[INDOLOGY] Special Issue on Magic, Supernatural and Danger in South and Southeast Asia

[Matthew Kapstein]

Hi Paolo,

Would you be so kind as to tell us to which journal you are proposing this?

thanks in advance,
Matthew

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From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Paolo Eugenio Rosati via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Sunday, February 6, 2022 9:29:49 PM
To: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Special Issue on Magic, Supernatural and Danger in South and Southeast Asia

Dear Indologists,

I am looking for one or two article's proposal that will discuss folk and/or vernacular and/or tribal and/or tantric traditions in Southeast Asia for a special issue I am going to edit, (provisionally) entitled: "Magic, Supernatural and Danger: Religions at the 'Periphery' of South and Southeast Asia".

It would be great if you could circulate this informal call to anyone that could be interested. The special issue is planned to be published in a double-blind peer-reviewed journal. The first manuscript draft should be submitted by September/October 2022.

Sincerely,
Paolo

Special issue's summary (draft):

South and Southeast Asian folk and indigenous religions share several socio-cultural and religious traits with Tantra. Indeed, through processes of ‘parochialization’ and ‘universalization’ (Marriott 1955), Tantra succeeded in adapting pan-Indian cults to the religious needs of local, low-caste, and often illiterate societies and vice versa. Tantra, then, is a cultural bridge that can link mainstream pan-Indian traditions with local, vernacular, low-caste, folk and indigenous traditions. These societies, which often rely on the oral transmission of their belief narratives, have too often been mislabelled by colonial rhetoric as ‘little’ in contraposition to the ‘great’ Indic traditions (Redfield 1955; Singer 1972). Instead, local religious phenomena underscore a complex polymorphism whose origins are to be found in the intersection of primitive religious systems—such as the ‘proto-Śākta tradition’ (Samuel 2008) and its worship of mother goddess—and pan-Indian religions.



Several folk, low-caste and indigenous religions such as Tantra are very often involved in the worship of fierce female deities (alone or in conjunction with a male partner) through the ritual use and consumption of substances, which the Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical socio-cultural mainstream designated as defiled, contaminated, and therefore prohibited—such as blood, semen, vaginal discharge, menstrual fluid, bone marrow, urine, faeces, ashes, bones (and skulls), raw meat, liquors, intoxicating herbs, etc. However, these substances, according to the high-caste Sanskrit literature and oral narratives, are an invaluable source of power that was associated with and, in a sense, generated by the liminality, transgression, and impurity of the ‘margins’ of society (Urban 2009).



In the ‘peripheries’ throughout monsoon Asia, magical, shamanic and supernatural milieus have been attested since early history, although all pre-colonial evidence was provided by a self-proclaimed socio-religious ‘centre’. The colonial ideology of a ‘centre’ against the ‘margins’ is a misleading understanding of Indic religious phenomena. Indeed, medieval kings were often involved in performing extreme and dangerous rituals that had the secular purpose of strengthening their social position against internal and external enemies (Rosati 2017). Nonetheless, magic-shamanic religious practices and supernatural experiences were deliberately placed outside of mainstream Indic religions during the colonial period due to their intrinsic danger. On the other hand, several magic-shamanic practices were reformulated as elements not belonging to the magic-shamanic milieu but to the religious mainstream. From both Buddhism and Hindu traditions there are several examples of  misleading interpretation. Among these practices, we could enumerate the dream experiences and visions of the Bodhisattva, which are avoided to be interpreted as shamanic dreams, or the siddhis which are defined by the textual scholars in every sense, but not in connection with the word magic (e.g. Sanderson 1988), although they are powers that overcome the laws of nature (Rosati [forthcoming]).



This special issue analyses ecstatic possession, shapeshifting or therianthropy, healing abilities, apotropaic and harmful magic, alchemy, flying ability, and many other phenomena related to the magical and shamanic tradition are analyzed. The aim of this special issue is to examine the overlap, intersection and superimposition between vernacular, folk, tribal, tantric, and pan-Indian religions in order to outline the role of magical-shamanic and supernatural phenomena in the monsoon Asian periphery and in mainstream socio-religious milieus.

--
Paolo E. Rosati
PhD in Asian and African Studies
https://uniroma1.academia.edu/paolo<https://uniroma1.academia.edu/PaoloRosati/>erosati/<https://uniroma1.academia.edu/PaoloRosati/>
paoloe.rosati at gmail.com<mailto:paoloe.rosati at gmail.com>
Mobile/Whatsapp: (+39) 338 73 83 472
Skype: paoloe.rosati
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