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

Sun Feb 6 21:36:16 UTC 2022

Dear Matthew and all,

I will answer in private because I have to approach the journal editor/s
yet.

Best,
Paolo

Il giorno dom 6 feb 2022 alle ore 22:24 Matthew Kapstein <
mkapstei at uchicago.edu> ha scritto:

> Hi Paolo,
>
> Would you be so kind as to tell us to which journal you are proposing this?
>
> thanks in advance,
> Matthew
>
> Get Outlook for iOS <https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
> ------------------------------
> *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
> *siddhi*s 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/>**er**osati/
> <https://uniroma1.academia.edu/PaoloRosati/>*
> paoloe.rosati at gmail.com
> Mobile/Whatsapp: (+39) 338 73 83 472
> Skype: paoloe.rosati
>

-- 
*Paolo E. Rosati*

*PhD in Asian and African Studies*
*https://uniroma1.academia.edu/paolo
<https://uniroma1.academia.edu/PaoloRosati/>**er**osati/
<https://uniroma1.academia.edu/PaoloRosati/>*
paoloe.rosati at gmail.com
Mobile/Whatsapp: (+39) 338 73 83 472
Skype: paoloe.rosati
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