Contributors include Sathianathan Clarke and Geoffrey A. Oddie and Subhash
Anand and Nirmal Minz and Julius J. Lipner and Ninian Smart and Jyoti Sahi
and Andreas Nehring and I. Henry Victor and Gabriele Dietrich and M. Thomas
Thangaraj. Published in 1996 by ISPCK.
Abstract:
Fourteen essays by an outstanding group of scholars divided into four
sections: "Studying India's Sacred Past" including David C. Scott on
pre-colonial Orientalism; "Primal and Popular Religious Experience"
including Oddie on hook swinging rituals in popular Hinduism and how the
realities of this practice shatter simplistic divisions between popular and
philosophical Hinduism; "Theological Reflection in the Indian Context"
including Lipner on avatara and incarnation, Ninian Smart on learning from
Ramanuja on the inner controller; and "The Dynamics of Religious Pluralism"
including Dietrich giving a socio-economic-religious perspective on the rise
of communalism and fundamentalism in India and Victor on insights from
Montgomery Watt on Islam and Christianity. With an appendix giving a listing
of Lott's writings arranged by subject. An invaluable collection of papers
that deserves a place in every library of religious studies.
==============================================================
 What I am curious
about, is this: are there any studies of persons who do this sort of
thing? Is this a thing "anybody" can do provided s/he has the willpower,
or do such persons have a reduced sense of pain which allows them to
perform such acts? In a religious context, is there any kind of abnormal
mental state involved? If anybody on the net knows anything about this,
I would be curious to hear the answer!

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse

>
> ³Hindoes moeten niet aan extreme boeterituelen doen²
>
> KUALA LUMPUR ­ Hindoes moeten zichzelf niet geselen, niet op
> messen lopen en geen karren voorttrekken aan haken die ze in
> hun rug hebben bevestigd. Die waarschuwing heeft de
> Maleisische Hindoeraad laten horen met het oog op het grote
> Thaipusam-festival, dat zondag wordt gevierd.
>
> Gelovige hindoes gaan zich tijdens dat festival
> traditiegetrouw te buiten aan extreme vormen van
> boetedoening. ³Ons lichaam is de woning van God, we hebben
> niet het recht om het schade toe te brengen², zei dr. K.
> Thilagavathi van de Hindoeraad. De raad vertegenwoordigt de
> hindoeïstische minderheid in het overwegend islamitische
> Maleisië. Van de ongeveer 23 miljoen Maleisiërs zijn er twee
> miljoen hindoe. De raad beveelt in plaats van zelfkastijding
> vasten, zingen en het reciteren van heilige teksten aan. De
> aanbeveling valt niet bij iedereen in goede aarde. ³Het is
> mijn boetedoening en ik maak uit hoe ik die volbreng², zei S.
> Murasoli, terwijl hij bezig was de punten van tientallen
> haken te scherpen die hij zondag in zijn huid zal steken. Het
> festival ter ere van de god Subramaniam, de tweede zoon van
> Shiva, trekt jaarlijks honderdduizenden gelovigen. Het is ook
> populair bij de hindoegemeenschappen in Zuid-India, Singapore en Bali.
>
>
> Uit: Trouw, woensdag 15-01-2003
>
>